Tracking Multilateral Development Banks' Energy and Industry Policies: Pathways for a Just Transition in Pakistan
Compares World Bank and Asian Development Bank financing strategies against Pakistan's national climate frameworks to recommend pathways for clean-energy resource alignment.
Summary
This September 2025 ADS study tracks how the World Bank Group's and Asian Development Bank's Pakistan country strategies align with the country's own climate and energy targets, and where implementation gaps undermine a 'just transition.' Drawing on official Country Partnership Framework/Strategy documents, project-level disclosures, and a custom scoring framework, it maps MDB commitments against Pakistan's NDC, NAP, IGCEP and NEECA targets, scores a case-study project (the World Bank-financed Punjab Green Development Program) across policy, safeguards and finance/market dimensions, and issues institution-specific findings and policy recommendations for the power sector, industrial decarbonization, and worker/SME protections.
Key Points
- 1The study finds a "pace and metric mismatch" at the World Bank: capacity additions (MW) are emphasized over dispatched clean energy (MWh), risking targets that don't translate into real generation without storage and curtailment-reduction finance.
- 2Its scoring of the World Bank-financed Punjab Green Development Program (PGDP) across Policy, Safeguards, and Finance/Markets yields a weighted overall composite score of just 0.45 (45%), with grievance-redress-mechanism efficacy and just-transition safeguards scoring particularly low (0.13 each).
- 3Both MDBs' Pakistan strategies name energy sector reform and renewable energy/efficiency as explicit priorities: the World Bank's CPF (FY2026-35) Outcome 4 targets cleaner energy and better air quality, while the ADB's CPS (2021-25) places renewable energy under its "boosting competitiveness" pillar.
- 4The report identifies gaps in carbon markets and green taxonomy integration, noting no Article 6 roadmap and limited portfolio-wide climate-finance tagging.
- 5Recommendations include adopting generation-linked KPIs and mandatory curtailment reporting, publishing a CTBCM operational roadmap, and pairing tariff reforms with BISP top-ups, SME support, and wage-insurance pilots to protect affordability during the transition.