During the 2024 World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings, the Bank released its new Corporate Scorecard, a reporting mechanism that has replaced the previous scorecard. The Bank has prioritized the Scorecard as a tool to report on holistic impacts across all of its lending branches. For the first time, the Scorecard will be used to report on commitments within the International Development Association’s (IDA) policy package and the Bank’s Gender Strategy.
Improvements to the prior Corporate Scorecard
The new Corporate Scorecard reports results for individual investments in ways that, if properly implemented, should lead the Bank’s clients to collect and report more on project impacts, which has the potential to lead to better overall project implementation. Furthermore, as many of the indicators are disaggregated by gender, youth, and disability-inclusiveness, the Bank’s clients should be incentivized to better consider the differential impacts of their projects. The Bank has also disclosed the result indicator methodologies, providing greater transparency around how the indicators are measured and monitored.
As part of the revised Corporate Scorecard, the Bank also created a new citizen and civic engagement indicator to replace the former beneficiary feedback indicator, which will measure the quality of stakeholder engagement at the project and country level. While we support this development, the utility of the indicator will depend on the methodology and how accurately this data reflects engagement on the ground during project preparation and implementation. To accurately reflect the quality of engagement across the Bank’s portfolio, this indicator should cover the World Bank Group’s entire portfolio, including its private sector investments through IFC, along with all of its public sector lending instruments, including program for results (P4R) and development policy loans (DPLs).
Strengthen disaggregation for marginalized groups
The new Corporate Scorecard does place a greater emphasis on marginalized groups compared to the old Corporate Scorecard. However, the disaggregation included in the new Corporate Scorecard does not go beyond current commitments and has notable gaps, both in the inclusion of specific groups and in the quality of methodology. Greater disaggregation by marginalized groups is critical to push clients to collect more data and better consider project impacts, including potential harm or barriers to accessing project benefit, on these groups. There are several areas where the Bank needs to strengthen the data disaggregation in the Corporate Scorecard, including:
- There is no disaggregation by Indigenous Peoples, a significant omission.
- Though the Gender Strategy goes beyond binary gender identities, the Corporate Scorecard only disaggregates gender by females and males, meaning that the Gender Strategy and Corporate Scorecard are not aligned. As the Corporate Scorecard will be used to report on many outcomes from the Gender Strategy, we are concerned that this misalignment will undermine the Strategy’s commitment to go beyond the binary.
- The disaggregation of females and youth currently relies heavily on proxies based on population-level data. In the first reporting cycle, 55% of female disaggregation and 91% of youth disaggregation are based on proxies that assume these groups’ access to project benefits is proportional to countries’ female/youth population. This is problematic as it may incorrectly conclude that projects with systematic barriers to youth and female access to benefits are performing well in terms of inclusion. The Bank should move away from the use of proxies.
- While some indicators are disaggregated by disability-inclusiveness, including the improved access to transportation indicator, there are gaps in disability-inclusive disaggregation. For example, there is no disaggregation by disability-inclusiveness in the number of beneficiaries with enhanced resilience to climate risks, failing to consider how persons with disabilities are among the most vulnerable to climate change. Overall, disability-inclusive disaggregation should be expanded beyond result indicators covered by existing Bank commitments on disability.
- It is also unclear how and why projects are flagged as disability-inclusive, how project beneficiaries with disabilities are counted, and if they are truly benefitting. For example, there are no details on the disability-inclusive disaggregation methodology in the social safety net indicator. Our previous research has shown that World Bank documentation for social protection projects tends not to address the specific needs of people with disabilities. The Bank should publicly disclose the Corporate Scorecard Disaggregation Methodology, so stakeholders can understand how the Bank is collecting this data.
Concerns with the Gender Equality Indicator
Gender equality continues to stagnate and regress in nearly 40% of countries and, according to the Bank’s own projections, by 2030, nearly 60% of the world's extreme poor will live in countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV). The Bank also reports that FCV increases the risk of gender-based violence (GBV) and prevents victims from accessing social services. In the new Corporate Scorecard, the Bank aggregates all data it counts as advancing gender equality, in line with its institutional commitment to mainstream the World Bank’s Gender Strategy 2024-2030. While we welcome this initiative, the Bank should also report in project-level datasets the impact of project components aimed at preventing GBV and improving sexual and reproductive health (SRH). As the only commitment on preventing GBV in the proposed IDA21 policy package is to implement the Gender Strategy, the Corporate Scorecard should report project-level data on the Bank’s actions toward achieving these objectives.
Concerns with Net-GHG Indicator
The net-greenhouse gas (GHG) indicator excludes World Bank development policy financing (DPF), International Finance Corporation (IFC) trade finance, and Multilateral Insurance Guarantee Agency (MIGA) trade finance guarantees from GHG measurements. Trade finance and DPFs account for a significant portion of the World Bank Group’s commitments. Since a significant portion of trade finance supports fossil fuels, the omission of trade finance from GHG measurements is concerning. Furthermore, as DPFs have played an increasing role in the Bank’s work on climate mitigation, with the Bank reporting that 97% of DPFs have climate co-benefits in FY21, the Bank should evaluate and disclose the GHG impacts of these investments in the net-GHG indicator dataset. The net-GHG emissions indicator dataset also lacks baseline information. As assessments of projects’ net impact on emissions reduction aren’t possible without initial baseline measurements, the net-GHG emissions indicator dataset should be updated as soon as possible with this baseline data.
Though the new Corporate Scorecard improves on data granularity, the lack of focus on marginalized groups, uncertainties in the disaggregation methodology and implementation, and gaps in the data coverage are concerning. We call on the Bank to address these issues and close these gaps as they begin to implement the Scorecard.