2 days ago
China's AIIB isn't too young to act and invest responsibly
In June 2025, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) marked its tenth anniversary at its annual meeting.
Outgoing president Jin Liqun gave opening remarks, invoking Chinese President Xi's original vision of the Bank to become a true multilateral institution and celebrating its commitment to 'integrity, transparency, inclusiveness, and a results-oriented approach.' Unfortunately, the bank's track record reveals a different story.
As representatives of Accountability Counsel, we attended the same meeting to advocate for the Bank to be more responsible when its financing contributes to negative impacts on local communities.
In particular, we called for much-needed reforms to the AIIB's accountability mechanism, called the Project-Affected People's Mechanism, so that the AIIB can easily hear directly from local communities and facilitate action to either prevent or remediate harm.
The AIIB's project financing has been linked to involuntary displacement, loss of livelihood and environmental destruction in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and elsewhere.
And yet, the AIIB's official channel for hearing about and addressing such concerns–its accountability mechanism–is broken. That's most clearly evidenced by the fact that the AIIB's accountability mechanism has yet to accept a single case as eligible.
In response to our concerns, we were asked to be patient. As a 10-year-old bank, AIIB was still young, still growing up and not ready to be compared to other multilateral institutions.
It is understandable that the bank will make mistakes and that it will need to continually evolve. What is unacceptable is that while AIIB takes its time to mature, people and the planet bear the consequences.
As a part of its operating model, the AIIB skirts responsibility by shifting its legal and institutional responsibility onto peer institutions. AIIB's 'lean, clean, and green' model moves money quickly and with little oversight.
The bank has financed more than US$60 billion during its first 10 years, a significant portion of which was committed through co-financing agreements with other multilateral development banks. As part of these agreements, the AIIB delegates the implementation and monitoring of environmental and social standards to the co-financing institution.
As of 2024, AIIB claims that for 113 projects, worth $23.3 billion – including large infrastructure projects like hydropower, metro rail, airport extensions – it does not bear the responsibility to prevent or remediate harm to local communities.
This statistic is a part of a worrisome pattern of the AIIB evading its obligations to local communities and the environment.
Even when AIIB is the sole financier and therefore solely responsible for overseeing the implementation of its own environmental and social standards, its own accountability mechanism has never once independently reviewed whether the bank is following its own rules, nor whether its rules are adequate to prevent, mitigate and remediate environmental and social harms.
Here, too, AIIB delegates its responsibility down to clients and project implementers, requiring them to resolve issues so that the AIIB does not have to.
Even worse, under the guise of localization, AIIB requires communities whose lives, livelihoods, and environments are at risk from AIIB's investments to try to first seek redress from the project implementers who've contributed to the harm in the first place.
This is the case, despite AIIB staff's own admission, project-level redress channels don't always exist and vary widely in effectiveness.
This year, AIIB has an opportunity to prove that it is ready to enter its next decade as a responsible investor. The policy of the AIIB's accountability mechanism is undergoing an official and public review, with a draft policy published just days after the AIIB's Annual Meeting concluded.
Improvements to that policy would be proof that the AIIB is ready to be accessible and accountable to the communities it impacts. An independent expert has already published a list of policy improvements, a majority of which are yet to be adopted.
We're calling for the AIIB to adopt three concrete improvements: The AIIB's accountability mechanism should allow communities to directly file complaints to it without first attempting other avenues. Because of current access barriers, communities are either unable to or choosing not to raise complaints, leaving the bank vulnerable and unaware of unsustainable aspects of its projects. The AIIB's accountability mechanism, its president and its board should have the power to call for an investigation into whether a project complies with AIIB's environmental and social standards. The AIIB is responsible for compliance with its own rules, so it should be able to initiate an independent investigation even if no complaint is filed. The AIIB's accountability mechanism policy should be reviewed every five years to ensure that it is maturing alongside the bank. This is standard practice to ensure that AIIB's policies and practices don't become outdated.
If the bank adopts these changes, we will applaud the bank's evolution towards responsible investing. If the bank does not adopt these changes, we will have proof that the bank cares more about itself than its mission.
The AIIB does not have to be the same as other multilateral development banks; indeed, its promise lies in new approaches it can bring to improve upon past development practices.
Regardless of its approach, however, the AIIB does have to be responsible for its impacts–both positive and negative–on people and the planet. As of its 10th anniversary, the AIIB has not exercised that responsibility.
Instead, AIIB has acted like a ten-year-old child, wanting praise without responsibility.
Radhika Goyal and Margaux Day are with Accountability Council, a San Francisco-based independent watchdog organization that advocates for people who have been harmed by internationally-financed projects such as dams, mines and oil pipelines.
