Ronald Sanders

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s Am­bas­sador

to the US and the OAS.

I was as­ton­ished re­cent­ly to be told by one of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Caribbean on the Board of the World Bank that An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, The Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, St Kitts-Nevis and T&T, should not ex­pect any change in the bank’s pol­i­cy not to make con­ces­sion­al loans to them be­cause, sup­pos­ed­ly, they are “high in­come” coun­tries.

My as­ton­ish­ment did not re­sult from the sharp fi­nal­i­ty of the state­ment but rather be­cause it came from a per­son who is charged with the oblig­a­tion of rep­re­sent­ing the views of Caribbean gov­ern­ments on the World Bank’s board.

By an out­dat­ed arrange­ment, which like many as­pects of the World Bank’s struc­ture and op­er­a­tions re­quir­ing ur­gent re­form, no Caribbean gov­ern­ment has a seat on the Bank’s board. In­stead, Caribbean coun­tries are rep­re­sent­ed by the Cana­di­an or Brazil­ian eec­u­tive di­rec­tors. I al­ways re­mem­ber the ob­ser­va­tion of the late Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos, Owen Ar­tur, that it was of­fen­sive that he, as the head of gov­ern­ment of his coun­try, could not ad­dress a meet­ing of the World Bank’s board with­out the per­mis­sion of a Cana­di­an of­fi­cial.

But all that is part and par­cel of be­ing small and pow­er­less, and the seem­ing in­abil­i­ty of Caribbean coun­tries to pool their sov­er­eign­ty so as to ar­gue joint­ly for the re­form the World Bank ur­gent­ly re­quires to make it fit for pur­pose.

An in­te­gral part of be­ing fit for pur­pose, in to­day’s world, is to raise the mas­sive amounts of cap­i­tal that are go­ing to be nec­es­sary in the com­ing years to help coun­tries adapt to and mit­i­gate a chang­ing cli­mate. While cli­mate fi­nanc­ing has grown in im­por­tance re­cent­ly as part of the pol­i­cy of the World Bank, large­ly due to the em­pha­sis placed on it by the Bank’s largest mem­ber, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (US), un­der its present Biden Ad­min­is­tra­tion, it is still a far way from what it should be. Last year, the Bank lent US$32 bil­lion for cli­mate-re­lat­ed projects. And while this was a vast im­prove­ment over pre­vi­ous years, it was still woe­ful­ly short of the need­ed mon­ey.

Note­wor­thy is that coun­tries clas­si­fied as ‘high-in­come’, like An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and St Kitts-Nevis, did not qual­i­fy for a cent of the al­lo­cat­ed US$32 bil­lion. The on­ly “high-in­come” coun­tries that did man­age to ac­cess spe­cial loans were those in an IMF bud­getary sup­port pro­gramme with all its harsh con­di­tion­al­i­ties.

Au­thor­i­ta­tive bod­ies es­ti­mate that an ad­di­tion­al US$2.5 tril­lion of fi­nanc­ing will be need­ed every year un­til 2030 to reach the 2015 Paris Agree­ment cli­mate goals and to achieve the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) agreed by all coun­tries at the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN).

If the World Bank is to play any mean­ing­ful role, it has to get more mon­ey and it has to change its lend­ing poli­cies to al­low ac­cess to con­ces­sion­al fund­ing by so-called “high-in­come” coun­tries in the Caribbean and else­where, which share sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances of neigh­bour­ing states of both ex­treme vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and lack of re­silience to Cli­mate Change and its im­pacts.

The World Bank needs to re­vis­it and re­vise this rule which may be con­ve­nient for deny­ing fund­ing, but which is short-sight­ed in its ne­glect of a prob­lem that is grow­ing and threat­en­ing the vi­a­bil­i­ty of coun­tries. Here’s what is an even more trou­bling sit­u­a­tion re­lat­ed to funds avail­able to the World Bank and how they are al­lo­cat­ed. Many de­vel­op­ing coun­tries are deeply con­cerned that even as the bank at­tracts more fund­ing, al­lo­ca­tions for cli­mate-re­lat­ed projects (36 per cent of the bank’s lend­ing last year) will re­duce the amount of mon­ey avail­able for in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment and for im­prov­ing so­cial ser­vices.

Stud­ies by the Cen­tre for En­er­gy and Cli­mate So­lu­tions show that from 1751 (be­gin­ning of mean­ing­ful in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion) to 2017, the share of cu­mu­la­tive CO2 emis­sions is: the US (25 per cent), the coun­tries of the Eu­ro­pean Union and Britain (22 per cent), Chi­na (12 per cent), Rus­sia (7.0 per cent), Japan (4.0 per cent) and In­dia (3.0 per cent).

How­ev­er, this is un­like­ly to hap­pen. In­deed, even pro­vid­ing suf­fi­cient mon­ey to the World Bank ap­pears in­creas­ing­ly re­mote, as coun­tries such as Chi­na and Britain opt to pro­vide their loans and grants bi­lat­er­al­ly than through in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions. So, the prospects for se­cur­ing fund­ing for de­vel­op­ing states to meet their de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges, par­tic­u­lar­ly build­ing re­silience to the im­pacts of Cli­mate Change, are not promis­ing. Nov­el ideas have been pro­posed, in­clud­ing what is called the “Bridgetown Ini­tia­tive”, a pro­pos­al of Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter, Mia Mot­t­ley, to in­crease con­ces­sion­al fi­nanc­ing by mul­ti­lat­er­al de­vel­op­ment banks to US$1 tril­lion among oth­er things.

Much hope is al­so be­ing placed in Ajay Ban­ga, the for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive of Mas­ter­card, who has been nom­i­nat­ed by the Biden Ad­min­is­tra­tion to be the next pres­i­dent of the World Bank. But he alone–how­ev­er skil­ful he may be–can­not bring about the trans­for­ma­tion that is need­ed, or the po­lit­i­cal will that is re­quired, to change the poli­cies of the World Bank which is made by its rich­est mem­bers. And right now, na­tion­al­ism and self-preser­va­tion pre­vails amongst the world’s pow­er­ful na­tions.

De­vel­op­ing coun­tries should cre­ate a uni­ty of the glob­al south, us­ing their own re­sources, in­clud­ing their pur­chas­ing pow­er to de­fend and ad­vance them­selves. That goal must nev­er be dis­missed as un­at­tain­able. To do so is to sur­ren­der a sig­nif­i­cant strength that could be a game chang­er. There is a va­can­cy in com­mit­ted lead­er­ship; it should be filled.