Translating climate strategies into action: An analysis of the sustainable, green, and resilient city action plans of the multilateral development banks

Abstract

Motivation Climate change is exposing significant urban vulnerabilities. The multilateral development banks (MDBs) have responded by devising a suite of sustainable, green, and resilient (SGR) city advisory services and lending products to prepare cities for future climate change impacts. Purpose The article comparatively analyses SGR city action plans and companion projects drafted by the MDBs. It thus evaluates the translation of analytical work into investments, reviewing what the MDBs are prioritizing and what this means for development and climate change. Methods and approach The article qualitatively analyses 124 SGR city action plans and 65 companion lending operations approved by four MDBs between 2014 and 2021, evaluating action plan documents and project appraisal, implementation, and results reports. Findings The article finds that while the SGR city action plans propose comprehensive recommendations, the companion projects narrowly focus on infrastructural upgrades that are uncertain to adequately prepare cities for future climate change impacts. Policy implications Multilateral interventions targeting climate change expanded considerably during the 2010s. The MDBs, however, continue to prioritize project‐based infrastructural investments financing climate mitigation and resilience actions over more substantive climate adaptation initiatives. This article thus shows that SGR city action plans hold great potential to enact robust and inclusive climate responses but have so far been stymied by the conservatism of project‐based investment lending.

Gender and the Multilateral Development Banks: From WID to GAD to Retroliberal WID

“…For this study, while the World Bank ‘leads’ the other MDBs throughout the three eras, our analysis expands to appraise several development banks as a complex network. The priority here is thus on organizational convergence as opposed to divergence; this is a defining trait of new institutionalist analyses of institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio, 1998; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) and aligns with a recent trend in MDB scholarship that examines the global architecture of multilateral development finance (see Bazbauers and Engel, 2021; Wihtol, 2014; Humphrey, 2019; Engel and Bazbauers, 2020); the aim becomes, as Bazbauers and Engel (2021: 1 emphasis added) comment, ‘to understand…the system of multilateral development banks’. The remainder of the article divides into four discussion areas: number of projects, timeframes, financial commitments and objectives and components.…”

“…The MDBs are international financial institutions whose influence in large part derives from their material resources—the loans, credits and guarantees approved to public and private sector borrowers (Babb, 2009; Bazbauers and Engel, 2021; Wihtol, 2014). As public banks with capital bases drawn from member country subscriptions, MDB financial allocations provide strong indications of their operational priorities.…”

“…There are 32 MDBs (see Bazbauers and Engel, 2021). While not the only actors in international development, they are influential.…”

“…The MDBs operate within the institutional field of multilateral development finance. From the expectations of shareholders, professionalization of development practice and requirements of capital markets, they are conditioned—to adopt a phrase from sociological institutionalism (see DiMaggio and Powell, 1983, 1991)—by coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphic pressures leading to well-documented patterns of convergence across their organizational practices and lending operations (see Acharya, 2009; Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998; Park, 2006, 2014); they are ‘networked in a myriad of ways’ (Bazbauers and Engel, 2021: 270) and demonstrate considerable organizational alignment, being more alike than not. Yet, while they are isomorphic leaders in infrastructural development (Engel and Bazbauers, 2020; Wihtol, 2014), they have been reactive to changes in the global governance of gender.…”

“…Yet it has been recognized that while such reports serve as important discursive projections of MDB knowledge-production, they often do not inform lending operations (Fine et al, 2016; Razavi, 2012; Roberts and Soederberg, 2012). For context, Bazbauers (2021) notes that the MDBs in the 2010s drafted comprehensive green city action plans that when translated into investment projects became limited in scope and abandoned most recommendations proposed.…”