Amid mounting complaints from developing nations over Group of Seven nations’ energy policies, World Bank President Ajay Banga said on Wednesday it’s not his job to prod G7 governments to wind down their spending on fossil fuels.
“I’m very focused on what I can do in the institution,” Banga told POLITICO on the sidelines of the World Bank’s spring meetings in Washington. “How can I focus on the right things that I can change as compared to others.”
The new bank boss is trying to stretch the World Bank’s balance sheets to address climate and other global challenges in developing nations, largely at the urging of G7 countries that compose roughly 40 percent of the bank’s voting shares.
But at the same time, those same wealthy countries are digging an even greater climate hole for the World Bank and its regional cohorts to address: The United States has continued financing fossil fuel projects abroad, Japan has met with U.S. natural gas exporters and urged new projects in Africa, and Italy and Germany have actively courted new supplies outside of Europe as well.
