
An exhibit by CSOs amplifying the voices of communities affected by ADB projects located in a corner of the CSO Center at the basement level of the 58th ADB Annual Meeting (Photo: Bernadette Victorio/Fair Finance Asia).
From May 4 to 7, 2025, representatives from Fair Finance Asia (FFA), including its Regional Team, ResponsiBank Indonesia, and Fair Finance Pakistan, traveled to Milan, Italy, for the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) 58th Annual Meeting. Alongside a host of other civil society organizations (CSOs) and community representatives, FFA engaged with a clear objective: to demand fundamental policy shifts in the ADB’s approach to financing Asia’s energy transition.
Our calls to action were unequivocal: strengthen gender considerations in the ADB’s Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM) and Environmental and Social Framework (ESF); mitigate the social, environmental, and human rights risks and impacts linked to the ADB’s ETM; embed rigorous human rights and environmental due diligence into the ADB’s Sustainable Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Technology Manufacturing (CM2CET) Value Chains approach; enhance the accessibility and effectiveness of the ADB’s Accountability Mechanism Policy (AMP); enhance transparency and meaningful consultations with CSOs and affected communities; and, finally, address the devastating public health and air pollution impacts of energy projects, especially from short-lived climate pollutants. These aren’t just suggestions; the FFA network believes these are imperatives for a just and sustainable energy transition.
The Illusion of Engagement: CSOs Systematically Sidelined
Throughout myriad engagements – from multi-stakeholder sessions and carefully organized side events to direct bilateral dialogues with the ADB’s new President, Board of Directors, Senior Management, and staff – a sobering truth became undeniably clear: civil society voices were being systematically sidelined, with calls for a just energy transition (JET), gender equality, and science-aligned climate ambition tucked away inconsequentially into the literal and metaphorical basement of the Annual Meeting. While CSOs enthusiastically leveraged opportunities to organize events, only a handful were included in the official Annual Meeting agenda and received limited promotion, resulting in poor multi-stakeholder participation and sessions that turned into civil society echo chambers. CSOs were also sidelined through physical marginalization: the CSO Center was relegated to a forgotten corner of the convention center’s basement, isolating CSO and community representatives from the main events and effectively reducing any meaningful interaction with other stakeholders. This spatial separation, a recurring pattern from previous annual meetings, ensured that critical insights from CSOs were kept far from the ears of key decision-makers. If the ADB genuinely values the input of civil society and multi-stakeholder discussion, this tokenistic approach must change, so discussions can be inclusive and acknowledge that CSOs are part of the mainstream dialogue. The ADB must integrate more inside-track CSO sessions into the main agenda, include more CSO representatives in other key ADB-led sessions, provide more inclusive venues, and facilitate enhanced support to grassroots representatives including in visa applications – falling short of these amount to exclusion, whether by design or through complicity.
People and Planet: An Afterthought in ADB’s ‘Transition’ Agenda
ADB’s approach to JET was consistently revealed to adhere to outdated strategies that do not align with the welfare of people and planet. During multi-stakeholder discussions on the ADB’s Just Transition Agenda (May 4) and advancing Asia’s JET (May 5), CSOs reiterated concerns that ADB’s JET approach continues to have loopholes for continued coal financing; serious gaps in meaningful consultation with communities and women’s rights organizations (WROs); insufficient consideration of the significant gendered impacts on women, girls, and other marginalized groups; promotion of resource-intensive, environmentally destructive “false solutions”; a limited to lack of clarity on the practical applications of ADB’s own safeguards and accountability mechanisms; and a shocking failure to address reported reprisals against communities and rights defenders. These are not minor oversights; they are risks that exacerbate existing structural social, economic, and gendered inequalities across Asia.
An alarming confirmation of these concerns came during a May 6 seminar, “Innovative Finance for Asia’s Decarbonization,” which exposed the ADB and its partners openly endorsing gas as a “transition fuel,” with minimal discussion of its profound impacts on local communities and the environment. This ignores the irrefutable fact that gas is a significant contributor to climate change, and scaling its financing will only push Asian nations deeper into fossil fuel dependence. In a session later in the day on “Supporting Critical Minerals to Manufacturing Value Chains,” panelists from public and private sectors, alongside the ADB, laid out critical minerals mining interests falling under the overarching agenda of the ADB’s CM2CET, without any engagement with CSO and community voices that would have highlighted the potentially massive negative impacts on local communities and the environment. As the CSO-led panel discussion on critical minerals on May 4 vividly highlighted, Asia’s extractives sector is already rife with egregious rights violations and a lack of meaningful consultation, particularly with Indigenous communities. If the ADB claims to be serious in its efforts to advance JET in Asia, it must heed the comprehensive list of recommendations submitted by FFA and allied CSOs, especially as it prepares for the upcoming review of its 2021 Energy Policy.
Gender Dismissed, Climate Ambition Hushed: Backsliding of Priorities?
ADB’s commitment to gender equality, a key priority in its 2030 Strategy, was noticeably less prominent in discussions. This was evident during a May 7 dialogue between CSOs and the ADB President and Senior Management, where the latter skipped over high-level recommendations publicly shared by the FFA network concerning gender equality and women’s empowerment in advancing JET in Asia, while readily addressing all other recommendations. Right after, the ADB’s Gender and Development Unit conducted a workshop, “Listening Session: How ADB Can Enhance its Support to Women and Girls in the Asia and Pacific,” that saw limited multi-stakeholder participation beyond FFA and other CSOs. This raises a critical question: what is the ADB actively doing to ensure its counterparts in the public and private sectors and other stakeholders genuinely prioritize gender mainstreaming, rather than just paying lip service?
CSOs also noted the conspicuous fading out of the word, “climate,” from this year’s Annual Meeting agenda. Last year in Tbilisi, Georgia, the ADB proudly proclaimed itself the “Climate Bank of Asia.” This year, “climate” was ominously redacted from discussions. Will the ADB backtrack on its promises to scale up accessible, high-quality, and effective climate finance for mitigation and adaptation for vulnerable Asian countries and communities? Or is this a capitulation to the pressures of seismic geopolitical shifts that are already undermining global collective action to urgently align with the Paris Agreement and other scientific imperatives? The silence speaks volumes.
Safeguards Undermined, Accountability Evaded
The ADB’s launch of its ESF on May 6 was met with CSO criticism. Concerns remain unaddressed: the ESF, set to be operationalized in January 2026, fundamentally falls short of a people-centered approach, lacks alignment with climate science imperatives, and fails to uphold international human rights and Indigenous Peoples’ rights standards, among other critical issues.
Additionally, in key sessions and bilateral dialogues with ADB Senior Management, CSOs repeatedly voiced alarm that the Full Mutual Reliance Framework (FMRF) signed by the ADB and World Bank (WB) is a dangerous recipe, risking the further watering down of safeguards mechanisms in co-financed projects. Without a strong commitment to full transparency and accountability, this framework risks creating a loophole that could leave communities more vulnerable to socio-environmental harm.
Similarly, the ongoing AMP review process has not committed to developing an updated Accountability Mechanism (AM) that can offer truly accessible and effective grievance and remedy for project-affected complainants. Despite repeated recommendations, it remains unclear if the ADB will remove the “good faith” requirements and allow complainants to select their own representation, as highlighted in a joint CSO feedback submission led by the Accountability Counsel. ADB’s reluctance to respond positively to these recommendations, among others, demonstrate a profound unwillingness to empower those harmed by ADB projects.
Moreover, the announcement of upcoming reviews for ADB’s 2021 Energy Policy, ESF Guidance Notes, and Gender and Development Policy – in addition to ongoing engagements with the ADB’s AMP and the ADB-WB FMRF – risks overwhelming an already under-resourced and capacity-strained civil society. These simultaneous policy reviews seem like they are part of a fast-track strategy that can result in the dilution of meaningful, inclusive, and comprehensive CSO engagement.
Emerging Risks in ADB’s Digital Infrastructure Investments
Compounding CSO concerns, the ADB leveraged this year’s Annual Meeting to highlight the increasing importance of digital investments in their portfolio, even elevating it to one of the event’s three pillars. During a May 4 CSO side session on ADB’s Digital Agenda, FFA, Oxfam, and allied CSOs engaged in an introductory dialogue with Dr. Antonio Zaballos, head of ADB’s new Digital Sector Office. This was an opportunity to call on the ADB to address emerging risks and impacts of investments in digital infrastructure and increasing popular technologies such as Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), particularly on human and environmental rights, as well as on people’s access to, and enjoyment, of public services (health and education) and fundamental freedoms. Given ADB’s pivot, it is critical that CSOs actively engage the bank on the digital frontier and advocate for financing conducive to a rights-respecting digital ecosystem.
In conclusion, the 58th ADB Annual Meeting was not really a platform for genuine dialogue, but yet another confirmation that the ADB continues to consistently sideline communities and CSO voices. Despite these deliberate efforts, FFA and like-minded allies remain undeterred in a shared, unwavering mission to hold the ADB accountable for aligning its policies and practices with the highest international human, environmental, gender, and climate standards, and to ensure that the rights and needs of the most marginalized are not just heard, but respected and urgently addressed.
More information:
- Read the FFA network’s high-level recommendations submitted to the ADB’s President and Senior Management here.
- Read the joint CSO statement on advancing a people-centered, green, and gender-transformative just energy transition here.
- See FFA’s session engagements at the Annual Meeting here.
- Read FFA’s 2024 gender and ETM report here.
- Read FFA and the NGO Forum on ADB’s 2023 report on the social, environmental, and human rights considerations in the ADB’s ETM here.
Fair Finance Asia (FFA) is a regional network of Asian CSOs committed to ensuring that financial institutions’ funding decisions in the region respect the social and environmental well-being of local communities. For more information about FFA, visit: https://fairfinanceasia.org/