While the World Bank says it encourages "environmentally responsible"
economic growth in developing countries, activists wonder why it has supported
332 fossil fuel projects in the past 12 years.
According to a study by the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network (SEEN), a
project of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and the
Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute, since the World Bank committed itself
in 1992 to financing sustainable energy projects in poor countries, only one of
every 17 programmes has focused on renewable sources of energy.
These statistics, contained in the report "A Wrong Turn from Rio", were
confirmed to IPS by Nadia Martínez, Latin America coordinator of SEEN, after the
presentation of a new World Bank publication at the tenth climate change
conference (COP-10) currently taking place in Buenos Aires.
At Tuesday's launch of the World Bank's annual report "Environment Matters",
whose theme this year is sustainable growth in the developing South, the
director of the Bank's environment department, Warren Evans, said it is true
that the international lending institution supports fossil fuel projects.
But he argued that this support is necessary because the needs of the poor must
be met.
There are 1.6 billion people in the developing world who lack electricity, and
an even greater number that still depend on fossil fuels for cooking and
heating, said Evans. But, he added, the Bank is supporting an increasing number
of renewable energy projects.
But SEEN pointed to the contradiction between encouraging sustainable growth and
investing in projects that increase greenhouse gas emissions, which trap heat in
the earth's atmosphere, causing climate change.
The World Bank report estimates that global gross domestic product (GDP) will
have quadrupled by 2050, and that growth will be especially strong in countries
that are now lagging. "However, how we grow matters," it adds.
"Clearly the prudent way forward must be based on promoting a development path
that integrates economic growth with environmental responsibility and social
equity," says one of the articles in the report.
Evans said the aim is to raise awareness that in order for economic growth to be
sustainable, environmental concerns must be fully integrated. He also said the
state of the environment in the world is disturbing and that progress in meeting
global environmental targets has been "alarmingly slow".
Other articles in the report were written by Mexico's secretary of the
environment and natural resources, Alberto Cárdenas, China's minister of
environmental protection, Xie Zhenhua, and India's secretary of the environment
and forests, Prodipto Ghosh.
According to Cárdenas, environmental degradation costs Mexico the equivalent of
10 to 11 percent of GDP, or around 64 billion dollars a year.
For his part, Mexico's under-secretary of the environment Fernando Tudela said
that many people in Latin America are concerned that investing in the
environment will hurt competitiveness. But, he argued, precisely the opposite is
true, and if the region fails to tackle environmental challenges, it will miss
out on opportunities.
Ghosh said his country had "successfully decoupled decline in environmental
quality and increases in per capita income at a much earlier stage than other
developing countries."
But he insisted on the need to alleviate poverty, because the poor are the main
victims of the deterioration of natural resources.
Zhenhua said that by 2020, China's GDP will have risen fourfold from the 2000
level, but that by then, renewable sources of energy should cover 12 percent of
the country's national energy consumption, up from less than one percent today.
The World Bank report thus presented an overview of the challenges facing the
developing world with respect to fomenting economic growth based on a more
sustainable development model than today's, which has been principally based on
the use of polluting sources of energy that cause global warming.
But SEEN noted that the promises made by the World Bank since the 1992 Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro to finance renewable energy projects have not been
fulfilled, and that on the contrary, the great majority of projects have
involved fossil fuels.
The environmental network estimates that the World Bank has invested more than
28 billion dollars in fossil fuel projects in the past 12 years, including
"extraction, power plants and sector reforms."
"There have been 332 projects from 1992 to 2004 that will release 43.4 billion
tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere," Martínez commented to IPS.
The activist also argued that it is not fair for the World Bank, which should
take the initiative in financing clean energy projects in poor countries, to
continue fomenting greenhouse gas emissions while participating in the "business
opportunities" created to help reduce emissions.
She was referring to the World Bank's support for the "flexibility mechanisms"
set up by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change to make it possible for
industrialised countries to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by
financing projects in developing nations.
The 30 industrialised countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol - which
enters into force on Feb. 16, 2005 - have committed themselves to reducing their
emissions to levels 5.2 percent lower than in 1990, by deadlines that range from
2008 to 2012.
One of the flexibility mechanisms, the Clean Development Mechanism, is based on
granting incentives for private companies to fund projects that curb greenhouse
gas emissions in the developing world, in order to obtain credits that count
towards meeting their targets.