Washington: Amidst strained ties over an alleged Chinese spy balloon, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and raised “the unacceptable” violation of American sovereignty and warned that Beijing’s material support to Moscow over Ukrainian war would attract sanctions.
The meeting on Saturday between the two top American and Chinese diplomats took place on the margins of the Munich Security Conference.
“The Secretary directly spoke to the unacceptable violation of US sovereignty and international law by the PRC high-altitude surveillance balloon in US territorial airspace, underscoring that this irresponsible act must never occur again,” State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said.
“During the meeting, Blinken made clear the United States will not stand for any violation of our sovereignty, and that the Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon programme which has intruded into the airspace of more than 40 countries across five continents has been exposed to the world,” he said.
Blinken also raised the Russia-Ukraine war during the meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
“On Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine, the Secretary warned about the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia or assistance with systemic sanctions evasion,” Price said.
Blinken condemned the ICBM test by North Korea as the latest destabilizing act carried out by Pyongyang, and emphasized the need for responsible powers to respond to such significant international challenges.
During the meeting, Blinken reaffirmed there had been no change to the longstanding ‘One China’ policy of the US, and he underscored the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, the spokesperson said.
“The Secretary reiterated President Biden’s statements that the United States will compete and will unapologetically stand up for our values and interests, but that we do not want conflict with the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and are not looking for a new Cold War,” Price said.
Blinken underscored the importance of maintaining diplomatic dialogue and open lines of communication at all times, he said.
Sydney: India is moving ahead to record the largest number of cashless transactions in the world, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday at the Raisina @ Sydney Business Breakfast.
“If you look at our cashless transactions, the UPI, I think we record the largest number of cashless transactions in the world. So there’s been a kind of a technology leapfrogging in the psyche of people, and that’s been actually a very big difference,” Jaishankar said at the Raisina@Sydney Business Breakfast.
Raisina@Sydney Business Breakfast was organized jointly by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and India’s Observer Research Foundation (ORF) at the InterContinental Hotel in Sydney.
“The digital was ensuring the integrity of delivery and transaction that would not have been possible equally on the financial side because we encouraged people to open bank accounts, sometimes bank accounts with no money.
But we were, again, during the same period, put money into the bank accounts of 415,000,000 people who are the lowest income in the country. And if you ask me, how did you get through COVID, I cannot overstate the importance of financially supporting people and feeding people and ensuring that this works on the ground,” he said.
Jaishankar also stated that digital governance has now become the basic mechanism today to do socioeconomic delivery. “India is trying to demonstrate that the country can construct a social, comprehensive social welfare system, even at the scale of income. And the scale of income is USD 2,000 per capita,” he said.
Talking about the social programs, Jaishankar said that in the last four years, India has been able to cover about 500 million people in health schemes, about the same number covered by pension schemes.
“There was a program to replace firewood with cooking gas. And the cooking gas, the initial lot of cooking gas, you get free of cost. Now, that program was as big as 80 million people.
We have a housing program, a housing program. We have already delivered 30 million houses, and at five people, a family in India, which means 150,000,000 people have been covered,” Jaishankar said.
“So I’m giving you these numbers because it actually tells you the scale which digital backbone makes possible.We couldn’t have done this ten years ago because we didn’t have that backbone, and we didn’t have the strategic understanding to activate and utilize that backbone. And you can see this in the lifestyle of people as well today,” he added.
He also said that Australia will get really deployable 5G technology from India this year and which is something that will be of great global interest. “Today you can see the change in infrastructure in India. The transformation has happened because of an integrated infrastructure policy,” he added.
Raisina@Sydney Conference, which began today with ‘Business Breakfast’, will involve ministerial and high-level government representations as well as participation from industry and civil society.
This mega event will also include panel and keynote addresses by leading regional think tanks on issues ranging from geopolitics to technology and economics.
After the keynote address of Jaishankar, a panel session will be held that would cover topics like “Next steps in the Australia-India economic partnership: stability, security and sovereignty,” and it will be addressed by keynote speakers: Vivek Lall, Chief Executive, General Atomics Global Corporation; Jodi McKay, National Chair, Australia-India Business Council; Vikram Singh, Vice President, and Country Head – ANZ, Tata Consultancy Services and facilitated by Bec Shrimpton, Director, The Sydney Dialogue, Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
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MUNICH — Cut through the haze of hoary proclamations emanating from the main stage of the Munich Security Conference about Western solidarity and common purpose this weekend, and one can’t help but notice more than a hint of foreboding just beneath the surface.
Even as Western leaders congratulate themselves for their generosity toward Ukraine, the country’s armed forces are running low on ammunition, equipment and even men. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who opened the conference from Kyiv on Friday, urged the free world to send more help — and fast. “We need speed,” he said.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris turned the heat up on Russia on another front, accusing the country of “crimes against humanity.” “Let us all agree. On behalf of all the victims, both known and unknown: justice must be served,” she said.
In other words, Russian leaders could be looking at Nuremberg 2.0. That’s bound to make a few people in Moscow nervous, especially those old enough to remember what happened to Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milošević and his entourage.
The outlook in Asia is no less fraught. Taiwan remains on edge, as the country tries to guess China’s next move. Here too, the news from Munich wasn’t reassuring.
“What is happening in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi did nothing to contradict that narrative. “Let me assure the audience that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory,” Wang told the conference when asked about Beijing’s designs on the self-governed island. Taiwan “has never been a country and it will never be a country in the future.”
For some attendees, the vibe in the crowded Bayerischer Hof hotel where the gathering takes place carried echoes of 1938. That year, the Bavarian capital hosted a conference that resulted in the infamous Munich Agreement, in which European powers ceded the Sudetenland to Germany in a misguided effort they believed could preserve peace.
“We all know that there is a storm brewing outside, but here inside the Bayerischer Hof all seems normal,” wrote Andrew Michta, dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the Germany-based Marshall Center. “It all seems so routine, and yet it all changes suddenly when a Ukrainian parliamentarian pointedly tells the audience we are failing to act fast enough.”
The only people smiling at this year’s security conference are the defense contractors. Arms sales are booming by all accounts.
Even Germany, which in recent years perfected the art of explaining away its failure to meet its NATO defense spending commitment, promised to reverse course. Indeed, German officials appeared to be trying to outdo one another to prove just how hawkish they’ve become.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to “permanently” meet NATO’s defense spending goal for individual members of two percent of GDP.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to “permanently” meet NATO’s defense spending goal for individual members | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
Germany’s new defense minister, Boris Pistorius, a Social Democrat like Scholz, called for even more, saying that “it will not be possible to fulfill the tasks that lie ahead of us with barely two percent.”
Keep in mind that at the beginning of last year, leading Social Democrats were still calling on the U.S. to remove all of its nuclear warheads from German soil.
In other words, if even the Germans have woken up to the perils of the world’s current geopolitical state, this could well be the moment to really start worrying.
CORRECTION: Jens Stoltenberg’s reference to Asia has been updated.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The head of the Rockefeller Foundation, Rajiv Shah, has emerged as the favourite to succeed David Malpass as head of the World Bank amid calls for the White House to lose its stranglehold on choosing who should run the global development body.
Shah, a doctor, health expert and former head of the US Agency for International Development, is one of the names hotly tipped to be the Joe Biden’s administration choice as a replacement for Malpass following his announcement that he would be leaving his post by June.
But the likelihood that Washington will use a “gentleman’s agreement” under which the US picks the World Bank president while Europe chooses the managing director of its sister organisation – the International Monetary Fund – brought immediate calls for the process to be opened up.
“With the dismal Malpass gone, the US are already manoeuvring to appoint the new head of the Bank”, said Oxfam’s head of inequality policy, Max Lawson. “This neo-colonial 80-year-old stitch up has to end if the World Bank is to retain any credibility with the rest of the world.
“Joe Biden should back a fully transparent open recruitment process to show the world that his administration is different.”
The UK government accepts that the next World Bank president will have a US passport, which means the list of possible choices could include the current head of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who was born in Nigeria but has American citizenship and previously worked at the bank for 25 years.
Kevin Watkins, the former head of the charity Save the Children, said: “It will be a US treasury appointment, which is outrageous. There should be a global search for the best candidate.”
Justine Greening, the former UK international development secretary, said there was a strong case for a tradition that stretches back to the founding of the World Bank and the IMF in 1944 to be broken.
“Because the World Bank is a development organisation it makes sense to have it run by someone for one of those countries”, Greening said. “We should be looking forward to how we want to do development in the 21st century not looking in the rear view mirror to how we did development in the 20th century.”
Liam Byrne, chair of the parliamentary network on the World Bank and IMF, said it was a moment when “the World Bank needs the best leadership it can get from anywhere in the world”, but it was also vital for the new president to be closely aligned with Yellen and Biden. “Congressional support for the bank is supremely important and the choice needs to be someone able to negotiate with Congress.
