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Up to $41B in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds
- wallbrownf 2y ago[dead]
- hilux 2y agoMaybe it's time for an update to the excellent Lords of Poverty (1994).
- eclecticfrank 2y agoThe author's wikipedia page is well worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock
- haccount 2y ago[flagged]
- motohagiography 2y agoThe world bank used to just pay off autocrats under the guise of indebting their countries for "infrastructure," and for policy concessions to foreign extractive industries. Activists complained until they had control, and have clearly cut out the middle men and are looting it for themselves. POSIWID.
- partofthereason 2y ago[dead]
- candiddevmike 2y agoWhat is the Global South going to spend $4 trillion on?
- hilux 2y agoTo pay World Bank consultants, of course!
- wongarsu 2y agoI imagine flood mitigation for population centers, hydroelectric dams, renewable energy, electricity grids, rail lines and public transportation, etc
- mmooss 2y agoAre you saying people in those countries will have a problem finding worthwhile investments? The US spent ~$6 trillion in one year, 2023 [0] on ~330 million people. Billions live in the Global South and are in much greater need of resources, due to lack of accumulated capital investments. [0] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727
- fakedang 2y agoThat's an incorrect measure to look at though. Per capita social expenditure is highly dependent on the welfare structure of a country. There are developed countries (notably the Arab welfare states - for their citizens only!) which get away with a much lower expenditure even adjusted for PPP, simply because the government directly handles the provision of a lot of essential services such as education and healthcare. The US Medicare system is structured in a way to inflate its own costs.
- mannyv 2y agoWhen it comes to non-profits and NGOs, it's the thought that counts.
- animal_spirits 2y agoApplies to government organizations too.
- zombiwoof 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jampekka 2y agoAnd corporate accountability.
- dang 2y agoMaybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
- solarpunk 2y agogetting an invalid cert warning when heading to this domain
- LorenPechtel 2y agoYeah--it's expired. One of the pitfalls of the push to encrypt everything.
- starttoaster 2y agoOne of the pitfalls of not using commonly available certificate renewal and rotating services.
- beejiu 2y agoIt's still encrypted and you can still access it.
- starttoaster 2y agoedit: Misinformation, the below user is mostly correct. It IS still less secure than a properly validated TLS connection though. The certificate is expired, your traffic to and from that site is not encrypted. If it were the case that your traffic could still be encrypted, what would even be the point of expiring the certificate? You're correct that you can still access it, over an unencrypted connection, however.
- BenjiWiebe 2y agoAn expired certificate still encrypts your traffic. You might have to change settings or click through a scary warning in your browser, but other than that a certificate doesn't magically quit working as soon as it expires. The expiration date is arbitrary.
- starttoaster 2y agoYou are correct, I had to do a bit of research. Because Chrome even explicitly states that traffic to a site with an expired certificate is unencrypted. But I guess that's mostly to scare you, because the truth is that it just opens you up to potential MitM attacks and other similar issues with regular ole HTTP, but traffic between you and an unverifiable identity is at least TLS encrypted.
- riazrizvi 2y agoSome context, Oxfam isn't a perfect organization. They struggle with fraud and graft. This is a part of their ongoing effort to reduce it, and sometimes yes that does mean pointing the finger past themselves too.
- c0brac0bra 2y agoRemind me what happens to a US citizen if our personal finances "struggle with fraud" and unaccountability to the tune of 40% when it comes to the IRS?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- iudqnolq 2y agoThe money is not actually missing*. Oxfam attempted to add up all the numbers in various PDFs linked on the World Bank's website and got a total that's less than the headline figure in the World Bank's press releases. (See the actual report at https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621658/bp-climate-finance-unchecked-241017-en.pdf?sequence=6 https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...) Some of that is probably missing data and some of it reflects that headlines like "USA donates 1 billion" don't actually always result in the US making a bank transfer for a billion dollars. For example sometimes it's a simplification of a complicated loan. Your comment reflects a common misconception about audits. When the books don't add up that doesn't show that money is actually missing. I don't love analogies to personal finance but a better one would be to suppose you asked a random US citizen what they spent money on last month and then compared it to their bank account. They'd probably be wrong, and you probably wouldn't have enough information to know exactly how wrong they were because they didn't save all their receipts and so on. *edit: this report provides no evidence money is missing. to be fair it doesn't disprove missing money either
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoGreat comment. On one hand I like what Oxfam has done, which is to show that the World Bank has poor financial controls and should do a much better job tracking where funds are actually spent. On the other hand I don't like how this is reported/interpreted (and Oxfam I think deserves some blame for how their investigation is characterized) as "there is a ton of fraud at the World Bank". That's simply not accurate, and your edit sums up the situation very well
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- ivewonyoung 2y ago> In October [2021], David Beasley, head of the U.N. food agency, tweeted a cheeky congratulations to Musk for reportedly earning $36 billion in a single day. "1/6 of your one-day increase would save 42 million lives that are knocking on famine's door," he wrote. > A few days later, Musk tweeted: "If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it." Last I heard he owed $11B to the US Gov in taxes in 2021, I hope it was put to good use.
