Selective responses to the climate crisis: International financial institutions and strategic ignorance

Amidst the climate crisis, all major international financial institutions (IFIs) have recognized the need for their involvement in financing low-carbon development—and, consequently, most have committed to aligning their efforts with the Paris Agreement. How, exactly, do these institutions respond to global warming? Which aspects of climate change do they emphasize, which dimensions do they neglect in their reorientation? I argue we can answer these questions by recognizing that IFIs have, to different degrees, the ability to shape the consensus about where the boundary between ignorance and knowledge about climate policy lies—that is to say that they can exercise strategic ignorance. This boundary work of IFIs is manifest in their official, outward-facing communication, such as public leader speeches. Empirically, I investigate the climate change communication expressed by leaders of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. Based on an original text corpus of 1,599 leader speeches between 2010 and 2023, I first use a dictionary approach to identify speeches about climate change. Consistent with the IFIs’ strategic reforms, the share of climate speeches has increased markedly over time. Second, I estimate a la carte word embeddings to understand the context in which these organizations speak about global warming. Preliminary findings indicate that the regional development banks are somewhat more likely than the Bretton Woods twins to speak about the issue in the context of poverty and that the Asian Development Bank tends to emphasize technology the most. In addition to its substantial policy relevance, this research promises to advance academic debates on the political economy of international organizations and the political communication of IFIs.