On Wednesday, the World Bank’s steering committee and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged for more reforms this year to help the bank respond to climate change, pandemics, and other crises that are undoing development achievements.

Yellen met with global finance officials to discuss an initial round of balance sheet changes that will allow the World Bank to lend $50 billion over ten years while maintaining its AAA credit rating and how to expand those efforts with it and other multilateral development banks.

Yellen said the modifications previously authorized had focused on the World Bank’s purpose, but more “bold action” was required to eradicate extreme poverty, enhance shared prosperity, and better address 21st-century problems, including climate change, fragility, and pandemics.

“We should use the rest of the year to undertake additional reforms through a staged implementation approach that can be agreed upon by the Board and implemented on a rolling basis.”

Later that day, the bank’s steering committee, the Development Committee, welcomed the “Evolution Roadmap” and said they looked forward to more efforts to reach “major milestones” by the October World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings.

“They expect the Board of Executive Directors and World Bank Group management to finalize a work plan with detailed actions to be taken,” the committee’s chair stated.

Members pledged “ensuring that the World Bank Group has adequate financial capacity to respond to development challenges and support its expanded mission.” They advocated ambitious strategies to boost private capital, investment, and public sector leverage.

The members also looked forward to exploring last year’s independent panel’s recommendations to make the bank’s emerging markets database more accessible to private investors, optimize the low-income lending arm’s balance sheet, and explore voluntary channeling of IMF Special Drawing Rights.

Yellen said Zambian women she saw in January understood how climate change decreased agricultural harvests. “We’ve all seen how global health threats can disrupt entire societies and economies, and how fragility and conflict can lead to significant displacement and migrant flows,” she added.

Yellen said future events might boost the World Bank’s evolution. The Summit for a New Global Financial Pact in France in June, the Group of 20 Leaders’ Summit in India in September, the World Bank and IMF annual meetings in Morocco in October, and the UN COP28 climate conference in Dubai in November and December.

She called Ajay Banga, the U.S. candidate to succeed World Bank President David Malpass on June 1, “the right leader to take the baton from President Malpass and accelerate our work to evolve this institution.”

Malpass told the committee the bank responded with “vigor and speed” to Yellen’s changes.

“There was… wide recognition that progress toward these goals requires a sharper focus on sustainability, resilience, and inclusiveness as part of our mission,” he stated.

Development Committee members commended Malpass for leading the WBG through an unprecedented financial boom in response to numerous crises.