What the World Bank is doing to fight climate change

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Editor's note: The dust is beginning to settle on the latest United Nations climate change talks, which concluded in the early hours of 20 November. I hope you followed my dispatches from Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt—if you haven’t, you can find them here. This was my first time covering the annual conference in person, an experience I’m still recovering from. Over 33,000 delegates spent two weeks in a haze of meetings, panel discussions, press conferences and hour-long queues for food and coffee. There were youth representatives, academics, activists, lawyers, government officials, corporate honchos and lobbyists—all gathered to talk solutions to the biggest challenge facing humanity. There is probably no comparable event happening anywhere on earth. I spent the past week on a break, roaming the ruins of ancient Egypt. The Pyramids of Giza, the majestic temples of Luxor and the Sahara desert competing against a thin strip of green on the banks of the Nile River—the land was full of metaphors about humanity’s achievements and its vulnerability to time and nature. As delegates return home, they are faced with the actual challenge and …