When it was launched, the ‘Global Environment Facility’ (GEF), a multi-billion dollar conservation fund run by the World Bank, promised a new openness and accountability for aid. Today, billboards along Joburg roads advertise GEF as ‘your partner in sustainable development’.

But behind the scenes, GEF grants have been used to sweeten World Bank loans (and add to the debt crisis), to enclose land and nature (and deprive people of their resources), and to offer highly conditional - but lucrative - grants to governments, NGOs, scientists and campaign groups who were getting too close to the worldwide anti-capitalist movement.

The GEF is the ultimate example of how the World Bank listens and reforms under pressure – but for its own sustainable development, and that of international capital. GEF has hardly touched the people and places, which need help the most.

A tiny proportion of GEF projects do devolve funds to the grassroots and work to change development policies and practices. But this kind of PR-friendly initiative is the exception that proves the rule: the GEF cannot challenge rich and powerful bodies with the money to co-opt critics and greenwash toxic track records, because if it did, its own flow of cash would stop.