Malpass was Donald Trump’s choice to succeed Jim Yong Kim – a Barack Obama appointee – after his surprise decision to leave the World Bank in 2019. Janet Yellen, Biden’s treasury secretary, has made no secret of her unhappiness with Malpass and sources said he had decided to go before being formally denied a second five-year term.
In addition to Shah, a number of other American candidates are being floated for the World Bank job. These include Samantha Power, the current head of Usaid and previously US ambassador to the UN; Gayle Smith, who coordinated the US’s global response to Covid-19 and now runs the One Campaign, the development lobby group set up by Bono and Bob Geldof; and Wally Adeyemo, Yellen’s deputy at the US treasury, and who was responsible for coordinating the international effort to impose sanctions on the Kremlin following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Should the US agree to break with tradition, possible choices include Raghuram Rajan, the former governor of India’s central bank and once chief economist at the IMF; and José Antonio Ocampo, the finance minister of Colombia.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
There’s a pathetic but satisfying thing that occurs when you stop using an online service you’re used to frequenting. This was Facebook a few years ago, when plummeting engagement whipped the social media platform into a frenzy of desperate invitations and prompts. It’s Fresh Direct when you fill your basket with groceries and – I can’t recommend this enough, if you’re looking for the tiny high that comes from withholding – don’t check out, triggering a bunch of wheedling automated messages, begging you to come back.
This week, in my life, it’s Uber Eats. For the past couple of years I’ve ordered from them once a week and now I’ve stopped, causing the food delivery service to issue a flurry of semi-hysterical special offers. Each spam text, each begging notification, reminds me of the money I’m saving. If you like rejecting things (I like rejecting things) then this exercise will thrill you: rejection without the human cost of hurting someone’s feelings.
The bigger picture, obviously, is a consumer trend away from the convenience-related services that surged during the pandemic. Companies that boomed and attracted millions in investment are starting to wither as our online habits change. In the US, instant delivery startups such as Buyk and Jokr, which briefly boomed in 2021, are declaring bankruptcy or pulling out of the US market. The meal-kit company Blue Apron has seen its share price plunge as food costs have risen and consumer interest in pricey convenience products has dwindled. The same goes for Stitch Fix, a service for clothing delivery that briefly boomed during the pandemic. And all of this in the context of mass lay-offs in tech at a time when those companies, seemingly, have nowhere left to expand.
Supermarket shopping: ‘The joy, withheld during those two years of disruption, of going to a place and doing a thing.’ Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA
Though it may be bad for the economy, from the perspective of an individual trying to have a life that entails leaving the house, this trend is perhaps an encouraging sign. The same encouragement might be taken from the slowdown at Netflix; many of us are capped out after too many hours of watching TV. I’m not exactly out there every morning taking invigorating walks, but I am reading again, feeling more inclined to work rather than pass out on the sofa, and to seek out real-world rather than online experience. If habits inculcated during the pandemic were supposed to augur the future, as Derek Thompson wrote in the Atlantic last month, “the post-pandemic economy has been much weirder than most people anticipated”.
For me, the weirdest of these impulses has been a desire to return to supermarket shopping. This is partly money-related; the downturn in fast-food delivery earnings is clearly linked to pinched household incomes. It’s also a health thing; many of us are still trying to reverse the damage done by all the junk food we ate during lockdown.
But of all the habits adopted in the past couple of years, it seemed as if grocery delivery might be the obvious keeper. Post-pandemic, maybe no one wants a hulking great Peloton in their living room and the appeal of the third place – be it the gym or Starbucks – is enjoying an obvious bounce-back. But supermarket shopping, at least in New York where I live, has rarely been a pleasure. It has always been time-consuming, stressful and over-crowded, with in-store prices not much lower than what you pay for delivery. And yet, every Monday, I feel compelled to stand in line at Trader Joe’s, and stagger home carrying six bags of shopping.
All I can put this desire down to is a combination of the small satisfaction that comes from making even minor economies in the present climate; and something less tangible to do with the joy, withheld during those two years of disruption, of going to a place and doing a thing. The expense of energy has itself become a virtue. Its inverse – ordering in; falling back on convenience and paying for it – seems not only to belong to a sadder period but, at this point, when one can go out, using one’s actual body, to feel like a moral failing. If it’s a hair shirt, perhaps it feels good simply in contrast to our pandemic wardrobe. Meanwhile, I suspect watching Uber Eats freak out will never get old.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The resignation of David Malpass, president of the World Bank, was greeted with relief and joy on Wednesday evening by climate experts and campaigners, who said it should open up a new era for financing the global shift to a low-carbon economy.
