UK’s Standard Chartered assailed for financing Philippines coal boom

Photo: The Mariveles Coal Power Plant, one of four financed by Standard Chartered. Photo: P199, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Key Points: Human rights and environmental advocates filed a formal complaint with the UK government this week accusing Standard Chartered bank of contributing to human rights violations and failing to provide remediation for harms […]

Watchdog Slams World Bank Group for Helping Bankroll Philippines Coal Boom

MANILA, Philippines – The World Bank Group’s private lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), violated its own environmental and social protection policies  as it helped bankroll a disastrous coal boom in the Philippines, according to an independent investigation made public today. In its report, the IFC’s internal watchdog, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), calls […]

Bowing to public pressure, Rizal becomes first bank in Philippines to exit coal

Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) made the announcement after years of pressure from climate activists in the Philippines and  an investigation of the bank’s practices by one of its most prominent shareholders, the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation. “[N]o more coal. I’ll say that slowly: no more coal,” said the bank’s president and CEO, Eugene Acevedo, at […]

Watchdog to investigate World Bank Group’s opaque support for coal expansion in Philippines

The International Finance Corporation’s independent watchdog has announced that it will launch a compliance investigation into the World Bank Group member for its investments in a commercial bank in the Philippines that bankrolled the country’s recent coal power boom. After receiving $254 million in IFC funds, Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation became a key financier of […]

World Bank and International Investors Bankrolling Climate Disaster in Philippines

International investors have in recent years poured billions of dollars into coal-fired power plants in the Philippines, one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change. The World Bank Group, commercial banks and asset managers have quietly bankrolled a coal boom on the island nation despite many of them pledging to end or cut […]

World Bank Fueling Climate Change, Philippine Groups Allege in Historic Complaint

(Washington DC, October 11, 2017) – More than 100 citizen groups and affected communities in the Philippines today filed a historic complaint against the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private-sector arm. The complaint accuses the IFC of fueling global climate change through its opaque investments in a Philippine bank that is a major financier of the coal industry. This is the first climate change-related complaint received by the IFC’s independent watchdog, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman.