World Bank, no one wants you, no one believes a word you say, especially the world's poor you claim to care about. They especially want you out of their lives in the area of 'climate finance.'

 

Photo, from 2010 Cancun 'climate' summit, protests against World Bank as center of UN climate cash, photo from Climate Justice
4/2/13, "World Bank chief says global warming threatens the planet and the poorest," Washington Post, Howard Schneider

"World Bank president Jim Yong Kim on Tuesday called global warming “a fundamental threat” to world economic development and announced plans to put the issue at the center of bank planning.
 
In a call for action to end extreme poverty among hundreds of millions of people worldwide by 2030, Kim said that central to that aim is ensuring that global temperatures don’t rise faster than expected.

“If we do not act to curb climate change immediately, we will leave our children and grandchildren an unrecognizable planet,” Kim said.

His comments reflect a turn by both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund toward greater participation in the climate change debate. 

The effects of a warming planet are expected to fall most heavily on the poor in countries least able to cope. The World Bank has announced a goal to reduce the number of people living on an estimated $1.25 per day from 21 percent of the world — some 1.3 billion people — to 3 percent in the next 17 years." via Tom Nelson

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12/8/2010, "March to keep World Bank out of climate finance," Climate Justice Now

"Cancun: Anger grows at World Bank role in climate finance."

CANCUN, MEXICO – "As talks on long term climate finance for developing countries heat up today in Cancun, campaigners from around the world condemned rich countries’ efforts to carve out a special role for the World Bank in managing these funds.
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Campaigners are furious that the World Bank is being promoted as the hub for climate finance. They insist that because the institution continues to bankroll dirty fossil fuel projects to the tune of $6.6 billion last year alone – they are in the wrong hands for the funds to fight climate change. They also cite the Bank’s recent history of imposing climate finance as loans, creating new debt for already impoverished countries, increasing the role of the private sector and imposing economic policy conditions that increase inequality.
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The coalition of diverse groups from developed and developing countries launched a new campaign ‘World Bank our of climate finance’ today calling on governments to resist any role for the institution in climate finance. They are particularly angry that in an early draft of the negotiating text, the World Bank has been invited to serve as the interim trustee of a new global climate fund – and potentially its secretariat.
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In response, 200 organisations from around the world, including Jubilee South, Friends of the Earth International and the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance have signed an open letter to governments at the Cancun negotiations stating that the nature, structure, track record, and policies of the World Bank and other development banks contradict what should be the principles of fair and effective climate finance.
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Ian Rivera, from Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) – Philippines said:
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“It’s outrageous that the World Bank is being forced on to developing countries. Peoples of developing countries do not want to work with the World Bank in order to access much needed climate finance. Based on bitter experience, they know that the World Bank will increase their debts and poverty and will undermine their human rights and their independence. That’s why we have launched a new campaign to stop the World Bank being imposed on developing countries who need climate finance to cope with climate change.”"...

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The World Bank ($5.3bn) ranks second in coal plant financing in past 6 years:
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. 11/19/12, "More than 1,000 New Coal Plants Planned Worldwide," Damian Carrington, UK Guardian
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"More than 1,000 coal-fired power plants are being planned worldwide, new research has revealed....

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8/26/2010, "World Bank Attempting to Sabotage Reform of CDM HFC-23 Projects," PR Newswire

"New Report Reveals Fatal Flaws in Bank's Justification for Business as Usual."

WASHINGTON and LONDON, Aug. 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "In an effort to justify its participation in perhaps the biggest carbon market scandal to date, the World Bank has dismissed concerns that the UN Clean Development Mechanism's (CDM) HFC-23 projects are generating millions of fake carbon credits. 
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An analysis released today by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), Ethically Bankrupt: World Bank Defense of the HFC-23 Scandal (link below) details the factual and analytical errors rife within the recently published World Bank Q & A on CDM HFC-23 projects.
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Despite its role as the fiscal agent for distributing billions to combat global warming, the World Bank has defended the flawed program for destroying HFC-23 even as the Executive Board of the CDM launched a comprehensive investigation into the scandal and suspended issuance of credits from six of the projects, including one from the World Bank.
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"The World Bank can't be the solution to climate change until they stop being the problem," said Samuel LaBudde , Senior Atmospheric Campaigner with EIA who added, "Self-enrichment at the expense of climate mitigation is indefensible, as is paying chemical plants so much to destroy waste gas that they intentionally produce more."
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Under the CDM, 19 projects that manufacture the refrigerant HCFC-22 are paid to capture and incinerate HFC-23 byproduct though issuance of Certified Emission Reductions Units (CERs) that are then sold on international carbon markets.  An analysis of HFC-23 projects in the form of a Revision Request(link below) submitted by CDM-Watch to the UNFCCC in March, revealed evidence that some CDM plants are intentionally maximizing the amount of HFC-23 waste gas produced up to the level to which they receive CDM credits.  This has likely resulted in the issuance of millions of fake carbon credits with no benefit to the climate, and huge subsidies to manufacturers resulting in higher production of super greenhouse gases.   
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Eva Filzmoser from CDM-Watch said: "We find it astonishing that the World Bank concludes there is not sufficient evidence to support our allegations, while the investigation by the Methodology Panel is still ongoing. There is a clear conflict of interest here."
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Manufacturers in China and India, where most of the HFC-23 projects are located, earn as much or more for destroying HFC-23 than they do for producing HCFC-22, which incentivizes production and use of HCFC-22 for the sole purpose of increasing the amount of HFC-23 created.  
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Last week in an unprecedented move, members of the Executive Board requested a review of the issuance of more than 9.5 million CERs from six HCFC-22 plants, requiring additional information from the plants to ensure the projects do not result in fake emissions offsets. CERs for HFC-23 destruction account for 51% of the almost 430 million CDM credits issued to date and are used extensively in carbon markets by the EU, Japan and other Kyoto Protocol Parties. 
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The World Bank's Umbrella Carbon Facility invests in two of the largest HFC-23 incineration projects. In 2006 the Facility contracted to pay 775 million Euros/ (US $982 million) for almost 130 million CERs ($2,24 billion at current carbon market value) from two projects in China. Both projects were identified by the Revision Request as operating to generate the maximum amount of HFC-23 that could be credited, resulting in superfluous greenhouse gas emissions and fake carbon credits.
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The World Bank Q & A argues against any changes in current crediting for HFC-23 projects and dismisses any and all evidence of wrongdoing.  EIA's analysis reveals a number of serious factual errors in their Q &A and a clear avoidance of the larger issues.  
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"The World Bank's position is both scientifically and morally indefensible," said Mark Roberts , Senior Policy and Legal Advisor for EIA. "It should stop trying to subvert the CDM investigation and allow the UN to do a job they are far better qualified for than the World Bank."
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Ethically Bankrupt: World Bank Defense of the HFC-23 Scandal and the HFC-23 Revision Request are available at: www.eia-global.org/global_climate/global_climate_reports.html