Malpass, who was appointed to the role by the then US president Donald Trump in 2019, had been facing mounting calls to step down after a series of missteps, including lacklustre plans for green investment, and appearing to deny climate science when confronted by a journalist.
In a statement, Malpass said the World Bank Group, which provides investment and finance to alleviate poverty and build services and infrastructure in developing countries, was “fundamentally strong, financially sustainable, and well-positioned to increase its development impact in the face of urgent global crises” and that he would “pursue new challenges”.
His departure, which will take place on 30 June to give time to find a successor, should herald sweeping reform of the bank and its sister institutions to focus much more on the climate crisis, experts said. Al Gore, former US vice-president, said: “Humankind needs the head of the World Bank to fully recognise and creatively respond to the civilisation-threatening danger posed by the climate crisis. I am very happy to hear that new leadership is coming. This must be the first step towards true reform that places the climate crisis at the centre of the bank’s work.”
Developing countries have grown increasingly frustrated with the paucity of World Bank funds available for their pursuit of clean energy and to help them adapt to the impacts of extreme weather. Donor nations were also grumbling and pushing for reform, impatient with the bank’s slow progress in delivering a comprehensive climate plan.
Jake Schmidt, strategic director for climate at the US Natural Resources Defense Council, said: “Malpass’s departure allows the World Bank to hit the reset button and finally commit to the leadership needed in the climate finance space. The world needs more and better climate finance to meet the scale of the climate crisis and the needs of developing countries. With new leadership, the World Bank now needs to rapidly evolve, as a growing chorus of countries and experts have been urging.”
Calls for Malpass’s resignation gathered strength after an incident last September, on the fringes of the UN general assembly, when a New York Times journalist asked him on stage to confirm his acceptance of climate science. He fumbled for words and refused to validate climate science. Although he later attempted to clarify his position and insisted he was not a climate denier, the impression had been clearly given and his leadership irrevocably damaged.
Then at the Cop27 UN climate summit last November, arriving late after the plane he was on was hit by lightning, Malpass flew into another storm. Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, spearheaded a carefully coordinated attempt to gather international backing for a new global system of climate finance, with a reformed World Bank at its centre.
The World Bank and its subsidiaries were set up under the Bretton Woods framework, developed by the allies of the second world war in 1944. Mottley told world leaders: “Institutions crafted in the mid-20th century cannot be effective in the third decade of the 21st century. They do not describe 21st-century issues. Climate justice was not an issue then [when the bank was set up].”
Some of the criticisms of the World Bank are that its climate spending is too small, too scattered, uncoordinated and badly targeted, and hard to access by the poorest countries. The bank has also continued to fund fossil fuel projects, despite claiming to phase it out. According to data published last year, the bank has provided $15bn to fossil fuel projects since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015.
Mottley, whose country is one of the many small island states at gravest risk from the climate crisis, was cheered and feted at Cop27, and country after country came forward to support her plans. World leaders including France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Olaf Scholtz, Rishi Sunak of the UK and the US climate envoy John Kerry discussed what reform could look like.
Malpass, when he finally arrived, could only reiterate that his leadership was delivering a record $32bn (£26bn) for climate finance – sums derided as falling far short of the hundreds of billions and even trillions needed for the green transition.
Yet reform of the World Bank need not involve vast new expenditure by developed country donors, according to its former chief economist Nicholas Stern. He estimates that because of the structure of the bank’s capitalisation, investment of about $9bn from developed countries over several years could enable it to raise about half of the $2.4tn a year he calculates will be required in total climate finance by 2030, to put the world on a low-carbon path.
“These sums are not scary,” Lord Stern told the Guardian at Cop27. “They are about 5% more than the current investment [much of which goes to fossil fuels and high-carbon infrastructure]. We could, if we wanted to, get started quickly.”
Mottley is expected to set out her proposals, known as the Bridgetown Agenda, in some detail in the coming weeks, to be discussed by world governments before the spring meetings of the World Bank Group in April. Then in late June, Macron will hold a climate finance summit in Paris, by which time – if nations can keep up their constructive spirit – the new plans may be ready to start putting into action.
By then, a new World Bank president should be ready to take over. Since the Bretton Woods institutions were set up, that appointment has always been made by the US president, while European leaders choose the head of the International Monetary Fund. Some developing countries would like to see that convention reformed, too, and have a global competition to find a new president – but that might be a step too far for Malpass’s successor.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The world is at risk of descending into a climate “doom loop”, a thinktank report has warned.
