IF-EYE Newsletter
Issue #26
Thursday, December 06, 2007
A publication of the Bank Information Center
Welcome to the December 6, 2007 issue of the IF-EYE – the Bank Information Center’s bi-weekly synthesis of key developments concerning international financial institutions. This issue spotlights the World Bank's controversial Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and how Malawi recently overcame years of persistent famine. Please send suggestions, contributions and subscription requests to: info@bicusa.org. Thanks for reading!
In this issue:
1. IFI Updates
2. Civil Society Highlights
3. SPOTLIGHT: Seeing the forest for the carbon?
4. SPOTLIGHT: Malawi wins results and recognition for rebuffing World Bank prescriptions
5. Announcements and Resources
6. New at BIC: BIC welcomes Chad Dobson as its new Executive Director!
1. IFI Updates
World Bank touts controversial climate change strategy in Bali
12/03/2007 World Bank
The World Bank has brought its "low-carbon growth" message to the United Nations climate change conference currently being held in Bali, Indonesia. The Bank plans to launch its controversial Forest Carbon Partnership Facility on December 11, 2007 at the conference.
Read More (World Bank website)
European Parliament passes resolution to end taxpayer support for fossil fuel projects
11/29/2007 European Parliament
On November 29, the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution on trade and climate change calling for the “discontinuation of public support, via export credit agencies and public investment banks, for fossil fuel projects.” The resolution asks EU governments to propose legislative mechanisms that would force export credit agencies and the European Investment Bank to "take account of the climate change implications of the funded projects" and to "impose a moratorium on funding until sufficient data are available."
European Parliament passes resolution to end taxpayer support for fossil fuels projects Press Release, November 29, 2007 (Bankwatch website)
2. Civil Society Highlights
BIC hosts working session on international financial institutions in Indonesia
12/4/2007 Bank Information Center
On November 26, 2007 BIC's Mekong/South East Asia Program organized its first event in Jakarta entitled “Working Session on World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Indonesia, 2007: Trends, Questions and Openings for Civil Society”. The event brought together around 20 representatives from non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations working on issues related with the World Bank and ADB operations and policies in Indonesia.
Read more (BIC website)
BIC’s Middle East and North Africa program organizes first workshop in Yemen
12/4/2007 Bank Information Center
BIC's Middle East and North Africa program recently held a workshop entitled “Understanding and influencing International Financial Institutions in Yemen” at the Sana'a International Hotel on November 5, 2007. Around 50 journalists and civil society leaders working on a wide range of issues including gender, budget transparency, youth, education and human rights attended the workshop. The objective of this workshop was to update the Yemeni civil society organizations and media on the involvement of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Islamic Development Fund in Yemen.
Read more (BIC website)
Second Latin American Congress of National Parks and Protected Areas
11/30/2007 Vince McElhinny, Latin America Program, Bank Information Center
The Second Latin American Congress of National Parks and Protected Areas held in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina was the largest gathering of environmental organizations working in Latin America since the last Congress in 1997, held in Santa Marta. Read Vince McElhinny’s recap of the events of the Congress.
Second Latin American Congress of National Parks and Protected Areas by Vince McElhinny, November 30, 2007 (Acrobat pdf, 715 KB)
Comment: Try as it might, the World Bank cannot hide its failings
11/27/2007 Simon Counsell, Rainforest Foundation
The World Bank touted it’s meeting with a delegation of Pygmies from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during the Bank’s Annual Meetings in October. But as Simon Counsell of Rainforest Foundation UK points out, the Bank has consistently ignored the findings of the quasi-independent Inspecition Panel and violated its own "safeguard policies."
Read the entire comment entitled "Try as it might, the World Bank cannot hide its failings" by Simon Counsell, November 21, 2007 (The Guardian website)
World Bank asked to implement National Drainage Program Action Plan
11/21/2007 Multiple Organizations
In 2006, the World Bank’s Inspection Panel issued its investigation report for the Bank-funded Pakistan National Drainage Program. The inspection requesters recently wrote to the World Bank Executive Directors to implement the approved Action Plan. The requesters feel the World Bank Board should ask the Inspection Panel to monitor progress of Management’s Action Plan so as to provide the Board with an independent assessment of progress or lack thereof.
NGO Letter to World Bank Executive Directors on Nation Drainage Program Action Plan November 21, 2007 (Acrobat pdf, 94 KB)
Read more (BIC website)
U.S. coalition calls for World Bank reforms
11/19/2007 Multiple Organizations
A coalition of U.S. development and environmental groups released a joint platform containing needed World Bank reforms, ahead of the 15th replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA) negotiations that took place November 12-13 in Dublin, Ireland. The platform identifies three critical reform areas the World Bank needs to address: ending economic policy conditionality, fighting energy poverty and climate change and increasing transparency and accountability at the World Bank.
Read the Join CSO/NGO platform November 27, 2007 (Acrobat pdf, 170 KB)
Read more (BIC website)
3. SPOTLIGHT: Seeing the forest for the carbon?
12/4/2007 Nikki Reisch, Africa Program, Bank Information Cetner
December 3 marked the opening of the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP-13) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – the international agreement under which the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions was established in 1997. As the leaders of more than 180 countries gather in Bali, Indonesia to discuss what kind of climate regulation regime will replace Kyoto when it expires in 2012, one of the hottest topics on their global warming agenda is tropical forests. Tropical deforestation is now widely recognized to be among the major causes of global warming.
The meetings, which are scheduled to run through December 15, are expected to be particularly important in charting the course for a post-Kyoto global agreement on carbon emission reductions.
Campaigners have been fighting to protect rainforests for years, citing their importance to forest-dependent peoples, their unparalleled biodiversity, and their medical, aesthetic and spiritual value for the planet, but it is their recently recognized significance to the world’s climate that has made forests an international priority today. While there is agreement on the need to stop destruction of the world’s rainforests, there is no consensus on how to provide the incentives necessary to do so, nor concurrence on how to calculate the value of not cutting them for the growing (though contested) trade in emissions reductions.
Even as the debate over whether and how to incorporate “avoided deforestation” into an international agreement on climate change mitigation continues, the World Bank has already proposed one solution. On December 11th in Bali, World Bank President, Robert Zoellick will launch its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, formally setting in motion the first initiative to include emissions reductions from avoided deforestation into the global carbon market. This latest foray by the Bank into carbon ‘market-making’ only heightens concerns among environmentalists opposed to emissions trading mechanisms in general, on the grounds that they will only perpetuate excessive pollution in the North.
Seeing the forest for the carbon? World Bank brings “market-making” to tropical forests by Nikki Reisch, December 3, 2007 (Acrobat pdf, 371 KB)
Read more about the World Bank's controversial Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (BIC website)
4. SPOTLIGHT: Malawi wins results and recognition for rebuffing World Bank prescriptions
12/6/2007 Soren Ambrose, Africa Program, Bank Information Center
The front page of the New York Times on Sunday, December 2, 2007 prominently featured an article on recent successes in Malawi’s battle against regular outbreaks of famine.
Headlined “Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts,” Celia Dugger’s article documents how the government of Malawi decided to re-introduce subsidies to small farmers for the purchase of fertilizer. The government’s move, a rare example of defying World Bank credo in a region still dependent on the institution’s good will, has produced solid, and virtually immediate, success.
After years of following the recommendations of the World Bank and donor governments to sharply limit, and ultimately eliminate, public financial support to farmers, the Malawian government in 2005 insisted upon subsidizing agricultural inputs for the country’s largely rural population. Last year, Malawi went from being a beggar dependent on food aid – much of it from the U.S. – to being a major provider of maize, the region’s staple crop, to neighboring countries like Zimbabwe.
Although Dugger only addresses the World Bank’s role in Malawi, the IMF played a key part in instituting market reforms in the agricultural sector. It was, in fact, blamed by many observers for exacerbating the country’s worst recent famine (2001-02) and causing unnecessary starvation.
While the Bank promises a renewed focus on agriculture in Africa in the wake of its 2008 World Development Report, it is not yet clear if it will reverse itself and support government intervention to ensure increased access to inputs on the more modest scale now being realized in Malawi.
Read more (BIC website)
Read the New York Times article "Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts", by Cecilia Dugger, December 2, 2007. (New York Times website)
5. Announcements and Resources
BIC now has an Arabic page for its Middle East and North Africa program!
Partners and readers from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region can now access information on BIC’s MENA Program in Arabic. While the Arabic page is still under construction, it provides an overview of BIC's MENA Program, as well as information on the work of the international financial institutions operating in the region.
Visit the new Arabic webpage at: الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا or at www.bicusa.org/arabic
6. New at BIC: BIC welcomes Chad Dobson as new Executive Director!
We are pleased to welcome Chad Dobson as BIC's new Executive Director! Chad will join BIC on Monday, December 10, 2007.
Chad founded BIC in 1987 and was its Executive Director until 1996. He then founded and directed the Consumers Choice Council to protect labeling systems (organic, fair trade, Marine Stewardship Council, Forest Stewardship Council) during the initial development of the World Trade Organization. At Oxfam America, where he has been since 2003, Dobson was responsible for developing the organization’s Washington presence and his portfolio included the Fair Trade campaign, extractive industries work and policy and advocacy activity associated with humanitarian relief.
Chad will strengthen BIC’s efforts to develop partnerships with civil society groups in developing and transition countries to influence the World Bank and other international financial institutions to promote social and economic justice and ecological sustainability.
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