Spring meetings expose climate‑finance rift

The International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings ended April 18 with a public split over whether the World Bank should keep climate finance at the center of its lending. (meetings.imf.org, downtoearth.org.in) U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the World Bank’s Climate Change Action Plan should expire and called for a shift away from what he described as a “myopic focus on climate and financing volumes.” In the same set of meetings, the U.S. statement to the International Monetary and Financial Committee said the International Monetary Fund had drifted into “climate change, gender, and social issues” beyond its core mandate. (home.treasury.gov, meetings.imf.org) That matters because the World Bank’s current climate plan, launched for 2021-2025, embedded climate screening across lending and set a target of 45% of annual financing for climate-related projects by fiscal 2025. The plan is due to expire at the end of June 2026, leaving shareholders to decide whether to renew it, weaken it, or replace it with something narrower. (worldbank.org, africanclimatewire.org) Other shareholders spent the week looking for a way to keep some version of the strategy alive after June. Reuters reported on April 17 that France and other World Bank shareholders were seeking a compromise to preserve the bank’s climate framework in some form. (money.usnews.com, msn.com) The fight unfolded as the meetings were dominated by a darker economic backdrop than six months ago. The International Monetary Fund’s April 2026 World Economic Outlook cut global growth to 3.1% for 2026 and 3.2% for 2027, with bigger downgrades for emerging market and developing economies. (imf.org, imf.org) Reuters reported after the meetings that finance officials were grappling with war-driven energy shocks, higher debt burdens, and less room for governments to spend their way out of trouble. That left multilateral lenders under pressure to do more even as major shareholders argued over what those institutions should fund. (money.usnews.com, thedailystar.net) World Bank President Ajay Banga used the week to push a jobs-and-growth frame instead of a climate-first one. The bank’s official spring meetings agenda centered on “building prosperity through policy,” with sessions on energy, water, agriculture, health, gender, and digital development tied to job creation and private investment. (live.worldbank.org, worldbank.org) That framing showed up in new announcements. On April 15, the World Bank launched “Water Forward,” a platform it said aims to improve water security for 1 billion people by 2030 by combining policy reform, financing, and partnerships. (worldbank.org, live.worldbank.org) African business voices argued that the answer was not to pause investment while the climate fight plays out. Reports from the Washington meetings said Aliko Dangote pressed for infrastructure, manufacturing, and job-creating projects, while other African delegates urged governments to keep backing artificial intelligence and digital capacity despite global shocks. (blueprint.ng, iafrica.com) The next deadline is June 30, when the World Bank’s current climate plan expires. By then, shareholders will have to decide whether the bank’s future lending strategy is still organized around climate targets, or around a looser mix of jobs, growth, energy security, and infrastructure. (africanclimatewire.org, home.treasury.gov)