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privatization
Whose Green Transition Is It Anyway?
Development banks must stop promoting false solutions that are implemented without community consultation, cause environmental damage, and lead to the further grabbing of local lands and resources.
Jun 20, 2026
Two years ago, the International Accountability Project, or IAP, first launched the Energy Finance Tracker, or EFT, and Energy Finance Tracker Report, as the accompanying analysis of energy investment trends between 2022 and 2023. The goal of EFT was to provide a tool for movements and communities to follow the money, hold 16 major development banks accountable for their role in the global energy transition, and push them to support priorities for a just energy transition. However, that direction looks less certain. As we dug deeper into the data from January 2024 to December 2025, we noticed that development banks still favor privatization and promote greenwashing and false solutions.
In just four years, EFT tracked 2,119 projects related to energy financing. We noticed a staggering increase in development bank funding toward energy projects, with total investment increasing from US$ 139.8 billion (as of December 2023) to US$ 304.3 billion (as of December 2025). However, we argue that this increase does not represent a victory for the climate and communities. Instead, we find that this capital is flowing into an increasingly privatized landscape. The share of public sector funding has slipped to just 30.1% (US$ 91.5 billion as of December 2025), as development banks increasingly prioritize private sector interests that now command nearly 69% (US$ 209.5 billion as of December 2025) of the total portfolio.
The EFT also tracked a surge in high-risk (Category A) projects, which jumped from 9.9% (92 projects as of December 2023) to 14% (297 projects as of December 2025) of total investments by development banks. We argue that this shows a dangerous trend where development banks accelerate large-scale energy infrastructures by sidelining environmental and social safeguards. Such a rush replicates extractive colonial models that promote greenwashing and false solutions, which bring harsher impacts on local communities’ livelihoods, lands, and resources.
A prime example is found in Brazil’s Alto Jequitinhonha region, where International Finance Corporation (IFC) has provided a US$ 155.64 million loan, complemented by up to US$ 117,2 million (€100 million) from other lenders, to expand Aperam BioEnergia’s large-scale eucalyptus plantations and charcoal production for the steel industry. While marketed as a “sustainable” project eligible for carbon credits, the operation of Aperam BioEnergia has been criticized as a “greenwashing” that functions more like an ecological desert than a forest. The expansion of this project impacts more than 30 local communities, including four Quilombola groups. These groups reported that the eucalyptus plantations strain and pollute their water sources, and further damage their health and traditional livelihoods. Beyond these human impacts, the project also causes significant biodiversity loss. Researchers have found that non-native eucalyptus monocultures are known to harm the local ecosystems they replace.
We believe that a just transition requires a shift to supporting decentralized, community-led renewable energy through direct grants rather than debt-intensive loans.
The preference for greenwashing and false solutions also still pertains elsewhere. Despite the severe harm and rising tensions reported by local communities, IDB Invest has proposed a US$ 150 million loan to AES Colombia and the oil company Ecopetrol SA for large-scale wind farm projects in the Upper and Middle Guajira region of Colombia. While framed as Colombia's just energy transition initiative, the project actively threatens the traditional livelihoods of the Indigenous Wayúu people and has proceeded without their Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). IDB Invest is moving forward with this funding even though this negligence has caused dangerous levels of conflict. The Indigenous Wayúu people, who maintain deep spiritual and customary law over their lands, have made it clear how far they will go to protect their home. One community leader stated, “The Wayuu defend their territory with blood and death, if necessary.”
The threats to the region extend beyond wind farms, as La Guajira is also being designated as a hydrogen production hub to supply Europe with “green” fuel through the European Union’s Global Gateway program. This initiative has been criticized as neocolonial because it prioritizes European energy needs over local rights in a region that already suffers from some of the lowest energy access rates in Colombia. A community leader from the Indigenous Wayúu people, Eliel de Jesus Castillo, denounced the injustice by saying, “While large electricity projects are being installed in our territories, we have no energy in our homes.”
