Development Banks and the Transparency Gap: A Call for Accountability
by Alessandro Ramazzotti, Regina Zendejas
Access to information is fundamental to guarantee human and environmental rights. This is especially true in development settings, where large-scale infrastructure projects, or the expansion of harmful industries often threaten the livelihoods of local communities, as well as local biodiversity and natural environments.
When communities, who also act as protectors of their lands, lack timely and adequate access to information on the so-called ‘development’ occurring on their territories, the risk of negative impacts on their livelihoods is much higher, which can lead to violations of their most basic human rights.
Since 2016, the International Accountability Project (IAP) has managed the Early Warning System (EWS), a database designed to alert communities of development projects with potentially significant environmental and social impacts. IAP coordinates this effort with global, regional, and local partners, many connected through the Coalition for Human Rights in Development, and a group of civil society organizations from Latin America, that play a co-administrative role in the region.
By sharing early warnings about development projects with potential environmental and social impacts, numerous communities who were likely to be adversely affected had enough time to organize a proper response to the projects proposed by development banks, as it recently happened in Assam and Gujarat, India.
Public development banks, due to their public status, are held to higher standards than commercial banks. They are expected to respect basic human rights and promote fair, sustainable, and inclusive development, including by guaranteeing access to information. However, when development banks fail to uphold access to information rights, they jeopardize all related environmental, social, and cultural rights rather than promoting “shared prosperity on a livable planet”, the aim set by the Word Bank Group, and by doing so they will keep promoting the unequal enrichment of a few.
While civic space is being restricted by governments worldwide, institutions tasked with promoting social, economic, and cultural development must remain accountable and transparent to the public, and play an even more active role as stewards of the right to information — especially in development settings. However, analysis from IAP and the EWS shows that is not always the case.
Banks’ policies on access to information
While development banks have varying commitments set out in their access to information policies, generally they require that information on high-risk projects (category A) be disclosed at least 60 days before Board Discussion, and 30 days for projects with lower risk categories. When it comes to answering requests for information, banks’ policies usually state commitments to respond within 20 or 30 days. For instance, the IFC’s Access to Information Policy states that “IFC endeavors to respond to requests [for information] within 30 calendar days of receipt of a written request for information”, while the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s Access to Information Policy states that “the Bank shall respond to requests for information within 20 working days, or if a timely explanation for a further delay is provided (within 10 working days following the receipt), no later than 40 working days”. The EIB sets the bar even higher, committing to respond to requests for information “without delay and in any case within 15 working days from the date of receipt of your request.” Other banks may have different but similar provisions in their policies.
While the response time set by banks might appear relatively reasonable at first glance, considering the volume and complexity of some requests, deadlines are often highly flexible. In practice, responses to information requests are frequently delayed, require multiple follow-ups, and often contain limited information, which significantly affects communities seeking access to reliable information, therefore prejudicing the respect for their right to development, and their access to remedies or complaints mechanisms. This lack of respect for stakeholders’ rights becomes especially serious when it affects Indigenous communities or other vulnerable groups.
Methodology
To improve communities’ access to information, IAP’s staff and partners regularly submit requests for information to various banks, hoping to address the common failures of these public institutions to disclose full and accurate information.
Between March 14, 2023 and April 1, 2025, the EWS team at IAP filed 84 requests for information, mainly related to agriculture projects, on behalf of the Stop Financing Factory Farming (S3F) Coalition, aiming to better understand the impacts of development banks’ investments in agribusinesses and consequently inform Coalition members’ advocacy efforts.
Requests were submitted to several major financial institutions, including the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
Analysis
On average, banks took 19.5 days to respond. However, in about 27% of cases (23), the banks either failed to respond or merely acknowledged the request without providing specific answers to the questions raised. Responses were provided in the remaining 73% of cases (61), although 45% of those (19) were deemed to be limited responses, offering limited or inadequate information about unclear projects.
In many cases, responses were limited to sending the web links to the project disclosure page. To that, the World Bank would add a sentence informing the requester that: “Your request is now complete and will be closed in the system. Should you require further information, kindly submit a new access to information request.” This highlights another problematic aspect of the World Bank’s access to information practices: an account cannot file more than six requests for information per month through the official channels of the World Bank.
