A report titled “Climatewash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights” was published by Oakland Institute just before World Bank Land Conference 2025 in Washington, D.C., USA. The report accused World Bank of using climate action as a pretext to push land reforms that favor corporate interests over local communities and environmental protection.
Key Highlights of Report
Report Focus: Examines how the Bank leverages climate commitments to justify a multibillion-dollar land tenure formalization drive across the Global South.
Core Concern: While the Bank claims these reforms support climate mitigation, the report says they actually:
- Open lands for agribusiness
- Enable mining of transition minerals
- Support carbon credit schemes
Negative Impacts Identified:
- Displacement of local communities
- Ecological degradation
- Dismantling of traditional collective tenure systems
- Burdening governments with debt (due to loan-financed programs)
- Enabling corporate land grabs
- Worsening land inequality
Funding Details
World Bank has:
- Committed $10 billion to land programs
- Pledged to double annual agribusiness investments to $9 billion by 2030
Case Studies Highlighted
Countries where Bank-backed reforms reportedly caused displacement and inequality:
- Indonesia
- Malawi
- Madagascar
- Philippines
- Argentina
Challenge to Climate Claims
The report points out: contradictions between Bank’s support for: Extractive industries and Industrial agriculture and recommendations from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which advocates:
- Agroecology
- Land protection
- Community-centered solutions
Call for Change
Report Urges:
- Reevaluation of the World Bank’s land reform strategy
- Greater transparency and accountability in land governance
- Prevention of harm to vulnerable populations and ecosystems
What is Climate-Washing?
- Also called greenwashing (in climate context)
- Definition: Misleading claims that policies, products, or actions are environmentally or climate-friendly when they are not.
Common tactics:
- Exaggerated / false climate claims
- Selective disclosure (only showing positives)
- Hiding negative information
- Using vague / ambiguous language
- Facing litigation over consumer protection, product liability, or failure to disclose climate risks