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Letters | AIIB must ensure its projects address the interaction of climate change and gender
- Readers discuss the impact of the multilateral lender’s projects on women, the role food companies can play in the fight against climate change, and key opinion leaders getting embroiled in scams
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Given that the annual meeting of the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) convened this week, it is timely to review its gender and climate track record. Since 2016, the AIIB has been lending funds to developing countries primarily for infrastructure projects.
Yet the AIIB lacks a stand-alone gender policy and gender experts, which are needed to ensure projects are gender-responsive. While policies alone are insufficient, they are a prerequisite for avoiding harm.
The AIIB’s Environmental and Social Framework that guides loan preparation and implementation ranked weakly in our 2023 report on international financial institutions’ rhetorical gender and climate promises, which surveyed a dozen development banks, for hardly addressing harmful climate change impacts on women.
Since women in developing countries depend on climate change-affected agriculture and natural resources for household food, water and fuel, the AIIB must terminate climate change-creating fossil fuel investments that undermine women’s well-being and our planet’s existence.
Civil society organisation cases demonstrate how AIIB-funded fossil fuel and other projects exacerbate climate change and harm women’s livelihoods.
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