Decade on, BRICS' New Development Bank 'still leaves' affected communities without redress

Counterview News 

On the eve of the 18th BRICS Summit, a new report has accused the New Development Bank (NDB) — the multilateral lender set up by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — of failing to deliver on its founding promise of people-centric, sustainable development, even as the harms from its projects mount and affected communities are left with no way to seek redress.

The report, Beyond the Promises: A Decade of Environmental and Social Commitments at the New Development Bank, is authored by Anuradha Munshi, Ivirah Agarwal, Ramananda Wangkheirakpam and Donald Takkhell, and published by the Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA).

Why the NDB Was Created

The NDB emerged from a long-running BRICS grievance that the IMF and World Bank were structurally tilted toward Western powers, and that their loans came bundled with intrusive policy conditions. A 2010 IMF quota reform meant to rebalance voting power toward emerging economies sat unratified for five years, blocked by the US Congress — a delay the report says convinced BRICS leaders to stop waiting and build their own institution. Launched at the 2014 Fortaleza summit and operational from 2015, the NDB gave its five founders equal shareholding and voting power, with no veto for any member — a deliberate contrast to the weighted-voting systems of the Bretton Woods institutions.

A decade of investment, a shift away from green infrastructure

By the end of December 2025, the NDB had approved roughly $43 billion across 139 projects. Transportation has become its dominant sector by a wide margin — a marked shift from its earliest years, when six of the bank's first seven approved projects were renewable-energy investments. India and China together account for over half the bank's portfolio (24.9% and 26.4% respectively), with transport infrastructure making up more than half of NDB's India financing, followed by water and sanitation.

The core problem: no independent scrutiny

The report's central critique is structural. Rather than applying its own consistent safeguard standards — as the World Bank does — the NDB relies on borrower countries' own environmental, social and procurement systems, without specifying what those systems must actually meet. This is compounded by non-disclosure agreements with client governments, and by a disclosure policy that has remained officially "interim" since 2016.

The 2025 DFI Transparency Index (run by Publish What You Fund) scored the NDB just 50% on environmental and social disclosure, and zero on every indicator tied to an independent accountability mechanism — because none exists. Its non-sovereign portfolio ranked second-last out of 22 development finance institutions assessed.

Case Studies Of Harm

Lamphelpat, Manipur: A legally protected wetland has been officially reclassified as a mere "water body" — a category with no legal protection status — allowing the ₹665 crore, NDB-backed project to bypass wetland laws. It is being implemented by the Water Resources Department rather than the Manipur State Wetlands Authority. A 12-foot artificial reservoir dug at the site has killed endangered Manipuri ponies and triggered water hyacinth blooms that are choking fish and raising flood risk. No detailed project documents are publicly available, and the project's risk category is listed as "undisclosed" in independent tracking databases.

Indira Gandhi Canal, Rajasthan: The $495 million canal rehabilitation project, approved in 2017, has struggled to reconcile repair work with drinking-water and irrigation needs. A planned 2024 shutdown was cancelled due to election-season drinking-water concerns, delaying the work, while farmers in Bikaner and Jaisalmer have staged protests over unequal water releases. The report argues that the NDB's "Category B" (low-risk) rating overlooks the livelihood disruption caused by unreliable water supply.

Manipur Water Supply Project: A $312 million loan flowing through the state's Public Health Engineering Department has drawn scrutiny after a 2025 investigation found villages that officially showed near-100% tap coverage had no functioning taps at all — allegations that led to a Manipur High Court public interest litigation naming the NDB directly.

Elsewhere, the report cites Brazil's Araripe III wind project, where a quilombola community was reportedly negotiated with family-by-family rather than collectively, and South Africa's Medupi coal plant, where NDB financing for "green" transmission lines is said to have freed up the borrowing institution's balance sheet to keep funding coal elsewhere.

What The Report Recommends

The authors call on the NDB to:

- Establish an independent accountability mechanism for affected communities

- Finalize a permanent disclosure policy with full project-level documentation

- Set binding minimum standards for the country systems it relies on

- Limit the use of non-disclosure agreements

- Define "sustainable infrastructure" with enforceable criteria

- Adopt a firm no-fossil-fuel-finance commitment

- Close the "fungibility loophole" that lets on-lending free up recipient institutions to fund fossil fuels elsewhere

Report author Anuradha Munshi said the NDB "needs to set a better standard than the institutions it was built to challenge," and that finalizing its disclosure policy, limiting reliance on country systems, and creating an independent grievance mechanism "aren't radical asks, they are the basics."

Co-author Ramananda Wangkheirakpam said projects like Lamphelpat expose "the stark gap between rhetoric and reality," with communities left to bear social and environmental costs while the bank's promise of improving people's lives "rings hollow."