'Award' for World Bank
Friends of the Earth in the United States last month presented the World Bank with the Worst Performance of the Year award because of its 1992 energy lending.
The bank, said FoE, won for "by disregarding its own highly touted environmental guidelines, by approving some of the worst 'development' projects ever conceived, funding projects which would destroy the Grand Canyons of the world".
Citing the large number of environmentally disastrous loans, Brent Blackwelder, vice president of policy at Friends of the Earth — USA, presented World Bank president Lewis Preston with a lump of coal and a dual gauge thermometer.
The coal symbolised the bank's attempt to accelerate global warming and air pollution, while the dual gauge thermometer portrayed "the bank's double standard in spending billions of dollars on fossil fuel plants, while shamelessly begging governments for additional money to combat global warming".
Friends of the Earth's analysis of the bank's energy lending in 1992 showed that it has given top priority to the most environmentally destructive programs. Not a single loan had the improvement of energy efficiency among consumers and industry as its primary objective.
"It's as if the bank wanted to maximise the threat of global warming and the damage from acid rain", said Alex Hittle, international coordinator at Friends of the Earth. Of 28 loans made, seven were directed toward building giant fossil fuel power plants, mostly coal-fired, and five were for oil and gas development.
Bank loans were granted for five large dam and river projects. In China, the construction of two dams will displace more than 50,000 people, and one dam in Malawi will flood part of the Majete Game reserve, a critical habitat for elephants. Less than 1% of all its lending went toward energy efficiency.
The International Finance Corporation, the Bank's private sector lending arm, funded the first dam in the "Grand Canyon" of Chile, on the magnificent Bio Bio River, a potential world heritage site.
The Narmada Project in India was supported by the bank in spite of a special study it commissioned of the project, which found gross violations of the bank's own environmental and human rights regulations and recommended a halt to the project.