IFIs undertake financing when their environmental and social quality criteria are met

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The main content of this article is to describe “climate finance” and “green finance” in detail, as implemented by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and their pertinent environmental and social project quality criteria. The approach of this article is to perceive and understand environment-related activities of international financial institutions (IFIs) as part of a societal learning process, and consequently to describe their “environmental and social project quality criteria” as an expression of such ongoing societal learning processes. What can our readership, related to global finance, profit from such a comparison? Against the expectation of many, IFIs already implemented efficient rules for redirecting global funds to climate and environmental projects — and have thus performed a successful “act of societal learning”. The “environmental and social project quality criteria” have played a crucial role in convincing economic and administrative actors (i. e., learners in our context) to behave in a climatecompatible manner. Thus, the lesson can be drawn from the domain of “societal learning” to the domain of “individual learning” that clear and transparent criteria sets are decisive for a rule-based societal transformation. This article shows that a criteriabased selection process provides the best results for long-term societal interest; in this case climate protection.