“Demystifying Development Finance” provides an eye-opening overview of Public Development Banks (PDBs) and their profound impact on the world. From the money they invest to the standards they set, these banks shape our lives and the planet’s well-being in ways we often underestimate.
In recent years, PDBs have been advocating to play an even bigger role to address climate change, global poverty, and other crises. However, the case studies and the evidence presented in this report show that PDBs are actually exacerbating the problems they claim to solve. The push towards privatization, the extractivist and top-down approach, and the limitations of PDBs’ social and environmental safeguards are often deepening inequalities, leading to violations, fueling climate change, and increasing debt.
Drafted by over 100 civil society activists, this joint analysis aims at sparking a much-needed debate on the role that development banks are playing in today’s global economy, and on what we can do to hold them accountable.
Key Findings
- PDBs say they empower people to reach their full potential, but their top-down development model excludes communities from decision-making, causing harm.
- PDBs say they finance public services, but they actually promote the privatization of health, water and other essential services, which worsens inequality.
- PDBs say their mission is to end poverty, but they burden countries with debt and austerity.
- PDBs have social and environmental safeguards in place, but their investments are harming communities and worsening the climate crisis.
- PDBs say they ensure safe participation, but at the same time they support authoritarian governments and businesses who are known human rights violators.
PDBs are hiding behind words like “sustainable development”, while advancing a model based on the ruthless exploitation of natural resources, destruction of pristine territories, spiraling debt and inequalities, and attacks against dissenting voices.
Would you like to join our collective efforts to hold development banks accountable? Feel free to share, adapt and use this report, and get in touch if you have any questions!
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We are excited to announce that, w/ our member @WRIEquity, we are developing a new initiative to protect Grassroots Environmental #Defenders!
The Standing Together for Environmental Defenders (#STAND) will offer training, financial support and collaborative partnerships 🧵(1/4)
📢 Save the Date! 📅 16:00CET, 9 April
Join BHRRC’s @ChristenDobson as she speaks at the online launch of new Indicators on Business & Human Rights, spearheaded by @ISHRglobal.
Register here👉: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5m9V1XgyQ0mN83ltukcjFg#/registration
🚨Today, as their hearing takes place, we urge authorities in #ElSalvador to drop all charges against 5 environmental rights defenders from @ades_sm.
The criminalization of HRDs for peacefully protecting their territory must end❗️
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/upcoming-hearing-five-community-leaders-and-environmental-rights-defenders-facing-2
Very worrying news from #Kyrgyzstan, where the president has signed the controversial law on "foreign representatives", that risks stigmatizing and silencing critical voices.
https://cpj.org/2024/04/kyrgyzstan-president-signs-russian-style-foreign-agents-law/
In a recent letter, local & intl CSOs had called on development banks to take a stance to protect #civicspace and use their leverage to push the Kyrgyz govt to stop the law.
https://rightsindevelopment.org/news/kyrgyzstan-foreign-representative-law/
Standing in solidarity with our Kyrgyz partners, we hope the govt will now withdraw the other proposed law on NGOs and will not use the new bill on foreign repr to target critics & silence dissent.
Read more in this analysis by @ICNLAlliance 👇
https://www.icnl.org/post/analysis/analysis-of-the-kyrgyz-republic-draft-law-on-non-governmental-organizations