The words of Indigenous Wayúu leader Eliel de Jesus Castillo are a stark reminder for development banks, corporations, and governments that the current energy transition often perpetuates deep injustices against the very communities whose resources are being extracted. Instead of replicating extractive models, development banks must stop promoting false solutions that are implemented without community consultation, cause environmental damage, and lead to the further grabbing of local lands and resources.
We believe that a just transition requires a shift to supporting decentralized, community-led renewable energy through direct grants rather than debt-intensive loans. A successful example of this approach is found in Nepal, where a local initiative supported by the Community Empowerment and Social Justice Network (CEMSOJ) developed a community-based renewable energy project for the Indigenous Tamang and Chepang communities. Additionally, it is also evident in Malaysia.
We further believe that a just transition can finally serve the people it claims to help by prioritizing the voices of those promoting climate justice and being community led. If the system continues to favor corporate profit over human rights and the environment, we are forced to ask: Whose transition is it anyway? Because at the end of the day, the word “just” before transition means changes must ensure that the “whole of society is brought along in the pivot to a net-zero future,” rather than shifting power into the hands of a few.
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Miles and Miles of Protest in Bolivia as Miners and Unions March Against Privatization and Low Wages
Peasants' unions and other groups are protesting a law that they say would allow corporate control of small farmers' land, as well as fuel shortages and a low minimum wage.
May 14, 2026
An economic crisis and the repeal of a crucial gas subsidy, fuel shortages, and a law that opponents say will allow the encroachment of corporate interests on Indigenous and peasant lands are among the central concerns of thousands of miners and other workers who have joined a march from Bolivia's northern Amazon territories to La Paz, with a major miners union in the capital joining the protest on Wednesday.
The Federation of Mining Cooperatives of La Paz and an influential peasant union met land workers and Indigenous representatives this week as they arrived in the capital after having marched 1,100 kilometers (683 miles) "for over 20 days from the tropics into freezing high-altitude terrain, many wearing nothing more substantial on their feet than plastic sandals," as Olivia Arigho-Stiles reported at Jacobin.
At least 50 marchers required medical treatment last week for exhaustion, dehydration, and other ailments, but the unions are showing no sign of ending the general strike that was begun by Bolivian Workers’ Central (COB), with the mass mobilization also including at least 70 road blockades around the country, according to the Bolivia Highway Association.
TeleSUR reported that the entry of the miners union signified "a substantial increase in pressure" on right-wing President Rodrigo Paz, whose resignation some workers' organizations are calling for.
The Federation of Mining Cooperatives joined the ongoing marches and protests after Paz failed to attend a scheduled dialogue. Miners have been alarmed by the scarcity of fuel, "a dire shortage of essential explosive material, and significant delays in the liberation of new areas designated for mining exploitation," reported TeleSUR.
The broader protests began in response to stagnant, low wages as well as Law 1720, which the government has claimed will benefit small-scale farmers by allowing them to obtain mortgages after converting their smallholdings into "medium-size" businesses.
But Roger Adan Chambi, an Aymara lawyer and specialist in Indigenous land law, told Jacobin that the measure was passed "without consulting the sectors it was supposed to benefit (peasants and small producers), jeopardizing legal security and constitutional guarantees regarding land ownership."
“Far from being an opportunity for small producers to access credit, this law weakens the property rights of peasants and Indigenous communities, especially those resisting on the agricultural frontier,” Chambi said. “Structural insecurity and the lack of basic services will, in the future, force them to mortgage or sell their plots, facilitating dispossession and the transfer of land to corporations.”
Oscar Cardoza, a peasant union leader and a representative of the marchers, declared at a public gathering in La Paz this week: “Our life is collective, not individual. The land must be respected; it’s not for sale.”
Al Jazeera reported that the end of a fuel subsidy, which was cut after Paz took office last year during what he called an "economic, financial, energy, and social emergency," also pushed COB to issue the call for a general strike.
The subsidy had been crucial for working Bolivians, and the cut has made quality fuel increasingly inaccessible.
