Down to Earth IFIs Update

The World Bank has pledged another US$1 billion loan for Indonesia's 2000 state budget. This is in addition to previously pledged money. It is not clear where the money will go. World Bank country representative Mark Baird also said the bank had already disbursed US1.5billion for the 2000 state budget as part of its pledge made during the meeting of the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI) last February. Visiting World Bank vice president for East Asia and the Pacific Jemal ud-din Kassum said the upcoming October meeting of the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI) would closely assess the progress of the country's reform programs. The CGI groups Indonesia's major international lenders chaired by the World Bank. The grouping will convene in Tokyo on October 17 and October 18. In February, the CGI pledged US$4.7 billion in loans to support the current state budget.
(Jakarta Post, June 15; Antara, June 12, June 14)

World Bank Forestry Review Heavily Criticised

A number of NGOs, including World Rainforest Movement, have expressed concerns about the World Bank's Forest Policy and Forest Policy Implementation Review process. They say it has not included sufficient field evaluations of ongoing projects and fear that the review process aims to dilute the Bank's ban on support for logging in primary moist tropical forest. The Operation Evaluation Department's review of the extent to which the World Bank has implemented its own 1991 Forest Policy found that:

• staff lack the expertise, time, resources and incentives and reporting tools to observe the policy;
• the Bank has had a negligible effect on curbing deforestation;
• participation of civil society was weak;
• the importance of reforming land tenure regimes has been poorly appreciated;
• gender considerations were inadequately addressed in 99.5% of projects;

A joint NGO briefing ahead of regional consultation meetings welcomed the review for its frankness but contested some of its conclusions.The NGOs urge:

• changes to Bank incentive structures;
• more focus on the problems with large-scale plantations and the differences with community-based reforestation;
• measures to integrate the forest policy into Country Assistance Strategies, Economic Sector Work and adjustment lending.

See also DTE's Critique of the Indonesian OED Review at www.gn.apc.org/dte/caoed.htm

Reforming the World Bank's Forest Policy: A Check-List for Activists is at http://www.wrm.org.uy/english/tropical_forests/WorldBank.html

Further information from info@fppwrm.gn.apc.org

(Source: Bretton Woods Update at www.brettonwoodsproject.org)


CGI meeting to be in Tokyo
The next CGI meeting will be in Tokyo on October 17-18, 2000. See July Factsheet for campaigning details.

NGO Call to come to Prague for IFI meetings in September
From September 20-28, the IMF/WB Annual Meetings (plus related NGO events) will take place in Prague, Czech Republic. See July Factsheet for campaigning details.

News in Brief

(Source: Bretton Woods Update at www.brettonwoodsproject.org)

World Bank Environment Strategy Draft Out

The World Bank has released a draft new environment strategy for public consultation. It aims to move the Bank from a defensive to a proactive and integrated approach, arguing that longer-term development prospects must be maintained by preventing soil degradation, freshwater scarcity and climate change. The Bank plans to bring the Environment Strategy to the Board in December 2000.
http://www.worldbank.org/environment/strategy/

Senior Author of World Bank Report Resigns over Censoring of Globalisation Comments

Ravi Kanbur, lead author of the World Bank's forthcoming World Development Report (WDR) on Poverty, has tendered his resignation. He has sent a letter to senior Bank management expressing his concerns about what he saw as unreasonable pressure to tone down WDR sections on globalisation. Reliable Washington sources indicate that US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has got directly involved in re-writing the globalisation sections of this report, which is likely to be extremely prominent in future discussions of international issues and in guiding aid interventions.

World Bank Discussed Indigenous Peoples Policy Review

The World Bank held a workshop on Indigenous peoples, forests and the World Bank's policies and practice, in Washington on 9-10 May to discuss nine case studies, presented by indigenous peoples, of their communities' experiences with World Bank projects. This also served to feed into the Bank's ongoing review of its policy towards indigenous peoples. The case studies were from Panama, Bolivia, Guyana, Cameroon, Uganda, Rwanda, India and the Philippines spanning forestry, eco-development, protected areas, oil and gas, and community development. This complemented the series of consultations held by the Bank in late 1998 in Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador and India. Recommendations centred on: identification, land and natural resource management, participation, compensation, self-determination and indigenous development, and compliance. The World Bank is due to hold another round of consultations later this year.
For further details: mail@fppwrm.gn.apc.org

USA Power in IFIs Examined

A new book sets out current issues in multilateral development bank reform and the way that the US pushes its interests in the institutions. Written by former USAID official Barbara Upton, it sets out very interesting interview material. It argues that "by pushing unrealistic or contradictory mandates upon multilateral institutions, aggressively seeking the appointment of inappropriate individuals to leadership positions, and failing to deal, in some cases for decades, with obvious problems, the US may have played an important role in the poor performance of many multilateral institutions and then sought to blame them for the ensuing failure."

The Multilateral Development Banks: Improving US Leadership is available from Praeger Publishers at http://www.praeger.com