World Bank a major cause of climate change
Riaz K. Tayob
The World Bank has positioned itself as a climate change saviour
but its record in this area is anything but laudable.
The World Bank is a major contributor to climate change, through its
projects and policies that cause Greenhouse Gas emissions in transport,
energy, industrial livestock and deforestation, according to a
well-known environmental scientist who previously spent 23 years working
at the Bank.
The devastating criticism was made even as the World Bank is striving
to become the major source of global financing for programmes in
developing countries to address climate change.
It is attempting to establish climate-related funds worth a total of
$5-10 billion, a move that is criticised by developing countries at the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
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Floods - Devastating effects of climate change |
The G77(Group of 77) and China is advocating that a multilateral
climate fund be set up within the UNFCCC itself, rather than having most
of the financing for climate-related programmes being diverted to the
World Bank.
The environmental scientist, Robert Goodland, characterised the
Bank’s policies and funding practices as being destructive to the
environment.
He said the Bank should be doing “almost the opposite of what it has
been doing.”
Goodland served the Bank from 1978 to 2001 and was author of the
Bank’s environmental safeguard policies. He had also facilitated the
establishment of the World Commission on Dams.
In an interview published in Down to Earth, a leading environmental
magazine in India, Goodland said even the Bank’s own watchdog has
criticised its policies. He said that the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG)
had published a devastating critique which showed “how the Bank is
hurtling away from sustainability”.
Goodland remarked that one arm of the Bank, the International Finance
Corporation (IFC) “privatises profits while spreading the costs of
environmental damages” to society. On the other hand, the other arm of
the Bank, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development(IBRD)
tries to ‘internalise environmental costs.’
Even here, said Goodland, the IEG has stated that the IBRD “has a lot
to do on this front.” Goodland said that the Bank “should be doing
almost the opposite of what it has been doing.” Not just confining his
critique to specifics, he recommended that the Bank “give up its credo
of maximizing growth” at a systemic level.
He also complained about the lack of transparency at the Bank and
said the Bank Group “refuses to make public the amount of Green House
Gasses (GHG) emissions it finances.”
Goodland also said that “greenwash and censorship is quite rife in
the World Bank Group.” Bank president, Robert Zoellick, appointed as his
top Public Relations adviser a colleague “who staunchly defended
suppression of scientific views on climate change.”
He added that “this appointment is in line with news reports that the
Bank’s senior management censored internal reports on climate change and
on logging in tropical forests.”
Goodland was also sceptical about the Bank’s claims that it is
working on a methodology to account for GHG emissions. He said that this
appeared to be years away.
Goodland said, “by continuing to finance so much coal, so much
livestock and so much deforestation, I can’t see the World Bank helping
in mitigating climate change.”
Regarding the Bank’s energy policy, Goodland said that the Bank group
“reversed its decade-long de facto moratorium against coal financing in
2003, as soon as an independent review recommended phasing out coal
within five years.”
He cited a number of projects that the Bank finances in a number of
developing countries including coal export units.
The Bank has also promoted emissions through other means by financing
three other top sources of GHG emissions: highways, deforestation and
industrial livestock, added Goodland.
Transport accounts for 25 per cent of global GHG emissions, and this
is where the Bank funding is ‘most skewed.’ He pointed out the lopsided
Bank funding of 75 per cent for highways, against 7 per cent for
railways.
Goodland was also candid about the Bank’s ‘year-old but still secret
Amazon strategy.’
It seems to be to replace the forest with agri-fuels and industrial
livestock production. The IFC has recently invested in the area more
than $2 billion in industrial livestock, a sector which is the second
biggest emitter of GHG.
The Bank has also not conducted assessments on some projects’
emissions risks. It has financed methane emissions from cows and carbon
emissions from jets which, he said, was “one of the most potent
combinations of exacerbating the global food crisis and climate risks.”
Goodland alleged that the Bank had been reckless in supporting the
production of agri-fuels, citing three examples:
(1) financing of palm oil plantations in South East Asia, the leading
driver of deforestation and a significant contributor to climate change;
(2) two huge soy monocultures in the Amazon forest, despite a
reprimand by its ombudsperson; much of the output is converted to agri-diesel;
and
(3) the March 2008 financing of sugar-ethanol in the Amazon, that has
encouraged further private investments.
Third World Network Features
(The writer is a researcher with the Third World Network) |
