If this is a change of heart for the World Bank, it could not have come at a better – or worse, depending on the angle from which you look at the issue– time. As hundreds are feared dead and/or are missing in Uttarakhand, the institution known to back development projects even at the cost of local environment is talking, ever so humbly, about climate change and all that jazz.

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As the hill state of Uttarakhand was coming to terms with its worst natural disaster in years, the World Bank released a report on June 19 (read m,ore on it here) that warns of climate change hitting India, as well as the world at large, very hard.

This, incidentally, is the same institution that funded the controversial Tehri hydro dam in Uttarakhand despite opposition from environmentalists and experts on ecology.

Many environmentalists had opposed the dam when it was being constructed, as the environmental harm of locating such a large dam in a fragile ecosystem in the Himalayan region, they claimed, could be disastrous. Nevertheless, the World Bank pumped in $648 million in way of loan to the project even as late as 2011.

While the Washington DC-based lender bank has funded coal-based power plants, known to be harmful for the environment, in many developing countries, some World bank-funded projects that came under the scanner in recent years in India are the Tata Mundra plant, a coal-power plant run by GMR Kamalanga Energy Limited in Odisha, and the NTPC coal power project at Singrauli, Madhya Pradesh.

After locals vented their ire at the Vishnugad-Pipalkoti power project in Uttarakhand, the World Bank in fact sent its own team to probe the issue. And these are only a few projects!

So, is there a change of heart now?

World Bank representatives would not break that easily, of course. "There are not easy choices for country like India. You don’t have much option left," said Onno Ruhl, World Bank’s country director for India, when asked why the bank funded projects in coal and hydropower despite resistance from locals, activists as well as experts.

While Ruhl admitted that the World Bank has committed some mistakes in its 68-year presence, he also defended earlier funds provided by the institution in India. "You have coal, and you don’t have much controversy on risks of coal,” he said. “It is very important to work in the area of different sources of energy because energy is needed for development – and hydro (power) is part of that equation.”

While a report says the World Bank has “directed $37 billion to the construction or expansion of 88 coal-fired power plants” across the world since 1994, the bank says its old policy on coal projects is now being phased out across the world.

But how did this change come about?

While protests by environmentalists against World Bank-funded projects deemed harmful for environment has only increased in recent years, the final straw, from all accounts, was massive protests in the United States.

Ergo the change in opinion.

According to the latest report, "An expected two degree Celsius rise in world's average temperatures in the next decades will make India's summer monsoon highly unpredictable.”

The bank is also talking about working together with India on building what it calls “resilience against the impact of the present warming trends”. Having closed its eyes to hydro projects all these years, the institution is now also talking on supporting environmentally sustainable hydropower in India.

The World Bank started taking nano steps in changing rules regarding coal plant lending in 2011, but the rules applied only to the poorest countries, and not for developing nations like Vietnam, India and South Africa, which are off the list. While it is welcome to champion the green cause now, the World Bank cannot wash its hands off “environmentally fragile” projects it has helped set up across the world till date.

And as Uttarakhand struggles to fight a disaster – according to environmentalists made worse by man’s construction frenzy, and greed – with an ever-watchful eye on the Tehri dam, many experts are calling it crocodile tears that might be too little, and too late.