It said simply coping with the escalating impacts of the climate crisis could draw resources and focus away from the efforts to slash carbon emissions, making the situation even worse.
The damage caused by global heating across the globe is increasingly clear, and recovering from climate disasters is already costing billions of dollars. Furthermore, these disasters can cause cascading problems including water, food and energy crises, as well as increased migration and conflict, all draining countries’ resources.
The researchers, from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Chatham House, said a current example of the impact of the climate crisis complicating efforts to reduce emissions and other action was the debate over whether keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5C – the international goal – was still possible.
Those arguing 1.5C was still possible risked perpetuating complacency that today’s slow pace of action was sufficient, the researchers said, while those arguing it was not possible risked supporting fatalism that little that could now be done, or “extreme approaches” such as geoengineering.
Avoiding a doom loop required a more honest acceptance by politicians of the great risks posed by the climate crisis, the researchers said, including the looming prospect of tipping points and of the huge scale of the economic and societal transformation required to end global heating. This should be combined with narratives that focused on the great benefits climate action brought and ensuring policies were fairly implemented.
“We’ve entered, sadly, a new chapter in the climate and ecological crisis,” said Laurie Laybourn, an associate fellow at IPPR. “The phoney war is coming to an end and the real consequences now present us with difficult decisions. We absolutely can drive towards a more sustainable, more equitable world. But our ability to navigate through the shocks while staying focused on steering out the storm is key.”
The report said: “This is a doom loop: the consequences of the [climate] crisis draw focus and resources from tackling its causes, leading to higher temperatures and ecological loss, which then create more severe consequences, diverting even more attention and resources, and so on.”
It noted that, for example, Africa’s economy was already losing up to 15% of GDP a year to the worsening effects of global heating, cutting into funds needed for climate action and emphasising the need for support from developed countries, which emit the most carbon dioxide.
“The thing I’m most concerned about is that we’re not factoring in the cascading risks to societies,” said Laybourn. “It’s not just the big city-smashing storms we should be concerned about, it’s the consequences that ripple through our globalised systems.”
“For the UK, it may not necessarily be the sheer cost of responding to disasters that’s the biggest distraction. It could be that it has to deal at the same time with a food price shock and resurgent nativism, playing off fears about so-called climate refugees,” he added.
Laybourn said the narratives used to describe the situation were very important. For example, he said, greener transport was not simply about switching to electric vehicles, but about better public transport and redesigned cities that meant people were closer to the jobs, education and healthcare they needed. This in turn meant reevaluating local authority budgets and taxes to implement the change.
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Unfairness in climate policy could drive the doom loop, Laybourn said, because if people felt unaffordable changes were being forced on them they would reject the need for a green transition. But, he added: “If you have fairness at the heart of things, it can instead be a virtuous circle, if you’re in a situation where people recognise that switching to a heat pump and having better insulation will be better for them regardless of the climate crisis.”
Making progress on climate action resilient to difficulties posed by climate impacts was also crucial. “I’m a massive fan of citizens’ assemblies, because if people feel they have a role in decision making, they’re more likely to maintain their support, even in a future in which the shocks start to rack up. They become moments where we actually do build back better,” said Laybourn, unlike after the 2008 crash and Covid pandemic.
Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: “This report rightly highlights the critical point we have reached, namely the increasing likelihood that global temperature will rise by more than 1.5C. This does not mean that we should abandon the target.
“Our main aim should still be radical emissions cuts to try to avoid breaching 1.5C, but we should now also be considering what happens if we continue to fail.
“This will mean bringing temperatures back down [and] we will have to invest in geoengineering options such as carbon dioxide removal and even solar radiation management. But it also means we will have to spend far more on dealing with [climate] damage, which will make it more difficult to make the transition to a sustainable, inclusive and resilient world.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
United Nations: David Malpass has announced that he is quitting as the president of the World Bank to take on “new challenges” after a rift with President Joe Biden’s administration over climate change policies.
He said on Wednesday that he would be leaving the international development institution in June, ten months before the end of his five-year term.
His departure comes at a time when many countries around the world are facing severe financial problems.
Appointing the head of the World Bank is a prerogative of the US president and Biden will appoint Malpass’ successor.
Malpass was close to former President Donald Trump, who appointed him to the post in 2019 after Young Kim, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, quit.
Malpass had worked in Trump’s 2016 election campaign and became the Treasury undersecretary for international affairs before going to the World Bank.
