Free Republic

The World Bank Group today released the findings of its probe into data irregularities discovered in 2018 and 2020 reports; and along with those findings, it confirmed that it will be discontinuing 'Doing Business' reports.Specifically, Bloomberg reports that International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva was cited by the World Bank in the probe....“The changes to China’s data in Doing Business 2018 appear to be the product of two distinct types of pressure applied by bank leadership on the Doing Business team,” the World Bank said in a report Thursday.The bank cited “pressure applied by CEO Georgieva and her advisor,...

The World Bank will give equal weight to curbing emissions and helping poor countries deal with the “disastrous effects” of a warming world as it steps up investments to tackle climate change in the first half of the 2020s, it said on Monday. The bank and its two sister organizations plan to double their investments in climate action to about $200 billion from 2021-2025, with a boost in support for efforts to adapt to higher temperatures, wilder weather and rising seas. The latest figures on international climate funding for developing nations show barely a quarter has been going to adaptation,...

Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed for a sense of urgency Tuesday as he launched a new commission that aims to accelerate and expand ways the world can prepare for climate change. “Without urgent adaptation action, we risk undermining food, energy and water security for decades to come,” Ban told guests as the Global Commission on Adaptation got underway in The Hague. The commission’s mandate is to encourage the development of measures to manage the effects of climate change through technology, planning and investment. Ban is leading the group with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and World Bank CEO Kristalina...

... Until recently, the consequences of climate change were thought to be so far into the future that many average people, including those who live in coastal zones, declared they needn’t bother; they’d be long dead by the time catastrophe struck. No more. Climate change is here, costing billions of dollars every year to recover from destructive events. Without adapting to that new reality, the world will confront rising costs of disasters that put economic growth, health, and in some places, even survival at risk. To spur action, a coalition led by billionaire Bill Gates, former United Nations Secretary General...