The World Bank and ‘Maximizing Finance for Development’: talk the talk but not walk the walk

Can the World Bank effectively mobilize private finance to developing countries to support climate change transition? This paper demonstrates that the World Bank’s market-based approach, exemplified by its Maximizing Finance for Development (MFD) approach, under-serves areas with a higher need for mitigation and adaptation finance. As such, MFD seems more aligned with donors’ interests in climate finance burden sharing, than with recipients’ needs. While the World Bank now ‘talks the talk’ of effectively leveraging private development finance, findings on MFD show that the organization does not yet ‘walk the walk’. The paper uses Qualitative Comparative Analysis to show that the MFD agenda is leading the World Bank to systematically ignore countries with low levels of development, poor governance structures, and higher levels of climate risk. By showing that the Bank’s MFD approach is insufficient to incentivize private investment in the countries that need adaptation and mitigation finance the most, this article contributes to the critical scholarship on the World Bank that highlights its tendency to behave more like a financial institution than as a development agency, to the detriment of the most vulnerable global populations