Research repeatedly shows that pound for pound, core development investments — like improving maternal health, advancing e-learning, or enhancing agricultural yields — deliver much greater and faster benefits than climate spending, writes Bjorn Lomborg

With Cop30 underway in Brazil, the United States has told the World Bank to stop obsessing about climate and get back to its core business of ending poverty. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on the Bank to remove its 45 per cent financing for climate projects and instead invest to “increase access to affordable and reliable energy, reduce poverty, and boost growth”. For the sake of the world’s poor, the UK needs to get on board with this commonsense call.

The World Bank was created at the end of World War Two to rebuild Europe — and then took on the mission of lifting poor people out of poverty. But as like the United Nations and many international organisations, the Bank set on its climate path after the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, committing billions to climate and vowing to lead on green financing. Last year it poured

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