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Endorsed by 200 Groups from 55
countries
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NGO PLATFORM CALLING ON THE WORLD
BANK GROUP TO PHASE OUT FINANCING OIL, GAS AND MINING
PROJECTS
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APRIL 2000
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- In this era of globalization, there is a
growing awareness that environmental protection and economic development
must go hand in hand. Nowhere is the incompatibility of environmental
destruction and poverty alleviation more evident than in the World Bank
Group's investments in the extractive industries: oil, gas and mining.
As the world's largest development institution, and one of the major
vehicles for economic globalization, the World Bank now stands at a
crossroads: perpetuate poverty among the poorest and pollution through
extractive industries, or alleviate poverty through environmentally and
socially sustainable development.
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- The undersigned organizations and
individuals call on the publicly financed World Bank Group to phase out
of financing destructive oil, gas and mining projects. The Bank's
support for these extractive industries underscores its record of
environmental and social destruction. Oil, gas and mining projects
enable wealthy multinational corporations to extract resources and
profits from poor countries, leaving poverty in their wake. They fuel
global climate change, pollute the environment and lead to
deforestation. Even worse, extractive industries have further entrenched
corrupt and dictatorial governments, and exacerbated human rights
abuses.
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- Oil, gas, and mining embody an
unsustainable model of economic development that has failed the world's
poor in the 20th century. There is no reason for the World Bank Group to
finance these sectors in the 21st. The World Bank Group devotes a large
share of its portfolio to extractive sectors (in 1999, IFC and MIGA lent
16% and the World Bank lent 3.8% of its portfolio for oil, gas and
mining projects). An environmentally and socially sustainable approach
would include investing in new industries, clean technologies,
environmental protection, job creation and education. The World Bank
Group should establish an immediate ban on new exploration in pristine,
frontier ecosystems (a ban more than 200 organizations from 52 countries
called for at the Kyoto climate change meeting). Finally, we call on the
World Bank Group to develop a plan for a complete phase out of financing
oil, gas and mining projects. The transition away from these sectors
should be developed in a participatory manner, be based on renewable
energy-based systems and ensure the livelihoods of local communities.
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Ten Reasons the World Bank Group Should Stop Financing Oil, Gas,
and Mining Projects in Poor Nations
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- 1. The Poor Often Pay the Highest
Price
The environmental
destruction and social upheaval that accompany oil, gas, and mining
projects often harm the poor the most. The poor are the most likely to
be forced off of their land and made homeless by these projects. They
are the most likely to live in polluted surroundings and the least
empowered to demand fair compensation or a share in the revenue from
oil, gas and mining development. The poor are the most dependent upon
local natural resources for their food and livelihoods, and the most
likely to suffer when aid is diverted from social sectors to finance
extractive industries.
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- 2. Indigenous Communities are Jeopardized
Oil, gas and mining operations
have devastated dozens of indigenous groups around the world, resulting
in loss of their numbers, territory, livelihoods and cultural identity.
From the Amazon Basin to Asia, these indigenous peoples' ways of life
are built on age-old traditions and deep ties to and interdependence
with the ecosystems where they live. As a result of these extractive
industries, indigenous communities often lose their right to
self-determination, their right to their land and livelihood.
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- 3. Leads to Forest Destruction and Biodiversity
Loss
From Siberia's boreal
forests, to the mangroves of Central Africa, to the rainforests of the
Amazon basin, oil, gas and mining projects threaten precious forests and
cause irreversible damage to ecosystems and biodiversity loss. Oil and
gas exploration, mining and new roads (which are often an indirect
result of oil, gas and mining exploration) currently threaten frontier
forests in critical hotspot countries around the world, including the
Russian Far East, South America and West Africa. Coal mining in eastern
India threatens to destroy the last remaining habitat for the endangered
tiger.
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- 4. Toxic Contamination of Communities
Oil, gas, and mining operations
are significant sources of ecological degradation even in wealthier
nations with stronger environmental protections. In poorer countries
with weaker environmental standards and less oversight capacity, the
likelihood of oil spills, toxic emissions, and contamination is greatly
increased, and governments and communities are less equipped to limit
the damage. Between 1982 and 1992 Shell's subsidiary in Nigeria spilled
about 1.6 million gallons of oil in the Niger Delta, most from leaking
pipelines. Spills, gas flaring, improper disposal of waste, and mining
accidents result in toxic releases that can be dangerous and even deadly
to humans, and can poison groundwater, farmland, livestock and marine
resources, the very resources on which the poor depend.
