Development finance is meant to benefit communities, climate and environment. Yet it often enables some of the most destructive activities on the planet.

Ill-conceived, large-scale infrastructure projects—many of which are funded by public taxpayer money—are compounding the climate emergency and the alarming loss of our world’s biodiversity. International financial institutions and global investors continue to approve their plans and bankroll their construction—from fossil-fuel-power plants that will generate greenhouse gases and pollution for decades, to large hydro-power dams, mining projects and export corridors that slice through some of the world’s few remaining nature preserves.