IN FOCUS
A World Bank Fail
The World Bank takes a huge step back following years of progress and reform. According to a press release by Oxfam international the World Bank takes an unsettling stance towards environmental and social protections. Their 133 page draft safeguard policy “contradicts World Bank President Jim Yong Kim’s commitment to ensure that the bank’s new rules will not weaken or dilute existing mandatory environmental and social protection measures”.
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| World Bank Building Jaakko H. via Wikimedia Commons |
The World Bank takes a huge step back following years of progress and reform. According to a press release by Oxfam international the World Bank takes an unsettling stance towards environmental and social protections. Their 133 page draft safeguard policy “contradicts World Bank President Jim Yong Kim’s commitment to ensure that the bank’s new rules will not weaken or dilute existing mandatory environmental and social protection measures”.
These existing measures are important as the World Bank has
a history of funding projects that ultimately destroyed environments and
communities. They often argued they hold little responsibility for project
implementation and countries are responsible for legal action. In recent years
more accountability on the side of the World Bank was called for.
_World_Bank_Project_to_Liberia%2C_working_on_a_road.jpg)
A number of independent environment and human rights groups
have voiced their concern about the new diluted safeguards. Concerns
include removal of “mandatory safeguards and accountability mechanisms” in
favor of “aspirational standards” and “allowing the use of ‘preventative’
violence by security forces. Additionally, accountability of projects seems
to become the sole responsibility of the nation in which the project is
conducted. This is counter intuitive for a donor as the projects are often
conducted in developing countries where rule of law, enforcement, policy, and
political will are lacking.
To put this into perspective, data from 1980s to 1999 the World
Bank had a failure rate of 80% in Africa for their Structural
Adjustment Programs. Twenty six projects conducted in countries included Gambia, Ghana, and Uganda
just before civil war broke out.
Don’t believe me about the World Bank’s influence on global
development? Here’s a not so happy story from April this year in the Huffington
Post and a study that discusses
their overall estimated failure
rate of 39% in 2013 according to Ika et al.
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