This Week @ The World Bank Board
It's been a while since my last update - sorry! But hopefully normal service will resume.
The 2025 Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank are now only three weeks away. There is a lot the Board has to get through before then. For example, this week we discussed the two papers that will go to the Development Committee (the Ministerial body that helps oversee the Bank). The main paper reflects the ongoing World Bank focus on jobs. The other is an update on the 2025 Shareholding Review. As the UK, we also have to work through how to use the Annual Meetings to help advance our priorities.
One of those priorities is mobilising more private capital into developing countries. And last week, the IFC - International Finance Corporation - the part of the World Bank that invests in companies - took a major step forward with the inaugural transaction under the Emerging Markets Securitization Program (EMSP). The UK was central to this (but more on that in a future update). And it is a big deal for two reasons. First, because it's about moving towards a model where the Banks identify opportunities and invest in them, but then - rather than staying with that investment all the way to maturity - they bring other investors in. If they do this repeatedly, across all the multilateral banks in a fairly standardised way, it will create a new class of developing country assets that could unlock interest from the big asset managers like the pension funds. That would be game changing. Second, by distributing these assets to the private sector, IFC can recycle its own capital faster and so reinvest more quickly.
How the Bank steps up on nature has also been a focus these past few weeks. I wrote previously about the screening that the UK office did of David Attenborough's Ocean. So I was delighted that High Seas Treaty came into force yesterday. And that the UK introduced legislation to join the 60 countries that have already ratified it. This will help create more marine protected areas. You can watch the film to understand why this matters. But I also posted previously about the World Bank's new report: 'Reboot Development: The Economics of a Livable Planet' (pictured) which was launched in Oxford. It presents the data and evidence for why nature is critical to development and I can't recommend it enough. At the Board we also discussed the results of Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) study of how the Bank has supported biodiversity efforts. I can't pre-empt the release of the report, but we will be using all of this progress to help set the future agenda for the Bank's work on nature.
Lastly, I just want to mention fragile states. I've written about this a lot before and will do so again I am sure. But it was very sobering to hear from Mirjana Spoljaric, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross - ICRC . My Swiss colleague - Beatrice Maser - invited Mirjana to speak to the Board. I have long admired the ICRC. And Mirjana talked powerfully about how the conflict and humanitarian landscape has completely changed. We are in a decade of conflict. This is where poverty and suffering will be increasingly concentrated. The Bank has been able to stay engaged in many conflict affected countries with strong Board support. How it continues to do so will be an important part of its new strategy on Fragility, Conflict and Violence.