5. Negatively Impacts
Women
Women often bear a
disproportionate amount of the costs of extractive projects in their
communities. Women are often not included in consultation processes,
even though they are responsible for the welfare of their family. Their
customary responsibilities are made even more difficult as the natural
resources upon which they and their families depend, including clean
drinking water and fuelwood for cooking, are polluted or degraded by
these extractive industries.
6.
Extractive Industries Often Tied to Human Rights Abuses
From forced relocation, to the brutal, and
sometimes deadly, suppression of those who dare to demand fair
compensation or clean-up, the drive for profit from fossil fuels and
minerals has all too often led to human rights violations by governments
and corporations. Witness the struggle in Nigeria by the Ogoni people to
demand the clean-up of the pollution on their land by the oil industry,
or the demand of the Amungme in Irian Jaya, Indonesia, calling for fair
treatment and compensation from the largest gold and copper mine in the
world. The rights of individuals and communities are often sacrificed in
the search for profit by these industries.
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- 7. Ties with dictators and corrupt
governments
Many of the countries
with oil, gas and mining projects suffer from corruption and
authoritarian regimes. Whether it is Russia, Colombia, Indonesia or
Nigeria, repressive countries often form alliances with multinational
corporations involved in extractive industries. For the last two years,
Transparency International, a non-profit corruption watchdog, has
identified Cameroon as the most corrupt nation in the world. In spite of
this situation, the World Bank still claims oil development will benefit
the poor in these countries, and is ready to finance a multi-million
dollar oil development scheme.
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- 8. Supports Corporate Welfare
The multinational corporations involved in
extractive industries often have profits that dwarf the size of many of
the Bank's borrowing countries. In the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project,
which the Bank is poised to finance, the lead company - Exxon - has
annual profits that are four times the budget of Cameroon and 40 times
the budget of Chad. Although earmarked for sustainable development and
poverty relief, nine out of ten World Bank fossil fuel projects first
and foremost benefit transnational corporations based in wealthy
countries. These multinationals are wealthy and do not need to tap into
preciously limited foreign aid. Furthermore, when the Bank subsidizes
these corporate giants in the name of helping the poor, in reality it
diverts much needed aid from programs that truly benefit the
poor.
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- 9. Extractive Industries Fuel Global Climate
Change
Fossil fuels are the major
cause of global climate change and must be phased out. Climate change is
already wreaking havoc on the poorest in developing countries, and
threatens to only worsen their situation. The World Bank Group should be
leading the way to assist countries in a transition towards a more
renewable energy economy and maximizing energy efficiencies, not tapping
into the last remaining resources for the dirtiest, most
climate-destabilizing fuels. Today the World Bank lends 25 times more on
fossil fuel projects than on renewables. Rather than taking substantive
action on climate change, and drastically reducing their fossil fuel
lending, the World Bank is now launching a carbon trading scheme, which
threatens to provide even more subsidies to the already heavily
subsidized fossil fuel industry.
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- 10 Increases Debt and Dependency of Poor
Countries
Oil, gas and mining
development commit countries to a path of indebtedness and dependency on
external aid. Desperate for hard currency to service debts, poor
countries exploit their natural resources at unsustainable rates, such
as petroleum reserves or minerals, to export for foreign exchange. This
costly development path fuels growing indebtedness, and the World Bank's
policy-based lending encourages an unsustainable export-led growth
strategy.
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Ten Better Examples of Good
Development
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- There is no shortage of alternatives to
oil, gas and mining. Opportunities will vary between countries, but this
is not an obstacle ensuring that foreign assistance directly responds to
the needs of the poor and offer sustainable solutions to pressing
environmental problems. The starting point is for the World Bank Group
to work with governments to establish a participatory process and
consult with citizens and stakeholders in the borrowing countries to
identify national development priorities for investment and financial
support. It may not be appropriate for the World Bank Group to invest in
each of these areas. But the bottom line is that where the World Bank
Group is providing financial assistance to developing countries, it must
limit its support to those projects and policy lending which directly
alleviate poverty and promotes environmentally and socially sustainable
development. Some better development examples than what the World Bank
is currently doing with the majority of its lending, include:
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- 1. Deliver energy to the rural
poor.
Roughly two billion people
in rural areas lack access to electricity and other forms of energy.
While the World Bank has a strategy to address these needs, it has never
properly implemented it. Instead, financing is oriented toward
industrial development and urban areas, thereby further impoverishing
the rural poor. Drawing on advances in renewable energy, and existing
production, the Bank Group could bring energy to millions of people in
rural areas. In most cases, cost-benefit analysis shows that renewable
forms of energy are the most viable way to reach remote, rural
areas.
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- 2. Promote energy efficiency and renewable
energy development.