- knowaveragejoe 2y agoKind of a self-fulfilling prophecy on his part, isn't it? $6B wouldn't solve world hunger, but it'd put a dent in it, and the size of that dent probably scales with how well the money is managed.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- darepublic 2y agoThe work on the Esplanade. No show jobs, no work jobs
- javajosh 2y agoI wish this was a link to the original Oxfam audit. It's strange to me that an audit would say that there's somewhere between $23 and $41 billion missing. If the audit really knew what it was doing, wouldn't it have a more precise number What is unaccounted for? That said, it's high-time for organizations like the World Bank to have fully transparent finances. Like, I should be able to go to a website and see where every single dollar is being spent. I say this as someone who's a citizen of a country who contributes heavily to the org And therefore, I think I have a right to know where my money's going.
- NoboruWataya 2y agoHere's the page on the Oxfam website: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-bank-climate-finance-unaccounted-oxfam-finds https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-ban... It links to a report which seems to be the main publication, but frankly is very light on details of their audit. Also a lot of the claims are very strangely phrased which makes it difficult to figure out if the criticisms are legitimate or overblown.
- wslh 2y agoI don't think at this point they could publish a complete report since some information should remain confidential for further investigation.
- zdragnar 2y ago> It's strange to me that an audit would say that there's somewhere between $23 and $41 billion missing. Audits have degrees of certainty; an opinion may be unqualified, meaning the records are spotless, qualified, meaning there are issues but the records are trustworthy, and adversarial, meaning the records are inaccurate and do not represent the actual financial status. If the records are questionable, it will usually take much more investigation than a standard audit to track down every money unit and produce a clean accounting of the money. Hence, it is possible to identify that records are wrong, but knowing exactly whether the money is still present but unaccounted for versus the money is actually gone from the organizations control without a record of the transaction isn't yet determined. The DOD itself hasn't passed an audit ever. Money comes and goes without accounting meeting financial standards. That does not strictly mean that the money has been embezzled, only that the DOD and World Bank are unable to demonstrate that it hasn't been.
- mistrial9 2y agothe readers here are being "chumped" IMHO .. lots of comments fall hook, line and sinker for an obvious rage-bait. Does not the article say that these are "declared allocated" but not yet dispersed? Is this related to the multi-hundred billions pledged through the Paris Accords system that have not actually been applied to anything yet? Intelligent people here are quick to jump on a 2-dimensional puppet headline to provoke the predictable canned outrage. Yes, outrage is certainly appropriate .. daily oil profits? wasteful and unrelenting energy practices across civilization?
- stonethrowaway 2y agoYou don’t actually expect us to do something about this, do you? Outrage posturing is the name of the game. Say a lot. Sound serious. Threaten action. Do nothing.
- calibas 2y ago> Does not the article say that these are "declared allocated" but not yet dispersed? Not sure where you're seeing that in the article, it doesn't use that language at all. It actually directly contradicts what you're saying in the first sentence: "Up to $41 billion in World Bank climate finance —nearly 40 percent of all climate funds disbursed by the Bank over the past seven years— is unaccounted for due to poor record-keeping practices"
- motohagiography 2y agoOriginal source: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-bank-climate-finance-unaccounted-oxfam-finds https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-ban...
- dang 2y agoChanged now (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41965323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41965323). Thanks!
- setgree 2y agoThat's a big number, but I'm not shocked by the error/graft, nor its source (poor accounting). A well-regarded development organization I used to work for went through a quiet reorganization in 2016 when a few million dollars came up missing. It turned out that just getting materials to rural places in Sub-Saharan Africa was really, really hard to do without graft along the way. I don't know how things ultimately resolved, but it's not obvious to me that effective countermeasures would have been cheaper than letting some of the money leak out in the delivery chain. It's an inherently hard problem to disburse development aid to the right parties in the right amounts.
- lbriner 2y agoDeciding where to spend it is most certainly hard but accounting for it is very easy. Even if the money was $100K to Jimmy to get the stuff into Algeria, there would be some tracking and accountability. It's weird that with the sort of numbers that could lift some countries out of poverty, we can't even write something down in a spreadsheet.
- fwip 2y agoI think the top-level spreadsheets are accurate - it's the spreadsheets five layers down that might have errors (intentional and otherwise).
