Bittu
Sahgal (on e-mail) exhorts:
Read
the following report carefully if you are worried
about the future of India's forests. It
confirms what many of us have been saying for years,
that the World Bank/FAO/UNDP combine is acting to
strip Indian forests.
Anyone who has followed the World Bank's bloody
trail over the years will have seen such apparently
honest internal appraisals from time to time
(remember the Wapenhan's Report?). What
generally follows is a massive public relations
exercise designed to improve the Bank's image
("We are trying harder."). This is
normally done by invoking its many consultants and
project beneficiaries, to act as World Bank
apologists and press agents.
We should now question all the Indians who have
profited by taking consultancy money from the Bank's
Forestry Projects in one form or another. They
are the cutting edge of the World Bank's destructive
impact on India.
Bittu
Sahgal
Editor, Sanctuary Magazine,
602, Maker Chambers V,
Nariman Point,
Mumbai 400 021 INDIA
FAX: +91-22-2874380
REUTERS
NEWS SERVICE
World bank admits to failure of forest
policy
WASHINGTON - In a damning self-indictment of
its decade-old forest strategy, the World Bank has
admitted it has failed to implement its own policies
at the expense of the things it was supposed to
protect - forests and the poor. In an unusually
frank internal evaluation report, the bank admitted
its lending was flawed, failed to protect forests,
failed to help the poor and admitted that the bank's
abilities to monitor the effects of its lending was
limited. In 1991, the bank adopted a forest strategy
aimed at deflecting long-standing criticisms that
the bank's activities had contributed to the
alarming pace of global deforestation.
The nearly decade-old policy charged the bank with
conserving tropical moist forests and planting trees
to meet the needs of the poor. The bank also
promised to monitor the impacts of its overall
lending on forests. The report admitted that the
1991 policy was, "narrowly focused on 20 moist
tropical forest countries and neglected other
biodiversity-rich forest types that are even more
endangered, more important globally, or more in need
of conservation to meet the needs of the poor."
Critics
inferred from the report that the bank, through its
structural adjustment loans, had vicariously
contributed to deforestation. "They have
been lending massively for the same economic
policies that have been identified in the report as
driving deforestation, without paying attention to
the impact they were having on forests,"
Korinna Horta, an environment economist at the
Environmental Defence told Reuters.
But,
World Bank spokeswoman Caroline Anstey said the
report should be seen in a positive light since it
was commissioned by President James Wolfensohn to
help him draw up a new forest strategy more in tune
with the current situation. "The important
thing is the report was called for by (Wolfensohn,)
who recognised there needed to be a change from the
1991 policy," Anstey said. "The report
concludes that the time has come for a new bank
forest policy, better attuned to the needs of
developing countries and the changing dynamic of the
forest sector."
The
report said that the poor were not a major source of
deforestation and illegal logging, as the bank
believed in 1991, but that demand for fuelwood for
industry, timber for housing and international
demand for hardwood were the main factors destroying
forests.
The World Bank has often been criticised for lending
for projects such as building dams which destroy the
environment. In recent years the bank, led by
Wolfensohn, has attempted to shake off that image
through a series of alliances with environmental
groups. But despite efforts to shake its tarnished
image, the bank is still under fire. Critics have
asked the bank not to fund part of the proposed oil
pipeline between Chad and Cameroon because, they
claim, the project will destroy rain forests and
harm the livelihoods of people living along its
route.
Horta said that while the bank appeared to be
squarely facing up to its past failings, she
remained sceptical that the bank's burgeoning
bureaucracy can improve itself. The report also
admits that the policy was only partially
implemented and that the bank failed to properly
help the poor, one in four of which live in forest
areas. "Even in countries where forest lending
is large, forests and their development are
currently not an important element of the bank's
assistance strategy for poverty alleviation,"
the report notes.
In a particularly damning assessment, the report
said that the bank's policy's actually hampered
lending which the bank should have encouraged. The
bank's "cautious approach had a chilling effect
on bank involvement in improving forest management
in forest-rich countries that wished to use their
forests for economic development.
The
report was written by the bank's Operations
Evaluation Department, an autonomous group which
reports directly to the bank's board.