"Starting today, a general, indefinite, and active strike is declared, until the government understands the people’s demands,” COB secretary-general Mario Argollo told a group of 1,000 supporters on May 1.
The union is also calling for a 20% increase to the nation’s minimum wage, which currently sits at 3,300 bolivianos ($477.71) per month.
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Ted Cruz Admits Trump Accounts Are Designed to Privatize Social Security Over Time
One advocate said the Texas Republican laid bare the "two-pronged strategy to push Social Security privatization: Creating the Trump accounts with one hand and gutting the Social Security Administration with the other."
May 08, 2026
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said during a public conference this week that the so-called Trump Accounts established under the GOP's 2025 budget law represent a viable path toward Social Security privatization—something the Texas lawmaker described as a "dirty little secret."
During a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference in California, Cruz said that "conservatives in America, for 50 years... have been trying to do Social Security personal accounts." Cruz, who lamented the failure of Bush-era efforts to privatize Social Security, described such personal accounts as vehicles into which the payroll taxes that finance current Social Security benefits could be diverted.
In the not-too-distant future, Cruz envisioned, "we're going to be able to go to parents and say, 'Hey, you know that Trump Account your kid has? ... Wouldn't you like to be able to keep a portion of your tax payments that you're paying already and, instead of sending it to Uncle Sam, wouldn't you like to have a Trump Account just like your kid does?'''
"My prediction is, within five years, that is going to have a really compelling constituency," the Texas Republican added.
🚨🚨🚨
Ted Cruz says the quiet part out loud…
Trump Accounts are a scheme to privatize Social Security.
HANDS OFF OUR EARNED BENEFITS! pic.twitter.com/Oo3owRF7bM
— Social Security Works ❌👑 (@SSWorks) May 8, 2026
Linda Benesch, vice president of communications at the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, told Common Dreams that Cruz's comments laid bare the "two-pronged strategy to push Social Security privatization: Creating the Trump Accounts with one hand and gutting the Social Security Administration with the other."
Benesch pointed to the remarks of an anonymous Social Security Administration (SSA) worker, who warned in comments to The New Yorker earlier this week that privatization advocates plan to point to the decimated agency and declare, "Look how Social Security sucks."
"They’ve been trying to privatize it for decades," said the SSA worker. "Now this will give them the excuse.”
Benesch said Friday that Cruz is "giving away the other half" of the Republican scheme by promoting the eventual expansion of Trump Accounts, investment vehicles under which children born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028 are eligible for $1,000 in "seed money" from the federal government. Parents of eligible children can contribute up to $5,000 per year to the accounts.
Cruz's comments are not the first time a Republican official has openly characterized Trump Accounts as a potential avenue for Social Security privatization.
"In a way, it is a backdoor for privatizing Social Security," US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last summer. "Social Security is a defined benefit plan paid out that—to the extent that if all of a sudden these accounts grow, and you have in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement—then that's a game changer, too."
It’s been twenty years since Bush tried to do Social Security private accounts and they still haven’t realized workers’ Social Security taxes pay for *current retiree* benefits and not future benefits so you can’t do this without cutting current retiree benefits. https://t.co/eq9OnuhXVr pic.twitter.com/vguJN6pfuO
— Brendan Duke (@Brendan_Duke) May 8, 2026
Axios reported Friday that "the idea that Trump Accounts could replace or augment Social Security is something that has been talked about behind closed doors with lawmakers."
"But no one has wanted to touch that third rail, at least publicly," the outlet added, citing a person familiar with the private conversations.
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, noted in a Friday statement that polling has found little support for privatizing Social Security, with a 2022 survey finding that just 15% of American voters back the idea.
"Turning over Americans’ hard-earned benefits to Wall Street would expose future retirees to unnecessary risk while lining the pockets of the financial elites who donate to Republicans," said Richtman. "Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and their Republican allies should realize that the people will not stand for privatization of their hard-earned benefits, and we in the advocacy community will continue to ensure that it never happens."
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