- ethbr1 2y agoAt the end of the day it's people time. And people time costs money. So how many dollars et al. do you want you want to spend documenting how you spent your dollars? Presumably < 100% and > 0%? But what's the right number? If we spend $1 in accounting for every $1 spent on mission, and that produces a perfect audit trail, is that too much or little?
- kylehotchkiss 2y ago> It's weird that with the sort of numbers that could lift some countries out of poverty This is not how you end poverty. This is how you pad the pockets of whatever entity is best positioned to receive that amount. It will promptly be flown with those people to the Dubai gold market where an all-gold suit will be purchased and the rest of the country never sees a dime. Ultimately self sufficiency needs to be obtained in a stable and scalable way and then the proceeds can distribute across the economy better.
- aspenmayer 2y agohttps://archive.is/TJR4l https://archive.is/TJR4l Site certificiate expired October 25, two days ago. Site is not authoritative/original link: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-bank-climate-finance-unaccounted-oxfam-finds https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-ban... https://archive.is/5Zhg0 https://archive.is/5Zhg0 The report itself: > Download Oxfam’s new report “Climate Finance Unchecked.” > https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621658/bp-climate-finance-unchecked-241017-en.pdf?sequence=6 https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...
- bubblesnort 2y ago[flagged]
- oseityphelysiol 2y agoPlease elaborate.
- Veen 2y agoProbably this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43112200 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43112200
- dang 2y agoPlease don't do this here.
- bubblesnort 2y agoOh, I see. I can cry foul towards Microsoft all day here, but not some faux charity which hosts fuck parties with underage and forced prostitutes. Makes sense.
- dang 2y agoTwo things can both be bad!
- starttoaster 2y agoWhy not link to the horse's mouth instead of some random site with expiring TLS certs? https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-bank-climate-finance-unaccounted-oxfam-finds https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-ban...
- 1024core 2y ago@dang: maybe change the submitted link? Thanks!
- perihelions 2y agoYeah, this domain is weird spam. - "As published on: africa.cgtn.com, Friday 18 October, 2024." I can confirm the OP text is indeed identical to the text on that CGTN article (Chinese state-owned media). This is simple plagiarism—among other things. edit: On that tangent, CGTN Africa itself plagiarized Oxfam's press release—it's obviously the same text, run through an LLM for rephrasing. It's SEO spam all the way down!
- dang 2y agoChanged from https://www.ifcreview.com/news/2024/october/green-finance-oxfam-says-close-to-41-billion-in-world-bank-climate-finance-unaccounted-for/ https://www.ifcreview.com/news/2024/october/green-finance-ox... above. Thanks!
- cle 2y ago> Activists are calling for the Global North to provide at least 5 trillion U.S. dollars annually in public finance to the Global South as a down payment on their climate debt to those least responsible for climate change but most affected by it. Huh? I'm pretty sure the Global South produces significantly more carbon emissions than the Global North. Like double. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong?) From a quick Jupyter CSV excursion: Region North 13307.26 South 24518.75 Name: Emissions, dtype: float64 (based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...) (edit: updated, miscategorized Australia)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Retric 2y agoEdit: NM, putting Australia but not China in the global north is an odd use of north and south.
- cle 2y agoAren't China and India in the Global South? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South
- Retric 2y agoPersonally I don’t think China is a developing economy at this point. ~25k per capita GDP (PPP) and sub 5% economy growth per year. India by contrast is just 11k per capita GDP (PPP).
- cle 2y agoI'd maybe agree, not sure. I'm mostly interested in figuring out what the "activist demands" are, specifically. On the surface using these common definitions, they seem a bit extreme.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gyyffghhuh 2y ago[dead]
- gyyffghhuh 2y ago[dead]
- jimnotgym 2y agoSometimes I feel like a mug, because I am one of the chumps who is not stealing from the government. Pesky conscience and personal ethics
- DevX101 2y agoHow much of that is your ethics vs you not having the opportunity to?
- Loughla 2y agoIf you run a business or consult, there's a ton of opportunity. The amount of grey area advice I received from my ex-CPA taught me that there is ample opportunity there. This is also why she's my ex-CPA.
- wmf 2y ago[flagged]
- silexia 2y agoThe funds probably went to funding terrorism. That is what happened with the UN funds in Africa and elsewhere.
- Dmccalmont 2y agoMy small startup (Chrysalis Digital Asset Exchange) developed an anti-corruption solution using a fully vetted digital wallet and stablecoins network to provide disaster relief funds to emerging economies worldwide. This solution could be applied to climate finance. With the maturing of the digital asset/tokenization economy, there is no reason corruption should be considered a "cost of doing business." DMcCalmont@ChrysalisDAE.com