To: Mr Ajay Banga
President, World Bank Group
1818 H Street, NW
Washington D.C.,
20433, USA
4 December 2024
Dear Mr Banga,
I write to you on behalf of the World Council of Churches (WCC), with member churches in some 140 countries and representing approximately 600 million people. As a global fellowship of churches dedicated to justice, peace, and care for creation, we appreciate the World Bank Group’s commitment to addressing issues that affect the most vulnerable communities, including children.
As the accelerating climate crisis continues to be one of the most pressing global challenges of our time, we recognize its impacts in intensifying inequalities and disproportionately affecting vulnerable communities, especially children. As faith actors, we strive to be both advocates and implementers of climate justice.
We recognize that the World Bank has been instrumental in mobilizing resources for climate finance, a critical component of achieving resilience and sustainability in vulnerable regions. We acknowledge the World Bank’s commitment to a 45% increase in its total lending towards climate finance in 2025. We believe this initiative is a beacon for international financial institutions and an important catalyst for a sustainable future for the world’s children.
While we acknowledge the complexities of global development finance, we believe that more can be done to fully align the Bank’s resources and influence to the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. We hope to explore ways in which faith-based organizations like ours can contribute to this, aligning the influence of religious leaders and our expertise in children’s rights advocacy with your role in promoting sustainable development and ending extreme poverty, ensuring that the World Bank sets an example for other financial actors to include children's rights and climate change in their funding policies and financial decision-making.
Among other efforts in this field, we have – jointly with the Muslim Council of Elders, the New York Board of Rabbis and the UNEP Finance Initiative – launched a landmark joint appeal, “Climate-Responsible Finance – A moral imperative and responsibility to all children and the living world“, through which we encourage all members of our global constituency to engage with their respective banks, pension funds and financial service providers for investment decisions that protect the living planet for our children and future generations of life on Earth.
We wish to propose a collaborative dialogue with you—through a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss potential strategies for working together to accelerate the transition to clean energy and reduce fossil fuel dependency in development contexts. Faith communities can serve as partners and advocates for these efforts, working at grassroots levels to promote awareness and resilience. We hope to underscore the critical importance of climate change financing for children's futures, and their heightened vulnerability to the impacts of climatechange when financing is directed towards fossil fuels instead of clean energy.
Writing to you on this date on which the International Day of Banks is observed, and with this year’s theme underscoring the need for sustainable finance to advance sustainable development and the achievement of the SDGs, is an emblematic occasion to begin this exchange with you.
We look forward to engaging and supporting you and the World Bank in becoming champions for a sustainable future for all children and future generations, by accelerating the urgently-needed transition from a fossil fuel economy to renewable energy through climate-responsible finance.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Prove
Director, WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs