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Forum network statement to AIIB annual meeting 2025

Updated: 4 hours ago

July 18, 2025


Mr. Jin Liqun

President

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)


Dear President Jin,


Congratulations on holding the 10th AIIB Annual Meeting and for hosting civil society groups to participate in this year’s event. We acknowledge your pivotal role over the years in ensuring civil society participation in the annual meeting space. In addition, we duly recognize AIIB's willingness to take input from civil society regarding policies and project concerns.


We also recognize your dedication to keeping communication channels open with civil society by hiring additional staff members to interact with us and by providing us with your audience and invaluable time during the World Bank Spring Meetings in DC each year.


In recognition of the above, we hereby present our current concerns and proposals regarding AIIB operations to ensure that the AIIB can live up to international standards and best practices in its investment pathway.


As the AIIB marked a decade since its inception in January 2016—with over USD 100 billion in capital, 109 member states, and hundreds of approved projects—our sustained engagement revealed a troubling pattern of neglect of on-the-ground realities that undermined the Bank’s credibility. It derailed its mandate to promote sustainable economic development. We wish to bring the following issues to your attention:


1. Civil Society Engagement — Progress and Persistent Challenges—We acknowledged that the AIIB had made notable progress this year by providing dedicated space for civil society participation and, for the first time, arranging formal meeting appointments with both the Board and Management. These steps represented a positive shift in the Bank’s approach and signaled potential for more open and inclusive engagement moving forward.


However, despite these improvements, AIIB’s overall approach to civil society participation remained far from meaningfully effective and continued to be marked by several critical shortcomings:


  • Inadequate Engagement Formats—We appreciated the inclusion of technical sessions during the AIIB Annual Meeting, which provided valuable insights into specific areas of the Bank’s operations. The technical sessions had the right people in the room from the AIIB side. Still, the announcement of the sessions came only days before the actual AIIB annual meeting, with very little time to prepare constructive discussion points. We recommend earlier announcements regarding the technical sessions, with a co-created agenda and discussion points for the effective use of time for constructive dialogue.

  • Peripheral Participation—At the AIIB Annual Meeting program, advocacy civil society organizations are still not part of the formal panels and sessions where the development agenda, including just energy transition, climate policy-based finance (CBPF), transportation corridors and connectivity, governance, finance, gender, environment, and social development, is being discussed. We urge the bank to consider the grounded perspective of civil society, placing it on equal footing with government and private sector stakeholders in terms of learning.

  • Exclusion of Diverse Perspectives—AIIB had yet to host civil society-led panel discussions. This restricted the diversity of stakeholder input and marginalized voices that could have offered critical, ground-level insights. The Bank needs to ensure that CSOs—regardless of their geographic location or resource constraints—can participate meaningfully in engagement spaces, including those held across accessible time zones and in formats that accommodate a broader range of perspectives. Special care must be taken to hear the voices of women and Indigenous groups.


2. Project Oversight—We are further bringing to your attention the following AIIB-funded projects, which are currently threatening the rights of affected communities and pose immediate and long-term threats to the environment: 


  • Balakot hydropower project, Pakistan – This 300 MW run-of-river project has raised serious concerns regarding land acquisition and resettlement. Affected communities report inadequate consultation and compensation, with at least 165 households impacted. 


  • North Dhaka Waste-to-Energy Project in Bangladesh—Despite a scheduled meeting with the project team leader, the North Dhaka WTE facility was approved without adequately addressing long-standing concerns raised by civil society. Projects like this have been criticized for prioritizing technical and infrastructure-driven solutions over environmental sustainability, transparency, and the well-being of affected communities. The decision to proceed with approval before meaningful engagement undermined trust and raised serious questions about the Bank’s commitment to inclusive, participatory processes.


  • Bangalore Metro Rail project, India—Continues to struggle with land-acquisition hurdles, cost escalations, and shrinking public infrastructure plans, particularly at the Hebbal hub. These delays compromise project effectiveness and public trust. 


  • Rogun Hydropower Development Project. Phase 1— The project involves forced resettlement of 60000 people and threatens more through unaccounted downstream transboundary impacts. The AIIB approved this extremely risky project before any conclusive, up-to-date ESIA and mitigation plans had been finalized and consulted with stakeholders. The AIIB president promised to ensure the mitigation of impacts before any financing. A year has passed and there are no improved E&S instruments or public consultations, while an additional 6 million is requested for project preparation. The Bank should make sure that resettlement is minimised, downstream and transboundary impacts are mitigated through robust e-flows and a biodiversity management plan for floodplain forests and critically endangered aquatic biodiversity, while public participation in project improvement is facilitated and not refuted by the AIIB and co-financiers.  

    

  • Financial Intermediaries (FI) Projects in Latin America—AIIB’s loans to Latin America total USD 2,595.55 million, of which USD 1,340 million are channelled through FIs. Typically, FI projects do not provide detailed public information about subprojects, their locations, or potential social and environmental impacts. Most of these projects lack clear project-level grievance redress mechanisms (GRMs) or fail to explicitly state whether the AIIB’s Project Performance Monitoring (PPM) applies.


Additionally, there are serious concerns regarding transparency and accountability, especially given the background of some participating FIs. One example is BlackRock, which acquired the Global Infrastructure Partners, which has been linked to controversial mining activities affecting indigenous communities; another example is BTG Pactual, which involves upstream and unconventional oil and gas production. Furthermore, there is limited disclosure regarding environmental impact assessments, subproject monitoring, and the management of potential risks to communities and ecosystems. This lack of clarity regarding AIIB’s FIs—the most popular AIIB lending vehicle in Latin America—hinders effective oversight. It raises critical questions about the economic, environmental, and social impacts of subprojects. 


  • Transportation Infrastructure in South America— The AIIB has publicly announced its commitment to supporting infrastructure investments in Latin America, such as the “South American Integration Routes,” an initiative recently proposed by Brazil's Ministry of Planning, in which three of five routes would traverse environmentally sensitive areas of the Amazon Basin. In November 2024, the AIIB and the Brazilian National Development Bank signed an addendum to an existing MOU, establishing a credit line of up to USD 1 billion to support transportation projects and related investments to promote infrastructure connectivity between Brazil and Asia. As described in the letter to the Bank from Latin American CSOs, dated June 19th, there are serious concerns about the AIIB's role in supporting the South American Integration Routes initiative. There is a critical need to ensure robust environmental and risk assessment in the early stages of infrastructure planning, including analysis of alternatives, with transparency and participatory processes.  Without this, AIIB risks contributing to a repetition of past mistakes of mega-projects in the Amazon and other sensitive areas, undermining its commitments and the broader objectives of sustainable infrastructure cooperation with Brazil and other South American countries. You can read more about it here.


  • Mandalika Urban Tourism Infrastructure Project, Indonesia (MUTIP)—Despite promises to uplift Indigenous communities, MUTIP has instead undermined their lives. Forced resettlement destroyed women’s livelihoods—farming, fishing, and craft-selling—while lack of education and job training excluded them from tourism opportunities, pushing many into debt. Men also lost traditional work and now compete for insecure, low-paid construction jobs. The project has damaged vital ecosystems like fisheries, mangroves, and paddy fields, eroding livelihoods and cultural ties. Military and police presence has intensified, with reports of harassment and land grabs. While corporate actors benefit from new infrastructure, displaced communities face worsening conditions, including a lack of potable water.


These cases collectively reveal a systemic pattern at AIIB, prioritizing rapid infrastructure development and financial returns over robust safeguards, transparent information and consultation, and the protection of affected communities.


3. Accountability Mechanism—AIIB’s Project-Affected People’s Mechanism (PPM) has not accepted a single complaint since its inception in 2019, despite the Bank financing 323 projects and over USD 61.6 billion in lending. Nearly half of AIIB’s projects are ineligible due to co-financing with other multilateral banks, effectively denying affected communities access to remedy.


With the current PPM review ongoing, we urge the bank to have a new PPM policy.

  • End of good faith efforts as a condition for filing complaints

  • Expansion of the scope of the PPM beyond the ESP to cover all policies and modalities, including co-financing and capital market operations.

  • The PPM is independent of management and reports to the AIIB Board of Directors.

  • The PPM aligns with the existing MDB accountability mechanisms and best practices upward, as it currently falls short of international standards.

  • The PPM should be gender inclusive and gender sensitive and go beyond addressing issues of gender-based violence and sexual assault.


4. Fossil Fuel Investments—Despite AIIB’s professed commitment to a "just energy transition," its investment portfolio contradicts global climate imperatives. 


AIIB continues to finance fossil fuel infrastructure across its regions of operation, undermining both international climate goals and its own policy rhetoric. Gas power plants in Uzbekistan and Bangladesh, as well as investments through financial intermediaries, reveal a troubling trend. Globally, AIIB has invested at least USD 2.8 billion in oil and gas power plants and pipeline projects—contradicting climate science and international emission reduction goals. This trend is evident in South Asia, where AIIB has financed 36 projects worth USD 6.363 billion in the energy sector. These investments are overwhelmingly tilted toward fossil-based energy systems. In Bangladesh, the Bank has provided USD 330 million in high-risk (Category A) projects exclusively for gas, oil, pipeline, and waste-to-energy (WTE) infrastructure, without a single dollar allocated to renewable energy generation. With USD 230 million channelled into gas projects alone, Bangladesh has become the gas frontier of AIIB’s portfolio. The Unique Meghnaghat IPP project, funded with USD 110 million, is expected to emit over 1.46 million tons of CO₂ annually, directly undermining AIIB’s climate rhetoric.


The pattern continues in Southeast Asia, where over the past four years, AIIB has approved USD 1.7125 billion for 12 energy projects. A striking 75% of these are private-sector-led and contribute 2,570 MW to regional generation capacity, yet very little of this funding supports renewable energy. 


Central Asia provides another telling example of AIIB’s fossil fuel bias. Of the USD 2.099 billion invested in 14 energy projects, USD 925 million has gone directly to gas, oil, and pipeline development. The Surkhandarya 1,560 MW CCGT power plant in Uzbekistan—a high-risk, Category A project approved in 2023—is projected to emit 4,874 ktCO₂e in its first year of operation alone. For a bank claiming climate leadership, such emissions projections are deeply troubling and expose the disconnect between policy promises and project-level practice.


5. Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment—AIIB adopted its first Gender Action Plan (GAP) in 2024 without CSO consultations. With GAP being implemented now for the last eight months, there was an opportunity at AGM 2025 to take stock. At the gender technical session, we learned that the AIIB no longer has a senior gender expert or any gender expert on its team and cannot implement GAP comprehensively. BRICS Feminist Watch and Recourse research indicates that the Bank's overall gender commitments in approved projects have decreased significantly since the adoption of GAP, compared to previous years. Approved projects with gender language only had, on average, 36% of checks against the gender indicators. This goes down to 27% if ADB and WBG projects are excluded. In both scenarios, the proportion of approved projects with gender considerations has decreased. There is no evidence to date that the GAP is having any positive impact on AIIB projects; quite the contrary. In the absence of gender experts, gender considerations have been reduced to a checklist approach and only two gender indicators—gender-based violence and sexual assault, and women getting project employment. GAP has not been comprehensively adopted, and the frontloading approach of GAP is not implemented in approved projects.  


Capital Markets 

The AIIB’s active decision to retain fossil fuels—particularly gas—in its portfolio calls into question its genuine alignment with the Paris Agreement. Although the bank committed in 2023 to align all its investments with the Paris goals, its self-defined interpretation allows fossil gas projects to be considered "Paris-aligned." This loophole reflects a broader pattern, similar to the bank’s approach to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), where commitments exist on paper but lack meaningful implementation. As we approach the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement in 2025, it is clear that AIIB’s current approach falls short of the transformative change the climate crisis demands. Research by Recourse and Urgewald revealed that almost half of AIIB's $1.94 billion investment in capital market projects between 2018 and 2024 is exposed to fossil fuels, including upstream oil and gas infrastructure. More than half of this investment also lacks disclosure of subprojects, which casts doubts on their alignment with renewable energy development. These projects often evade the Project-Affected People’s Mechanism (PPM), leaving communities without access to remedy or redress. The AIIB can take the opportunity to demonstrate genuine climate leadership. To do so, it must close all avenues for funding fossil fuels, especially gas, in all its investments, including its support for “innovative” financing instruments like infrastructure debt securities. By stopping both direct and indirect support for fossil gas and ensuring accountability, the AIIB can concentrate its efforts on helping member countries to build renewable energy infrastructure for a just, sustainable future.


Urging the AIIB to take immediate and meaningful reformIn light of these shortcomings, we call on the AIIB to take urgent action to rebuild trust and align with its claims to sustainable and inclusive development by committing to:


  • Authentic civil society engagement. Establish transparent mechanisms enabling civil society’s meaningful participation at all stages, including control over agenda setting and support for diverse representation.

  • Ensure comprehensive and effective implementation of GAP. We recommend: 

    • The AIIB needs a full-time senior gender expert and a dedicated gender team with the capacity to ensure comprehensive implementation of GAP in all its operations and in all projects. 

    • The AIIB should set minimum gender-related standards and thresholds. 

    • The AIIB should mandate all projects to have a specific gender action plan with clear objectives, targets, and indicators. 

  • Civil Society Perspectives in Strategic Dialogue—The AIIB must ensure dialogue spaces for civil society to unpack AIIB's strategic direction in financing different regions, such as LAM, Asia, the Middle East, and others. There should also be space for critical dialogue around AIIB's Just Energy Transition, the Paris Alignment framework, and the approach to nature, biodiversity, and human rights.

  • Robust and accessible accountability. Reform (from our August 2024 letter) the PPM to ensure it is accessible, responsive, and capable of delivering enforceable outcomes for affected communities.

  • Comprehensive project oversight. Enforce proactive environmental and social safeguards, including mandatory independent impact assessments and ongoing community-inclusive monitoring.

  • Alignment with global climate goals. Immediately cease financing fossil fuels and reallocate resources toward renewable energy and climate-resilient infrastructure, in line with the Paris Agreement. An in-depth, transparent dialogue must accompany this on the Bank’s recent Climate Policy-Based Financing (CPBF) initiative to ensure it truly supports just and effective climate action.


As AIIB marks a decade of operation, urgent and meaningful change is no longer optional—it is necessary. Our continued engagement depends on the Bank’s commitment to concrete action that fulfills its promise of sustainable, inclusive development. Without this, AIIB risks further eroding trust and accountability. We remain hopeful that AIIB can fulfill its mandate and become a true champion of equity and environmental justice with bold leadership and decisive reforms. 


On behalf of NGO Forum on ADB network and allies,



Rayyan Hassan

Executive Director

NGO Forum on ADB



Endorsed by the following organizations -


Accountability Counsel, Global

Aksi! for Gender, Social, and Ecological Justice, Indonesia

Asian Peoples' Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), Asia / Regional

Bangladesh Working Group on Ecology and Development (BWGED), Bangladesh

BRICS Feminist Watch, Global

Center for Environmental Justice, Sri Lanka

Centre for Human Rights and Development, Mongolia

Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network (CLEAN), Bangladesh

Environmental Public Society, Armenia

Equitable Cambodia, Cambodia

Forum on Ecology and Development (FED), Bangladesh

Fundación CAUCE: Cultura Ambiental - Causa Ecologista, Argentina

Fundeps, Argentina

GAIA, Asia-Pacific

Gender Action, USA / Global

Growthwatch, India

GT Infraestrutura e Justiça Socioambiental, Brasil

Indus Consortium, Pakistan

Initiative for Right View, Bangladesh

International Accountability Project, India

International Rivers, Global

Jubilee Australia, Australia

Latinoamérica Sustentable, Latin America

Nash Vek, Kyrgyzstan

Oyu Tolgoi Watch, Mongolia

Participatory Research & Action Network (PRAAN), Bangladesh

Programme on Women's Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PWESCR), India

Rivers Without Boundaries, Regional

Rivers without Boundaries Coalition, Mongolia

Sustentarse, Chile

Urgewald, Germany

WALHI, Indonesia


References

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. (2023). Annual report 2023. https://www.aiib.org/en/news-events/news/2023/annual-report.html

Forum on ADB. (2024, April 10). Civil society engagement and issues of concern regarding meaningful participation at the AIIB Annual Meeting 2024. https://www.forum-adb.org/post/civil-society-engagement-and-issues-of-concern-regarding-meaningful-participationin-the-aiib-annual

Forum on ADB. (2024, May 6). Boycott of AIIB Annual Meeting 2024 due to lack of meaningful civil society engagement. https://www.forum-adb.org/post/boycott-of-aiib-annual-meeting-2024-due-to-lack-of-meaningful-civil-society-engagement

Urgewald. (2024). The AIIB's capital market operations include major fossil fuel investments. https://www.urgewald.org/sites/default/files/media-files/urgewald_Paper_AIIB_Capital_Market_Operations.pdf

Urgewald. (2024). Not clean, not green: The AIIB’s energy investments in Uzbekistan. https://www.urgewald.org/sites/default/files/media-files/urgewald_Paper_AIIB_in_Uzbekistan.pdf


Cc:

Vice President and Chief Administration Officer

Vice President, Investment Solutions

Vice President and Corporate Secretary

Acting Vice President, Policy and Strategy

Acting Vice President, Investment Solutions and Director General, Sectors, Themes and Finance Solutions Department

Chief Investment Officer, Public Sector (Region 1) & Financial Institutions and Funds (Global) Clients

Chief Investment Officer, Public Sector (Region 2) & Project and Corporate Finance (Global) Clients

Acting Vice President for Investment Clients Region 1 and Financial Institutions and Funds, Global (VP IC1) and Director General, Public Sector Clients Department Region 1 (PSC1)

Acting Managing Director - Complaints-resolution, Evaluation and Integrity Unit (CEIU)

Head of Stakeholders CSOs Engagement for Asia, Africa and Latin America

AIIB Consultant

Stakeholder Relations Associate

Civil Society Officer

AIIB Board of Directors



 
 
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