World Bank deputy attempted to omit references to climate change
26 April 2007
World Bank Managing Director, Juan Jose Daboub, apparently tried to delete the words "climate change" from the institution's main environmental strategy paper, reports the Financial Times.
Robert Watson, chief scientist at the World Bank, claims that Mr. Daboub intentionally removed any use of the term "climate change" from the report in an attempt to "convey greater uncertainty over the human impact on climate". The allegations have been confirmed by two other officials.
Mr. Watson, a well respected authority on climate change, oversaw the World Bank's Clean Energy Investment Framework which was presented at the 2006 Annual Meetings in Singapore last September. According to reports, Daboub, the head of the World Bank's sustainable development division, deliberately tried to delete references to climate change and even attempted to replace them with more innocuous terms such as "climate risk” and “climate variability”. In regards to the edits received from Mr. Daboub's office, Watson said: “My inference was that the words ‘climate change’ to him implied human-induced climate change and he still thought it was a theory and was not proved yet.”
Juan Jose Daboub is one of two managing directors at the World Bank, who serve directly under the President, Paul Wolfowitz. The other managing director, Graeme Wheeler, called for Mr. Wolfowitz to step down from his post last week, amid controversy surrounding a compensation package for the President's girlfriend.
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