Climate Imperative: The Urgent Need for the World Bank to Stop Financing Industrial Livestock
Stop Financing Factory Farming
19th June '24
On the heels of a new report by the World Bank Group highlighting the urgent need to reduce GHG emissions, an IPS opinion piece calls out the failures of the bank to translate these words into action.
They cite the World Bank’s continued financing of industrial livestock expansion, a practice known to degrade ecological and human health and undermine food security, as directly contradicting its commitment to the Paris Agreement targets and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Beyond global commitments, this financing is also at odds with the World Bank’s own mission statement “to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet”. Achieving this mission demands that the World Bank reassess its investments and cease financing the expansion of industrial livestock.
The World Bank must immediately cease its support for industrial livestock — a primary driver of climate change, biodiversity loss, public health crises, and food insecurity — and direct the Bank’s resources and considerable influence toward reforming and reshaping agriculture and food systems.
– Inter Press Service (IPS) News Agency