DAM WORLD BANK FUNDS - NOT THE RAINFORESTS

THURSDAY 21ST JULY 1994: At 10.30 am today, Friends of the Earth campaigners will dam the entrance the UK Treasury symbolically blocking the flow of UK taxpayers' money to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) - institutions 50 years old tomorrow [1]. Also today a major conference on the work of the World Bank and IMF opens in Washington D.C. [2].

The human dam outside the Treasury [3] will bear the message:

DAM THE WORLD BANK NOT THE RAINFORESTS STOP UK FUNDING NOW

Tony Juniper, Senior Campaigner at Friends of the Earth said:

"If the British public knew that over the last year almost 250 million of its money was spent on cutting down the tropical rainforests, forcibly evicting poor people from their land and driving Third World countries ever deeper into debt, the cash would not flow so freely" [4].

Citizens' groups the world over continue to highlight the adverse environmental and social consequences of the World Bank and IMF's style of development and to call for fundamental reforms to these institutions [5].

Friends of the Earth has today written to UK Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke [6], urging that the UK use its influence to achieve changes in development policy so that the poor really benefit from World Bank and IMF aid. Friends of the Earth calls for an end to the funding of destructive projects; a reduction in the debts owed by poor countries to the World Bank and IMF; and greater public access to the institutions' information. Friends of the Earth demands that further payments of UK taxpayers' money to the World Bank and IMF are suspended pending satisfactory progress in these areas.

Tony Juniper continued:

"The World Bank's own figures confirm that the real beneficiaries of its lending are the rich countries. In 1992/3, more than half of the World Bank's aid to the poorest nations finished up in the world's ten richest countries to pay for equipment and technical advice" [7].

ENDS

[1] A conference that took place at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, from July 1 to 22, 1944, established the World Bank and the IMF - the so-called Bretton Woods Institutions.

[2] Friends of the Earth's demonstration at the UK Treasury coincides with a major conference hosted by the World Bank in Washington from 21-22 July, also marking the 50th anniversary.

[3] The demonstration will take place at 10.30 am outside The Treasury in King Charles Street, off Whitehall.

MAP (extract from A-Z) here

[4] The UK's contribution to the World Bank in 1991/92 was 228 million, rising to 249.68 million in 1992/93 (Foreign and Commonwealth Office Departmental Report 1994, HMSO, March 1994, p.93).

[5] A Friends of the Earth briefing entitled "Fifty Years is Enough" presents brief case studies about Bank lending and summarises the issues behind the campaigns of non- governmental organisations working for changes to the World Bank and IMF. A copy is included with this press release.

[6] The World Bank and IMF are ultimately controlled by a Board of Governors (usually finance ministers) representing member countries. The UK Governor is the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

[7] See World Bank Annual Report 1993, Washington, 1993, pp.80-82

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