Under pressure from shareholders, the World Bank has undertaken a series of reforms in recent years — outlined in its own “Evolution Roadmap” and reinforced by the Group of 20 major economies’ road map for multilateral development banks agreed to last year. But the political and economic landscape that drove those reforms has shifted dramatically since the start of the year, largely because of Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency. As the bank’s largest shareholder, his administration is reshaping what’s possible.
Years of intense discussion about how MDBs must respond to global challenges “has led to a shared set of objectives,” Nancy Lee, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, told Devex. “I don’t think you can say, however, that the implementation has progressed as fast as it should.”
The question now is where things go from here. The World Bank has oriented itself around job creation while going noticeably quiet on climate. That marks a sharp shift from the original evolution road map, which promised to expand the bank’s mission beyond extreme poverty to tackle global challenges and public goods, including climate change.