Rather than
promoting the exploration and production of fossil fuels, the World Bank
Group should be concentrating its energy on capturing the hundreds of
millions of dollars in revenues that are annually lost through energy
inefficiency. Investments in preventing heat loss and in co-generation
processes that simultaneously produce both hot water and electricity,
could save World Bank Group clients billions of dollars in the coming
decades. Combined with energy efficient lighting and building
techniques, this would reduce energy imports and possibly free up energy
for export. Similarly, by supporting emerging markets in solar, wind and
fuel cell technology, the Bank will be promoting energy that will not
exacerbate pollution problems or global climate change.
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- 3. Support education and technical
training.
Investing in human
capital is the most important investment of all. A quality education
empowers a person to defend their rights and to creatively employ their
own resources. Basic education is a fundamental right and the foundation
upon which an informed and dynamic citizenry is based, yet it is denied
to hundreds of millions of children around the world. Primary education
is key, especially for girls.
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- 4. Promote healthy societies.
Easily preventable diseases continue to kill
millions of people each year. In many countries of Sub-Saharan Africa,
roughly one in four children will die before the age of five and
diarrhea is a leading cause of death among toddlers. Responding to this
scandal and waste of human and economic potential is a moral imperative
that the world must face.
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- 5. Support micro and small
enterprise.
Supporting small and
medium enterprises, as well as micro-enterprise initiatives, has obvious
social advantages over the mega-projects that characterize World Bank
Group lending. Smaller enterprises result in more employment per dollar
invested, are more likely to reinvest earnings in the local economy and
can be more easily targeted to benefit women and marginalized
communities. From producing carbon filters out of coconut husks, to
exporting organic foods to other markets, opportunities for promoting
small and medium sized initiatives are endless.
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- 6. Build strong agricultural sectors that
respond to peoples' needs.
Agriculture is the lifeblood of many of the world's poorest
countries. World Bank projects and policy lending have often been
associated with accumulation of land in the hands of the few and the
promotion of export driven agriculture that can ultimately undermine
food security. What is needed is a more positive role in development in
the agriculture sector that deals with land redistribution and land
rights, sustainable agricultural practices and more appropriate
technology development.
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- 7. Improve the quality of life in urban
areas.
Gridlock, pollution, crime
and a declining quality of life are the products of overcrowded cities
flourishing in the developing world. The World Bank Group could help
counter-act this trend by directing more of its resources towards
land-use planning, improved efficiency in building practices and
pollution control. Better-organized transit corridors, especially public
transit such as low cost ultralight rail vehicles, would reduce
pollution-related illnesses. The World Bank Group could work to support
innovative building practices and work with city planners to improve the
design of urban areas. The Bank could also invest in more urban area
pollution programs, the cause of so many health related problems.
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- 8. Develop productive alternatives to
deforestation.
Even by its own
analysis, World Bank Group projects are often associated with
accelerating rates of deforestation. More emphasis should be placed on
developing alternatives to deforestation and promoting the sustainable
use of certain forest resources. Innovative alternatives exist, such as
emerging substitutes for wood products and non-wood paper production, or
supporting eco-tourism and the sustainable harvesting of forest products
such as rubber. Governments should be enabled to expand protected areas
for conservation and sustainable use because forests are critical for
the global environment and for generations to come.
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- 9. Encourage the efficient use of
water.
Water scarcity is a
growing global concern, as well as an increasingly obvious potential
source of conflict. Despite the shortages and its fundamental importance
to life on earth, huge volumes of water are unnecessarily wasted each
day. Bombay loses up to one-third of its water, and losses are as high
as 50 percent in Manila. Similarly, irrigation systems that account for
more than half of the water drawn for human use, can also be sources of
great waste. The World Bank Group could improve quality of life by
directing more of its resources to reducing leakage, improving water
conservation and developing mechanisms to more efficiently employ
existing irrigation systems.
10.
Immediate Debt Cancellation and Recognition of Ecological
Debt.
The dire problem of debt
must be addressed. The World Bank Group should move forward this year on
granting immediate debt cancellation to the highly indebted poor
countries and develop a program for debt relief for middle income
countries. These programs should include innovative approaches to
protect and conserve more pristine, frontier ecosystems around the
world. It should also be recognized that there is an ecological debt
that must be reckoned with since Northern consumers have benefitted from
cheap natural resources, including oil, gas and minerals, from the
South. These resources have been extracted at a high cost to the
environment and communities.