For example, between November 2024 and April 2025, information was requested from the World Bank regarding 12 projects located in Latin America. During this process, it was observed that if more than six information requests were submitted using the same email address, the Bank would respond with the following message depending on the number of exceeded requests: “This request is your 7th request within this time frame; therefore, the Bank is refusing the request”.
Another recurring issue involved projects listed as “Pipeline” on the Bank’s website, which would merely show the project number and possibly the title, without providing further information on the foreseen activities. When requesting general project information such as description, costs, beneficiaries, documents, etc., 42% of the responses indicated that the project was in an “early stage” and therefore no further information could be provided. For 3 out of the 12 requests submitted to obtain more specific and complementary information beyond what was already provided in the original disclosure, the response merely consisted of a link to the Project Information Document (PID).
Worst institutions & better examples
The Asian Development Bank showed the most worrying practices in our analysis: the bank failed to respond to any of the 8 access to information requests submitted between November 2023 and April 2024 through its website. Unlike other institutions, the ADB does not even send an automatic acknowledgement or estimated response timeline, as required by its own Access to Information Policy, which states that the “ADB promptly acknowledges the receipt of a request and communicates its decision on the request.” This malpractice constitutes a first and most relevant obstacle to the bank becoming an inclusive institution.
The IDB Invest, the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank (FMO), and the World Bank did respond to all requests submitted. However, in about 1/3 of the cases, the responses provided little to no useful information.
In two specific instances, the World Bank and the IFC showed a great lack of professionalism and due diligence in stakeholder engagement. In May 2023, a request for information was filed in relation to an IFC’s investment in Pearl Dairy, a company involved in the industrial production of dairy products in Uganda and Kenya. Despite the legitimacy of the request, the IFC’s vague response led some S3F Coalition members to send a more structured letter of concern directly addressed to the IFC’s Board of Directors. The letter remains unanswered.
Among the questions raised, there was a request to update the projected Board date disclosed on the IFC’s project webpage, which was left pending for a long time after it had passed. About six months later, the organizations that had sent the letter learned that the project had been approved despite the concerns raised in the letter, never been acknowledged, and in the requests for information.
In another case, concerning a World Bank’s investment in the livestock sector in China, S3F Coalition members waited nearly six months from the time the first request for information was filed, and about four months since questions were submitted to World Bank’s staff, before being able to secure a meeting with the project team.
Finally, the IADB stood up. Despite showing failures to respect access to information rights in other instances, it “scored” quite well in our analysis. It has been at the same time the bank that received the most requests from our side (24, almost 29% of the total) and provided the highest number of satisfactory responses (20 out of 24; 3 were partial, or limited responses; and 1 was not acknowledged).
Recommendations
Our findings demonstrate the urgent need for significant reforms in access to information policies and their implementation across public development banks. In order to comply with their policy commitments, but most importantly to guarantee local beneficiary communities’ basic human and environmental rights, development banks must:
(i) disclose information about the projects they finance in a timely manner, and with appropriate documentation to support further understanding of the potential risks related to the project. This would also support the adequate involvement of all rights holders in the project design, and therefore prevent issues at a later stage of the project implementation, saving the borrowing companies’, but also the banks’ financial and human resources, and preventing escalations in litigation unwanted by all stakeholders, from the investors, to the local rights holders;
(ii) allow potentially affected people, as well as other concerned stakeholders, to request and receive access to any missing information in a timely manner. This would shorten the time required to raise any concerns, and therefore, again, save resources at a later time and ensure a smoother implementation of project activities; and
(iii) make sure the information provided upon request is properly complementing the information already publicly available on the banks’ websites.
By ensuring enhanced transparency in their operations, development banks are more likely to utilize their full potential and foster real development, instead of constantly getting stuck in the mud created by watery information-sharing practices.
With all resources available to these institutions, complying with their policy commitments on access to information constitutes a considerably lower burden than facing and addressing the complaints of adversely affected communities during project implementation.
Development banks must treat access to information not as a procedural box to check, but as a core obligation. Upholding this principle is essential to respecting their public mandate and restoring public trust, especially at a time when civic space and public participation in development processes are under threat throughout the world.
