In Gidan Dare, a farming community near the BUA Cement plant in northwest Nigeria, residents describe wells that once reached water at three or four metres now requiring seventy or more metres before anyone strikes anything. They describe their mud houses cracking and collapsing under the vibration of heavy truck traffic.
They talk about how, close to midnight, plant operations are loud enough to disturb their sleep. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) says it confirmed “broad community support” for the expansion during a site visit in August 2022. Yet none of the community leaders I spoke with recall being consulted before BUA expanded onto land their families had farmed for generations.
I lead Quest for Growth and Development Foundation in Nigeria, where I work with five communities around the plant, one of them resettled for the expansion. Their experience is a local face of the global climate problem that governments will be debating at COP31 this November. Projects like this one, financed by institutions such as IFC, rarely enter that conversation.
Once its new lines are running, this plant will emit about 4.1 million tonnes of CO₂ a year, 2.9 million of them from the expansion. IFC approved $210 million for that expansion and classifies it as Category A, which is its highest environmental and social risk tier. That raises a question for the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors: do IFC’s climate promises actually mean what they claim?
Climate finance: Need for independent verification
IFC’s own file suggests not. It sets no reduction target and requires no independent verification of those figures, before approval or since.
What it does contain is a promise: IFC’s Climate Advisory arm “will support BUA integrate low-carbon solutions in the existing and new facilities, to further reduce its carbon footprint.” That leaves the core climate claim resting on future advisory work, rather than measurable commitments anyone outside the institution can check.
For the people living beside the plant, the same accountability gap remains. IFC’s record says they were consulted. They say otherwise. BUA says it supports its host communities through health care, scholarships, and donations. Those benefits matter, but they cannot substitute for consultation before a high-risk project is approved.
This is not a one-off failure at a single plant. It is what IFC’s published climate methodology permits for a project counted as aligned with the Paris Agreement. In practice, a promise is sufficient to earn the label. Verification is optional. For a high-risk cement plant expansion, in one of the hardest industrial sectors on earth to decarbonize, that gap is not a technicality.
It is the whole problem.
Cleaner cement is already financeable. For example, IFC has financed a calcined clay cement plant in Burkina Faso. For every cement investment, IFC should require a transparent alternatives analysis showing why lower-carbon production options are or are not feasible before approval.
None of this requires waiting for the outcome of the Independent Evaluation Group’s ongoing review of the World Bank Group’s Climate Change Action Plan, a review the World Bank’s own board requested this year, with no findings yet public. The evidence is already sitting in IFC’s own file on this project, in its own published methodology, and in what residents on the ground have reported for years.
IFC is rewriting its Sustainability Framework – the environmental and social rules for every project it funds – and a first draft is expected in the coming weeks. Executive Directors should insist on four changes that would close the gap that file exposes: Publish a measured emissions baseline before the board votes, rather than an advisory pledge to build one later.
Read also: Climate finance to low and middle income countries up 10% to $85 billion
Climate finance should prove what it promises
Require independent verification of climate and community consultation claims before a project is labelled climate-aligned. Make an independent audit against a credible pathway, such as the IEA Cement Roadmap, a condition of financing. And require a completed analysis of lower-carbon alternatives before approval.
I’m not asking the Executive Directors to take farmers in Nigeria at their word alone. I’m asking them to close these gaps in the Sustainability Framework revision.
Climate was barely discussed when the World Bank and its member governments gathered for their meetings this October. That is exactly the problem: when accountability lapses, IFC doesn’t absorb the cost. Families in communities like Gidan Dare do, and they have the least capacity to adapt.
The Board doesn’t need to wait for climate to return to the agenda. It needs a rule that makes the climate commitment binding and checkable, not a pledge to be resolved later. Climate finance should be able to prove what it promises.
The author, Smith Nwokocha, is a climate justice advocate and founder of Quest for Growth and Development Foundation, where he leads initiatives on environmental governance, climate action, and just transition for vulnerable communities across Nigeria.
Leave a Reply