- Endorsed By:
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- Africa Faith and Justice Network
United
States
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- Africa Policy Information Center
United
States
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- African Network for Environmental and
Economic Justice
Nigeria
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- AID/WATCH
Australia
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- Alberta Wilderness
Association
Canada
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- Alliance for Democracy -
Minnesota
United States
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- Alliance for Democracy
United
States
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- Alternative Information Center
South
Africa
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- Animal Welfare Institute
United
States
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- American Lands Alliance
United
States
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- Asia-Pacific Environmental
Exchange
United States
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- Anti-Debt Coalition
Indonesia
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- Asociaciones Civicas Unidas
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- Assessoria e Servicos a Projetos em
Agricultura Alternativa
Brazil
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- Association of World Citizens
United
States
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- Australians for Animals,
Inc.
Australia
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- BothENDS
Netherlands
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- Burma Forum
United States
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- Campaign for Alternative Industry
Network
Thailand
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- CEE Bankwatch Network
Eastern
Europe
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- Center for Economic and Policy
Research
United States
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- Center for Environmental Public
Advocacy
Slovak Republic
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- Center for International Environmental
Law
United States
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- Center for Popular Legal Assistance and
Education
Panama
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- Center for Social Justice and Global
Awareness
United States
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- Centre for Environmental Law and
Sustainable Development
Portugal
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- Center for Sustainable Living
United
States
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- Chikoko Movement
Nigeria
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- Climate Network Europe
Europe
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- Colectivo Ecologista
Jalisco
Mexico
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- Conference of Social Justice Coordinators
of Southern California
- United States
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- Congregation of the Sisters of the Good
Shepherd
United States
Council of Canadians - Vancouver
Chapter
Canada
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- Creed Alliance
Pakistan
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- Dahanu Taluka Environmental Welfare
Association
India
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- David Suzuki Foundation
Canada
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- Defense of Canadian Liberty
Committee
Canada
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- Development VISIONS
Pakistan
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- Dominican Sisters of San Rafael
United
States
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- Earth Rights Institute
United
States
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- Earth Rights International -
Asia
Asia
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- Earth Rights International - US
United
States
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- Earthwatch Magazine
Ireland
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- East Kootenay Environmental Society -
Kimberly/Cranbrook Branch
Canada
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- Ecologistas en Accion
Spain
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- Ecology Action Center
Canada
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- Economic Reform Australia
Australia
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- ECOROPA
Germany
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- EcoSolatia
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- ECOTERRA International
Kenya
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- Egi Forum
Nigeria
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- Engenni Community Initiative for
Conservation and Development
Nigeria
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- Enviro-Clare
Canada
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- Environmental and Conservation
Organizations of New Zealand
New Zealand
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- Environmental Defense
United
States
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- Environmental Investigation
Agency
United Kingdom
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- Environmental Lobbying
Facility
Slovakia
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- Environmental Support Group
India
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- European Union for Coastal
Conservation
Netherlands
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- Federation de CIGALES
France
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- Fellowship of Reconciliation
United
States
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- First Unitarian Church
United
States
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- Forests, Trees and People
Newsletter
Sweden
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- Friends of the Bitterroot
United
States
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- Friends of the Earth -
Austria
Austria
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- Friends of the Earth -
Brazil
Brazil
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- Friends of the Earth -
Cameroon
Cameroon
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- Friends of the Earth - Czech
Republic
Czech Republic
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- Friends of the Earth - El Salvador
El
Salvador
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- Friends of the Earth - England, Wales &
Northern Ireland
United Kingdom
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- Friends of the Earth -
Estonia
Estonia
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- Friends of the Earth -
France
France
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- Friends of the Earth -
Georgia
Georgia
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- Friends of the Earth -
Grenada
Grenada
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- Friends of the Earth International
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- Friends of the Earth -
Italy
Italy
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- Friends of the Earth -
Japan
Japan
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- Friends of the Earth -
Lithuania
Lithuania
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- Friends of the Earth - Middle
East
Middle East
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- Friends of the Earth -
Netherlands
Netherlands
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- Friends of the Earth -
Nicaragua
Nicaragua
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- Friends of the Earth -
Nigeria
Nigeria
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- Friends of the Earth - Togo
Togo
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- Friends of the Earth -
Ukraine
Ukraine
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- Friends of the Earth - US
United
States
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- Fundacion para el Desarrollo de la Libertad
Ciudadana
Panama
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- Georgia Strait Alliance
United
States
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- Global Exchange
United States
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- Global Greengrants Fund
United
States
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- Global Peacemakers
Association
Japan
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- Global Resource Action Center for the
Environment
United States
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- Global Response
United States
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- Greenpeace Belgium
Belgium
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- Greenpeace International
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- Greenpeace United States
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