Blog 9: Three-Quarters Of World Bank-Backed Projects Still Don't Evaluate Climate Risks: Report

Summary:
This article concerns a report from the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit organization. The researchers involved with the report uncovered and analyzed information pertaining to loans being distributed by the World Bank, and found that only around 25% of the funded projects contained no assessment regarding climate change. In 2013, the World Bank admitted that climate change could seriously undermine poverty alleviation and the path to sustainability for developing, and also promised to make climate change more a more prevalent factor regarding the projects they fund. The World Bank also continues to fund coal-powered projects, one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Despite all of this, the WRI believes that the World Bank is serious about moving forward on climate, and has made several suggestions to the World Bank, and the World Bank generally agreed with their suggestions.

Analysis:
The World Bank needs to take climate change more seriously when funding projects. The point that is lost in all of this, though, is that the West is responsible for an extremely disproportionate amount of greenhouse gases and environmental destruction when compare to the developing world. The focus and the pressure of climate change needs to be laid at the doorstep of the US and other developed nations, because we are the largest contributors. Who are we to tell the developing world how to develop when we can't even reign in our own pollution? I do hope the World Bank makes the right decisions going forward, though, and I hope they offer real, profitable, and sustainable infrastructure projects to these developing nations. 

Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/07/world-bank-climate-change_n_5104895.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change