ACTION ALERT! World Bank to Resume Financing of Rainforest Destruction

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World Bank to Resume Financing of Rainforest

Destruction

July 2002 - By Forests.org, Inc.

 

The World Bank has released its long awaited draft

policy on forests. The proposed policy threatens most

of the world's remaining forests with environmentally

damaging industrial forest management financed by

taxpayers through the World Bank. It severely weakens

the existing Operational (OP) Policy on Forests of

1993. Environmental group pressure led to the current

policy that bans Bank funding of logging in primary

moist tropical forests. Over the past several years,

the World Bank has aggressively sought to resume

financing of " sustainable forest management "

activities in the World's dwindling primary forests,

particularly in the tropics. This would require

revision of the Bank's existing forest policy.

 

The proposed new policy opens the door to financing of

large scale timber export and carbon sequestration

projects, emphasizing market forces and marketing

arrangements to address deforestation. However, there

is no evidence that commercial scaled sustainable

forest management can be effective in promoting

environmentally sound and socially equitable

development. The Bank's new proposed policy fails to

address the powerful forces of globalization and

economic liberalization, as well as poor governance,

the main causes of deforestation according to the

World Bank itself.

 

The Bank has spearheaded failed tropical timber

industry reform efforts for over a decade; failing

miserably to reform commercial logging in Papua New

Guinea, Indonesia, Kenya, Cameroon and elsewhere. The

Bank's forest conservation policy approach continues

to be based upon the false premise that commercial

logging in primary forests is ecologically

sustainable. This is patently false. Turning the Bank

loose to " integrate forests into sustainable economic

development " will guarantee the demise of the World's

remaining large natural primary and old-growth

forests. The Bank seeks to sustain foreign exchange

revenues and timber yields rather than natural

ecological processes and patterns.

 

The proposed policy allows extractive investments by

the Bank in all types of forests except those Bank

bureaucrats deem to be " critical forests " .

Participatory mechanisms to define such forests are

not part of the plan. Instead of proposing clear and

strong new safeguards to protect the world's forests,

the proposed policy refers to seven other existing

World Bank 'Safeguard Policies' as a means to protect

ecosystems and livelihoods of forest-dependent

peoples. The draft policy was developed through years

of consultation with others. Yet the result flies in

the face of demands of civil society and ignores most

of the advice given to the Bank by its own Technical

Advisory Group. It appears the Bank carried out a very

costly and time-consuming exercise to justify the

adoption of a policy that had already been decided

upon beforehand.

 

The proposed policy shows little potential to promote

forest conservation. Any revision of the Bank's

current forest policy must not allow any financing of

commercial scale logging or forest management in any

of the World's remaining primary forests. The Bank

needs binding policy for each sector (i.e. roads,

agricultural plantations, mining, etc.) in regards to

forest conservation. The Bank's structural adjustment

lending must be reformed to eliminate massive negative

impacts upon forests and other ecosystems. It is

inappropriate for the World Bank to subsidize

rainforest destruction. Please edit and send the

following letter:

 

sample letter at:

http://forests.org/emailaction/bank.htm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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