MANILA, Philippines — As the world marks a decade since the Paris Agreement, NGO Forum on ADB Network and allies have issued a scathing assessment of the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) 2025 Energy Policy Review and Draft Policy. In a scorecard released today, Forum concludes that the Bank has “failed the test” of climate leadership, human rights protection, and meaningful public participation.
For highly vulnerable countries like the Philippines, the climate crisis is a daily reality. In 2025 alone, Typhoon Ragasa displaced around four million families, highlighting the urgent need for decisive climate action. Forum network and allies warn that ADB’s review process and proposed amendments “ring hollow,” offering little protection for the communities most affected by climate impacts.
The Bank’s process violated its own Access to Information Policy and commitments to stakeholder engagement. Key documents were disclosed late, consultations were brief and selective, and feedback was not meaningfully integrated.
The proposed amendments reveal “a dangerous pivot toward corporate and extractive interests.” Fossil gas remains labeled a “transition fuel,” allowing financing for new exploration and pipelines despite overwhelming scientific consensus that no new oil and gas fields are compatible with the 1.5°C goal. The Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM) risks extending fossil expansion rather than retiring coal. Loopholes in the coal ban persist, and mining is being rebranded as “green” under the Critical Minerals for Clean Energy Technologies (CM2CET) initiative, threatening Indigenous communities, ecosystems, and human rights.
ADB is also considering lifting its nuclear financing ban. Forum network warns this is a reckless regression: nuclear remains expensive, unsafe, and produces long-lived radioactive waste, while Small Modular Reactors are unproven and financially burdensome. The review promotes additional false solutions, including coal co-firing, Waste-to-Energy, large hydropower, and geothermal projects in Indigenous territories.
The revised policy also lacks explicit commitments to human rights due diligence, protection of environmental defenders, gender justice, or Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). Past ADB projects have been linked to displacement, land conflicts, repression, and gendered harms. “Energy transitions that violate rights are neither just nor sustainable. ADB’s silence speaks louder than its rhetoric,” the statement reads.
Over a hundred civil society groups evaluated ADB through lived experience: gas pipelines through Indigenous lands—zero; opaque financial intermediary lending that hides coal exposure—zero; promotion of nuclear, extractives, and incinerators while claiming climate leadership—zero. “ADB’s score of zero is a mirror reflecting the Bank’s own choices,” the coalition declares.
The Forum calls on the ADB Board of Directors to reject the policy in its current form and take immediate, decisive action. Demands include a genuinely transparent review process through 2026, closure of all coal loopholes, a time-bound phaseout of fossil gas, rejection of nuclear and extractive-driven initiatives including CM2CET, an end to false solutions, integration of binding human rights and just transition principles, and full alignment with the 1.5°C pathway with a complete fossil fuel phaseout by 2030.
“ADB’s Energy Policy Review remains a failed test and a failing grade,” the statement concludes. “The climate emergency demands leadership rooted in justice and science—not profit, not technofixes, and not exclusion. Communities across Asia refuse to accept another generation locked into fossil fuels.”
