AAP FACTCHECK – An Oxfam report did not find that $US41 billion has gone “missing” from the World Bank’s climate change fund, contrary to claims online.
The international charity’s research reveals that no funds are missing; instead, the bank did not track whether individual project components labelled “climate finance” during the approval phase continued to qualify for that definition.
The claim appears in Facebook posts sharing an image of World Bank president Ajay Banga and the headline: “$41 Billion of World Bank’s ‘Climate Change’ Fund Has Gone Missing”.
The headline and image match those used in an earlier article by Slay News, a website debunked multiple times by fact-checking outlets.
Oxfam’s Climate Finance Unchecked report analysed World Bank-funded projects between 2017 and 2023.
It explained that the global lender tagged individual costs within the overall spend on each project that qualified as “climate finance” at the approval stage.
While the World Bank’s overall spending on each project “tended to balance out”, an Oxfam spokesperson said, there was no way to track if individual cost items still qualified for a climate finance tag at the project completion stage.
Oxfam found that $US24 billion to $US41 billion ($A36.5 billion to $A62.4 billion) labelled as “climate finance” at the approval stage of projects couldn’t be confirmed as still qualifying for that label at completion, due to the bank’s accounting processes between 2017 and 2023.
The charity said it was not alleging any mismanagement of funds due to corruption or waste; it was concerned about the World Bank’s reporting process for deviations in planned and actual climate finance.
“This distinction is significant,” Oxfam’s spokesperson told AAP FactCheck.
“Oxfam’s report doesn’t suggest funds are missing but points to a transparency issue that makes it difficult to know precisely what the Bank is delivering in terms of climate finance: where it’s going and what it’s supporting.
“Knowing this is crucial for tracking the real impact of climate funding and holding institutions accountable.”
The spokesperson added that Ajay Banga’s leadership of the bank “did not have any bearing on the findings”, noting that the report focused on projects initiated before his tenure began in June 2023.
A different version of this article focuses on claims made by a New Zealand politician.
The Verdict
False – The claim is inaccurate.
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