SOURCE Environmental Investigation Agency." photo above, Climate Justice Now
RELATED LINKS
http://www.eia-global.org/global_climate/global_climate_reports.html"
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At Cancun in 2010, China threatened to spew illegal quantities of poison (hfc) gas into the atmosphere if anyone interfered with its business. The World Bank has defended China's hfc issue per above article.
  
12/13/10, "‘Perverse’ CO2 Payments Send Flood of Money to China," by Mark Schapiro, Yale Environment 360 

"To offset their own carbon emissions, European companies have been wildly overpaying China to incinerate a powerful greenhouse gas known as hfc 23. And in a bizarre twist, those payments have spurred the manufacture of a harmful refrigerant that is being smuggled into the U.S. and used illegally. ...

Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and JP Morgan Chase have significant holdings in the credits linked to the gas....

The controversy over hfc’s came to a head at the climate negotiations in Cancun last week. Last Tuesday, Chen Huan, deputy director of China’s CDM Fund, the recipient of the hfc tax revenues, denounced the attempts to reduce the use of hfc credits as “irresponsible,” and attacked the calculations on which they are based as “implausible” and lacking in documentation. 

He threatened that Chinese industries would vent hfc gases without government controls if the subsidy program was discontinued, telling Point Carbon News — a market monitoring and news service —

• that efforts to stop the credits are “not acceptable for China because
• it deviates from the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.”

The Environmental Investigations Agency and CDM Watch responded by 

accusing the Chinese of holding the climate “hostage.”"...

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The World Bank lied when it blamed 2011 Thailand floods on human CO2 caused global warming. A NOAA/UK Met Office study said "climate change cannot be shown to have played any role" in this event. (See 7/10/12 text below).

2/16/13, "Climate change real economic risk, World Bank tells G20," AFP, via globalpost.com

"The president of the World Bank on Saturday warned the finance chiefs of the world's leading economic powers that global warming is a real risk to the planet and already affecting the world economy in unprecedented ways.

Adressing the G20 finance ministers at their meeting in Moscow, Jim Yong Kim

called on the world powers to

"tackle the serious challenges presented by climate change."

"These are not just risks. They represent real consequences," said Kim, calling the lack of attention to the issue by finance ministers and central bank chiefs "a mistake".

He said failing to tackle the challenges of climate change risked having "serious consequences for the economic outlook".

"Damages and losses from natural disasters have more than tripled over the past 30 years," said Kim, giving as examples the $45 billion of losses from the 2011 floods in Thailand, whose effects "spread across borders disrupting international supply chains."

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7/10/12, "Back-to-back La Niñas cooled globe and influenced extreme weather in 2011," noaanews.noaa.gov

"Findings" (scroll down to near end of pg. for this subhead)

(4th parag.): "Climate change cannot be shown to have played any role in the 2011 floods on the Chao Phraya River that flooded Bangkok, Thailand. Although the flooding was unprecedented, the amount of rain that fell in the river “catchment” area was not very unusual. Other factors, such as changes in reservoir policies and increased construction on the flood plain, were found most relevant in setting the scale of the disaster.

The paper, Explaining Extreme Events of 2011 from a Climate Perspective, was produced by NOAA and UK Met Offices scientists as well as numerous colleagues around the world. It was edited by Thomas Peterson, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center; Peter Stott, UK Met Office-Hadley Center; and Stephanie Herring, NOAA’s Office of Program Planning and Integration. The study can be viewed online."...

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Ed. note: The World Bank knows very well that if man caused global warming exists, and if it's caused by human CO2, the only country that can make a difference in world CO2 levels at this point is China. US CO2 has plunged and is heading lower. China has only begun to burn coal and has no intention of lowering its CO2 anyway. It may occasionally say it's going to do so, but obviously they can say anything they want. No one is going to challenge them. No one is able to challenge them.





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