The World Bank and Climate Change Mitigation - Integrating Considerations for Climate Change Mitigation in the Energy Portfolio 2008-2011

Abstract

Projections reveal that developing countries’ emissions of GHG will rise tremendously in the decades to come. The UNFCCC has identified the World Bank as having an important role to play in assisting client countries develop along a low emission path. While earlier research has shown that the World Bank largely ignored considerations of climate change mitigation in the energy sector before 2007, new developments has signified an intensified effort on the part on the World Bank to manage linkages between development and climate change after 2008. This thesis aim to fill some of this gap in research by evaluating to what extent the World Bank has integrated considerations for climate change mitigation in the energy sector portfolios from 2008 – 2011. The results of the quantitative content analysis applied to World Bank project documents indicate an ambiguous extent, in which integration is mainly concentrated in a few selected high volume projects while the majority of the portfolio still ignores climate considerations. Drawing on insights from rationalist and constructivist approaches for understanding the behaviour of international organizations this thesis suggests a number of factors that may have influenced the performance of the World Bank in assisting client countries develop along a low emission path.