Quo Vadis? The World Bank’s role in promoting environmental sustainability

The World Bank is being called upon to expand its role in addressing climate change and broader environmental sustainability. At least since the Brundtland Report in 1987, the Bank has advanced several important tools and initiatives for supporting environmental considerations in development. However, a selective overview of this past approach highlights that while the institution’s own strategies, reports, and activities have often suggested a ‘beyond growth’, and ‘eco-sufficiency’ approach to development, its own assessments have highlighted the inability to mainstream either the objectives or tools of environmental sustainability into its country-based work. Nonetheless, the Bank’s success in raising poverty reduction to the level of its original economic growth mandate and results accountability suggest that it can draw upon its experience to implement at least a ‘techno-abundance’ perspective that acknowledges environmental sustainability as a co-equal objective with growth and poverty reduction.