World Bank destroys rainforests

This video is called Wildlife of the Deep Congo Rain Forest.

From Wildlife Extra:

World Bank encouraging industrial scale logging

World Bank refuses to review its support for logging in tropical rainforests despite criticism from its own independent evaluators

February 2013. The World Bank Board of Directors has blocked a call by independent evaluators to review the outcomes of the Bank’s support for industrial-scale logging in tropical rainforests. The evaluators concluded in a report that such operations have not been effective in reducing poverty, the World Bank’s core mandate, or achieving sustainability. Despite these findings, the Board voted unanimously against a recommendation that the Bank review the effectiveness of its support for tropical forest logging.

“The very survival of tropical forests and the way of life of people who live in them is under threat, and the World Bank is in denial about its contribution to the problem,” said Rick Jacobsen of Global Witness. “As a public institution tasked with reducing poverty, the World Bank should take very seriously its own evaluators’ finding that its approach is not helping vulnerable forest communities. It’s time for the Bank to stop defending destructive logging practices in the name of development benefits that never materialize.”

Widespread logging of tropical rainforests

The Bank has been instrumental in putting into place policies in many tropical countries that result in widespread logging of tropical rainforests. Yet according to a growing body of evidence, industrial-scale logging contributes to tropical deforestation while doing little to improve the lives of forest-dependent communities and indigenous peoples. Corruption and lack of government oversight further aggravate the problem. In the countries of Africa’s Congo Basin, home to the world’s second largest rainforest next to the Amazon, law enforcement in the logging sector is ineffective and corruption and cronyism are widespread. Recent reports from a government-appointed independent observer in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, found that many international logging companies are carrying out illegal activities.

DRC forests in danger

“After 10 years of World Bank-led reforms in the DRC, roughly 150,000 km2 of rainforest remain in the hands of poorly regulated international logging companies, while communities are once again being left behind,” said Susanne Breitkopf of Greenpeace International. The reform process in the DRC has been marred with irregularities and widely criticized; meanwhile, a law that would support community management of forests has been stalled for years, and the Bank is financing a forest zoning process that is likely to earmark huge areas of rainforest for industrial logging.

Forest dependent communities

While the Bank fiercely rejected the evaluators’ criticism of its support for industrial-scale logging in the tropics, it accepted seven other recommendations made in the report. Two of these focused on the need to provide more support for forest-dependent communities to allow them to directly manage their own forest resources. The Bank has not yet indicated how it plans to implement these recommendations. Breitkopf remains sceptical: “In order to reduce poverty and deforestation, the Bank needs to put land rights and community forest management at front and centre of its projects, rather than making them cosmetic add-ons.”

Related articles

• Dr. Reese Halter: Rapacious War Against Nature: Indonesian Palm Oil (huffingtonpost.com)
• The year in rainforests (news.mongabay.com)
• Brazil to inventory Amazon rainforest trees (terradaily.com)
• Brazil wants to count every tree in the Amazon rainforest (smartplanet.com)
• WWF urges Indonesian pulp producer APRIL to immediately stop pulping tropical forests (wwf.panda.org)
• World Bank management rejects criticisms of industrial logging (climate-connections.org)
• World Bank Unmoved on Auditor’s Criticism of Forest Policy (ipsnews.net)
• Tropical Tree Climbing Offers Eco-tourists a Bird’s Eye View in the Amazon Rain Forest (prweb.com)
• Paper firm says to stop cutting Indonesia’s natural forests (reuters.com)

World Bank harms Ethiopian, Kenyan people

This video says about itself:

Many Kenyan residents say the Gibe III dam project, located along the Omo River, will have a negative impact on their environment. VOA’s Vincent Makori reports and talks to Ikal Angelei, founder of Friends of Lake Turkana Kenya, 2012, Goldman, Environmental Prize Winner.

From Wildlife Extra:

Outrage as World Bank funds power lines linked to controversial dam

The Gibe III dam threatens the livelihoods of 200,000

August 2012. Human rights organizations, including Survival International and Human Rights Watch, have fiercely criticized a decision by the World Bank to fund power lines in Ethiopia linked to the controversial Gibe III dam.

The newly-approved project will help transport power generated by a notorious hydroelectric dam in southern Ethiopia, to Kenya’s power grid. Ethiopia’s controversial Gibe III dam is expected to be complete by 2014, but the devastating social and environmental consequences of its construction are generating widespread opposition. The decision to help back such a controversial project violates World Bank guidelines on safeguarding indigenous peoples’ rights and involuntary resettlement.

Lower Omo Valley people livelihoods endangered

More than 200,000 indigenous people in the Lower Omo Valley stand to have their livelihoods and food security destroyed by the dam. Water levels are already unprecedently low and are devastating the self-sufficiency of pastoralist tribes such as the Bodi and Mursi and the hunter-gatherer Kwegu.

Violent land grabs

Added to this, violent land grabs, forcible resettlement and human rights abuses are rife in the Lower Omo, as the government clears land to make way for lucrative sugarcane and cotton plantations irrigated by the newly-dammed river.

Ethiopia has failed to consult any indigenous communities over the construction of Gibe III or its aggressive plantation plans, which are devastating the Lower Omo Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The dam will also affect many tribal communities across the border near Kenya’s Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake.

Survival International’s Director Stephen Corry said, ‘The electrical needs of Kenya and Ethiopia should not be used to justify such flagrant human rights abuses. This is yet another ill-fated project supported by the World Bank, which will destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. These are some of the most self-sufficient communities in the Horn of Africa, and yet their human rights are being openly trampled on by an organization that ought to have learnt from history, rather than repeat the mistakes of the past.’

Survival International, Human Rights Watch and International Rivers all condemn the World Bank’s decision to fund these transmission lines.

A TURKANA lobby group has called on the government of Kenya and Ethiopia to consider more environment and people friendly development before proceeding with their grand projects: here.

With support from the UK government’s Darwin Initiative, BirdLife International is working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources, is raising awareness and building capacity on the role of ecosystems in adaptation amongst government and civil society in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda: here.

USA: Wolfowitz at American Enterprise Institute

This satirical video is about the ouster of Paul Wolfowitz over the revelation of a promotion and pay raise he secretly gave his girlfriend who worked for the World Bank.

It says about itself:

These are dark days for Paul Wolfowitz. His girlfriend broke up with him last week, after he left his job in disgrace for getting said girlfriend a gig. That, after helping start the Iraq war…his downfall would be tragic if it weren’t so completely fucking awesome.

From the blog of James Pinkerton in the USA:

Like Napoleon at Elba, Wolfowitz Finds Contentment at AEI

Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of Defense and former President of the World Bank, has been named Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. But while AEI is known as a hub for hawkish neoconservatives–including Richard Perle, David Frum, and Michael Ledeen–Wolfowitz will not be working on any more foreign wars, according to AEI President Chris DeMuth. Instead, as the July 2 press release informs us, Wolfowitz will “work on entrepreneurship and development issues, Africa, and public-private partnerships.” …

In other news, Napoleon announced that he was perfectly content to remain at Elba, denying rumors that he would attempt a comeback in France. Also, the Kaiser Wilhelm II reiterated his long-held opposition to plunging Germany into a two-front war. And finally, President Lyndon Johnson forcefully declared, “We are not about to send American boys 10,000 miles away to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

See also here.

And here.

AEI update, July 2008: here.