The news from a climatist perspective is reported in the LinkedIn article World Bank and IMF Retreat from Climate Finance Under US Pressure.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

In a significant shift in global financial priorities, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) appear to be scaling back their commitments to climate finance in 2026, likely influenced by pressure from the United States. This development, reported in mid-2025, has sparked concerns among environmental advocates, developing nations, and the business community about its potential to disrupt the global transition to a sustainable economy. Climate finance, which funds projects aimed at mitigating and adapting to climate change, is critical for supporting renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure, and climate resilience initiatives. [ Note: The United States is the largest shareholder of the World Bank, controlling about 16% of voting power. This allows the U.S. to single-handedly block any decision that requires a supermajority, such as extending or replacing the climate financing targets.]

Reorientation Background from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

Excerpts from Secretary Bessent IMFC-DC Statement in italics with my bolds and added images.

In recent years, the IMF has suffered from mission creep. Its work has too often extended into areas such as international development, climate change, gender, and social issues, which are disconnected from the institution’s core mandate. To restore its relevance and impact, the Fund must drop these extraneous items and focus on the critical economic work at hand. 

As part of the ongoing Comprehensive Surveillance Review (CSR), the IMF is taking important steps to better calibrate the scope of its surveillance and reverse these concerning trends. Through the ongoing Review of Program Design and Conditionality, we expect the IMF to reemphasize a culture focused on achieving successful program outcomes rather than prioritizing inputs, such as the volume of financing provided.

In a more constrained external financing environment, the IMF should promote domestic revenue mobilization, better governance, and policies that support durable, private sector-led growth.  Moreover, the IMF, together with the World Bank, must continue its efforts to improve debt data reporting, help build debt management capacity for borrowing countries, restore momentum in debt-restructuring processes, and advance progress under the Common Framework.

The World Bank must maintain focus on its core mission of reducing poverty and increasing economic growth. This means:

♦ Promoting a stronger development agenda focused on country self-reliance by directing resources to the countries most in need for foundational investments that increase productivity and growth and graduating countries from Bank support;
♦ Delivering access to all technologies which can provide abundant, reliable, and affordable energy;
♦ Promoting prudent macroeconomic management and the rule-of-law; and improving development outcomes by proactively seeking to expand competition in procurement.
♦ Striving for greater efficiency, discipline, and accountability so that every dollar delivers more impact.

The Bank must do more to advance developing country access to abundant, affordable, and reliable energy to support economic growth and poverty reduction. Energy abundance sparks economic abundance, and the World Bank should support an all-of-the-above approach to energy technologies—including fossil fuels such as gas, oil, and coal, rather than restrict borrower choice. We call on the Bank to further expand its support for affordable, reliable energy by removing constraints on its support for natural gas and increasing the number of gas projects in the pipeline. We continue to welcome the Bank’s removal of the prohibition on financing nuclear power generation last year. We further welcome the Bank’s leadership in a working group on nuclear energy development with other multilateral development banks. Financing that delivers energy abundance will provide a strong boost to growth, which will also support debt sustainability.

Focusing on the Bank’s core mission also means abandoning its distortionary 45% climate finance target, which impedes market efficiency, distorts incentives, and undermines efforts to reduce poverty and spur economic growth. We welcome the coming expiration of the Climate Change Action Plan, and upon its long-overdue expiration, expect the Bank to immediately shift its myopic focus on climate and financing volumes to one that emphasizes high-quality, durable projects rather than shaping and selecting projects to chase arbitrary financing targets that do little to lift people out of poverty. The Bank should turn its attention to whether its investments and the countries they support are resilient to a multitude of shocks, rather than to meeting nonsensical arbitrary targets.

As public institutions, the World Bank and IMF can most clearly demonstrate accountability to their shareholders by ensuring that a sharper focus on their respective core missions is also reflected by restrained budgets. In service of this goal, we are pleased that both institutions have proposed flat real administrative budget growth for the upcoming fiscal year alongside streamlining efforts that will help reverse the mission creep of recent years.

More than eight decades after their creation at Bretton Woods, we must ensure that the international financial institutions remain true to their mandates and fit for purpose. Streamlining policy priorities will allow both the World Bank and IMF to focus limited public resources on effectively fulfilling their core mandates while nimbly responding to crises. The United States will continue to work with Management and staff, as well as other shareholders, to advance these priorities.