Ideologically closer to Trump than Biden, he was dogged by the fallout of his refusal at a New York Times event last year to categorically affirm that climate change resulted from man-made greenhouse gases.
Pressed on the subject, he said, “I am not a scientist”.
Former Vice President Al Gore, a leading climate activist had dubbed him a “climate denier” and many others joined in to criticise him.A couple of days later, Malpass changed course and wrote to World Bank Staff, “It’s clear that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are causing climate change”.
The World Bank has been criticised for continuing financing of oil and gas projects and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reportedly had goaded him to speed up changes to the bank’s functioning with more emphasis on climate change projects.
The Bank said that under his leadership, the Bank “more than doubled its climate finance to developing countries, reaching a record $32 billion last year”.
In a statement after Malpass announced his decision to quit, Yellen papered over their differences saying that he “advanced shared priorities that have measurably improved the lives of people around the globe”.
“While we all must continue to raise our collective ambitions in the fight against climate change, during President Malpass’ tenure the World Bank has made important recent advances in this area, including through the successful launch of the Country Climate Diagnostic Reports”, she added.
She said that the US will nominate his successor and expects “a transparent, merit-based and swift nomination process” from the bank’s executive board.
In the Bank statement announcing his decision to quit, Malpass said, aceWith developing countries facing unprecedented crises, I’m proud that the Bank Group has responded with speed, scale, innovation, and impact”.
The Bank said that under Malpass it had “responded quickly to global crises, mobilising a record $440 billion in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, sharp global economic slowdown, unsustainable debt burdens, climate change, and food, fertilizer, and energy shortages”.
The Bank, which has 189 nations as members operated through five institutions, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development Association, the International Finance Corporation, the Multinational Investment Guarantee Agency and the International Centre for Settlement of Disputes.
Its primary role is to fund loans for development projects.
Malpass worked in various capacities with the administrations of Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, and with Congress.
In 1993 he became the chief economist of the investment company Bear Sterns, which collapsed in the 2008 financial crisis.
He then set up his own economic advisory firm and made an unsuccessful bid for a Republican nomination in a senate election.
(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)
World Bank president David Malpass on Wednesday said he would leave his post by the end of June, months after running afoul of the White House for failing to say whether he accepts the scientific consensus on global warming.
Malpass, appointed by Donald Trump, will vacate the helm of the multilateral development bank, which provides billions of dollars a year in funding for developing economies, with less than a year remaining in a five-year term. He offered no specific reason for the move, saying in a statement, “after a good deal of thought, I’ve decided to pursue new challenges”.
Treasury secretary Janet Yellen thanked Malpass for his service in a statement, saying: “The world has benefited from his strong support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion, his vital work to assist the Afghan people, and his commitment to helping low-income countries achieve debt sustainability through debt reduction.”
Yellen said the United States would soon nominate a replacement for Malpass and looked forward to the bank’s board undertaking a “transparent, merit-based and swift nomination process for the next World Bank president”.
By long-standing tradition, the US government selects the head of the World Bank, while European leaders choose the leader of its larger partner, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Pressure to shake up the leadership of the World Bank to pave the way for a new president who would reform the bank to more aggressively respond to climate change has been building for over two years from the United Nations, other world leaders and environmental groups.
In November 2021, special adviser to the UN secretary-general on climate change Selwin Hart called out the World Bank for “fiddling while the developing world burns” and said that the institution has been an “ongoing underperformer” on climate action.
Pressure on Malpass was reignited last September when the World Bank chief fumbled answering a question about whether he believed in the scientific consensus around climate change, which drew condemnation from the White House.
In November, special envoy on climate change John Kerry said he wants to work with Germany to come up with a strategy by the next World Bank Group meetings in April 2022 to “enlarge the capacity of the bank” to put more money into circulation and help countries deal with climate change.
More recently, Yellen has launched a major push to reform the way the World Bank operates to ensure broader lending to combat climate change and other global challenges.
Malpass took up the World Bank helm in April 2019 after serving as the top official for international affairs at US treasury in the Trump administration. In 2022, the World Bank committed more than $104bn to projects around the globe, according to the bank’s annual report.
A source familiar with his thinking said Malpass had informed Yellen of his decision on Tuesday.
The end of the fiscal year at the end of June was a natural time to step aside, the source said. The World Bank’s governors are expected to approve the bank’s roadmap for reforms with only minor changes at the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank set for mid-April.
Still, World Bank sources said they were surprised by his decision to step down before the joint meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Morocco in October.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
