Climate change focus needs a rethink
SINCE the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, the need for governments and development finance institutions to prioritize the focus on climate adaptation and mitigation actions, including, of course, raising the hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of funding such actions require, has been emphasized in mantra-like fashion by organizations such as the World Bank.
The World Bank has, as a matter of fact, implemented significant changes to its strategy and operations to intensify its efforts toward climate action, recently committing to spending at least 45 percent of its annual financing on climate-related projects in the next fiscal year. Other institutions such as the Manila-based Asian Development Bank have made similar changes.
However, the recently released 2023 Country Opinion Survey, a survey the World Bank conducts every year, highlights a worrisome difference between what the World Bank’s shareholders and leadership consider important, and what government officials, civil society, business people and other experts in the World Bank’s client countries consider their most pressing challenges.
The results of the survey are troubling in a couple of different respects, and suggest that multilateral institutions and governments alike need to rethink their approach to addressing climate change and the needs of developing countries.
The annual Country Opinion Survey is one way in which the World Bank can assess its reputation with developing countries, as well as gather insights into critical issues affecting the countries it serves. In the 2023 survey, 17 topics were provided for respondents to rank in order of importance; respondents were further asked to rate how effective they thought the World Bank is in addressing these issues.
“Climate change” did not even make the top 10 on the list of developing countries’ concerns, landing at No. 11 out of the 17 topics. “Education” and “health” topped the list, followed by “agriculture and food security,” “job creation/ employment” and “public sector governance.”
Other issues ranked by the survey respondents as bigger priorities than climate change included water supply and sanitation, private sector development, transportation, macroeconomic stability and energy. Some issues that were ranked as lower priorities than climate change included digital development, social inclusion and gender equity, all of which are notable because they also have figured prominently in the objectives of the World Bank and other development finance institutions in recent years.
As far as the Philippines is concerned, it was not included in the 2023 survey, but was in the 2022 survey, where the order of priorities as seen by respondents here was similar to the most recent results. In that survey, climate change was at No. 10 of 17 concerns; the top three were education, poverty reduction, and agriculture and rural development.
The important takeaway from the results of the survey, in our view, is that it may have been a mistake for policymakers and supporting institutions to treat climate change as a separate, standalone challenge. This is not to say that it should be dismissed or downplayed, but rather quite the opposite.
All of the more important concerns expressed by developing countries are in some way caused or exacerbated by climate change effects; therefore, climate change should not be considered an item on a list, but rather a critical part of everything on that list. Obviously, it is a bigger part of some concerns than others; for example, agriculture, water and public health are impacted more than a concern like public governance.
But even the way public governance is carried out is affected in some way by climate change concerns, the circumstances of the times we live in being what they are.
In this light, a grand, well-meaning goal such as “spend at least 45 percent of the World Bank’s funding on climate-related projects” comes across as unrealistic and performative. The same can be said of pledges by governments to invest certain amounts in climate change action. The entire approach should be reconsidered.
If the developed world and its institutions sincerely want to help developing countries who, after all, are the most affected by climate change, then the problems those countries are experiencing as a result of it and are manifested in day-to-day worries about food security, livelihoods, energy, and the like, should be given priority. That would be a more productive, and perhaps ultimately successful way to address climate change.