Bank Official Pleads for End to Poverty

June 2, 1992

Rio de Janeiro-- Once a lending institution that funded environmentally destructive projects, the World Bank is now assuming a leading role in financing ecologically sound development, Bank officials said today at the '92 Global Forum.

In the past, the World Bank provided loans for highways and dams that led to environmental degradation. Now the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), a pilot program run jointly by the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), is being considered as a mechanism to finance future sustainable development.

"If you are a development agency like the World Bank you have to make absolutely sure that you don't do things that damage the environment and that environmental costs of your projects are absolutely minimized," said Andrew Speer, director of the of the World Development Report, an annual overview of the Bank's policies and goals.

While the World Bank was always aware of the environmental impact of projects, says Speer, "we are aware now more than we've ever been before. That is why we are putting a lot of resources to make sure we don't do anything bad to the environment."

The World Bank has gone a step forward by providing loans that restore damaged ecological areas, he said. For instance, the World Bank last March approved a loan for a $250 million dollar plan put forward by the Brazilian government to reverse the deforestation in the Amazon state of Rondonia.

Speer pointed out that the World Bank's loan was fitting in that it was a Bank loan that helped finance construction of highway BR-364 in Rondonia, the road that led to the area's current destruction.

"We never intended to finance environmentally destructive projects," said Kenneth Newcombe, World Bank coordinator for the GEF. "Some projects had unforeseen circumstances." Certain factors and analysis should have been taken into account, he added, which is why the bank in 1989 adopted strict environmental impact assessments on all bank projects.

As for the possibility of the GEF being used as a finance mechanism for sustainable development in the future, Speer stated: "We are being asked to play a larger role. We take that very seriously."

In the World Development Report, the World Bank outlines its own agenda on where future funds should be directed. "Poverty alleviation is absolutely the number one issue on that agenda," Speer declared.

As for UNCED, Speer said the World Bank message for world governments is that "eliminating wide-spread poverty within this generation is not only morally imperative, it is also imperative for environmental stewardship.

"Poor people suffer more from environmental damage and poor people don't have the resources to manage the natural world in a way that over the long term will be sustainable," he added. To illustrate the problem, Speer said that one billion poor people don't have access to clean water and another 1.7 billion don't have access to sanitation. "That's an environmental problem," he remarked, "and we can solve it."

As regards the official UN conference, Speer said that "the UNCED conference should be saying that 1.7 billion people without sanitation and 2 million children dying every year is unacceptable for the world community."

While issues such as biodiversity and global warming are vital, Speer maintained, "those must never, never, never distract us from the number one target which is to attack poverty in away that is environmentally responsible." (IPC)

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