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Bruce Rich

Autor(a) de Mortgaging the Earth

6 Works 95 Membros 1 Review

About the Author

Bruce Rich is a lawyer who has worked for three decades with national environmental organizations. An expert on public international finance and the environment, he received the United Nations Global 500 Award for his research and advocacy concerning multilateral development banks. He is the author mostrar mais of Foreclosing the Future and To Uphold the World, as well as numerous articles in publications including The Financial Times, The Ecologist, and Environmental Forum, the policy journal of the Environmental Law Institute. mostrar menos

Obras por Bruce Rich

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male

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Críticas

Imagine a grant and loan system where the end product is worth less than the money invested. Where in half the projects the money goes into the tax haven accounts of giant corporations, and much of the rest simply disappears into pockets. Where theoretically pro-environment programs degrade the environment far more than leaving what was there alone. Where aiding the poor means displacing millions of people every year, killing off their livelihoods and endangering their health with pollution. Where the biggest recipient spends more money itself every year doing similar projects in other countries. Where any hint of clamping down on corruption is met by fierce objections from the borrowers. Where the supposed beneficiaries, in their thousands, riot in the streets when a new billion dollar project is announced. This is the legacy and continuing pride of the World Bank, ever out of control, doing immeasurable damage to the planet.

Foreclosing the Future is one of many such studies, using the Bank’s own investigations and reports, criticism from funding governments, from NGOs of every persuasion, and news reports. Nothing here is classified, stolen or suspect. It’s a public horror story without end.

The entire oeuvre of the World Bank is pushing money out the door. That’s what defines a good performer. “Perverse internal incentives with no economic rationale” are the order of the day, every day, for decades. The ultimate customer – the poor – are simply in the way. The Bank’s own annual report says the attention to poverty “was seen as an obstacle to lending performance, defined for the most part as lending volume.” A typical example: only one tenth of one percent of the power generated by a World Bank project (Tata Mundra brown coal-fired power plant) is set aside for the poor of India. Apparently, most Bank power projects are designed to export all the power they produce, benefiting the locals not one bit. The power company and the government make all the revenue; citizens just get in the way.

In addition, the Bank supports all manner of what Bruce Rich calls kleptocracies, helping keep dictators in power, supplying money that almost immediately goes to the purchase of arms instead of helping citizens whose lives it has just ruined.

So with the environment. The Bank is “widely viewed as more of a menace than a solution” to the global environment and its preservation. A 2002 survey in Latin America found 67% strongly disagree that privatization “has been beneficial” for their country. Even Ban Ki Moon called the way we live a global suicide pact. No one has done more to promote the burning of dirty coal than the World Bank. It continues to promote and finance coal burning plants all over the world, even as the amount of CO2 and fine particulates sets records going back 300 million years. The Bank is the single greatest polluter in the world, and continues to build its portfolio without obstruction – despite all the objections.

The Bank’s current president, an MD, wrote a book ten years ago, slamming the health damage the Bank did amongst the locals. He called it Dying for Growth. But the culture has swallowed him up like all his predecessors. Nothing will change, criminally bad employees will be kept on and promoted, as usual. The Bank will continue to send millions to criminals who have been banned by it for corruption. The projects will continue to spread their damage.

Incredibly, internal reports are quickly forgotten, and new recruits write up the same complaints from new fiascos all the time. The Bank never learns from its own disasters. The bank does not focus on outcomes; the only key metric is amount loaned.

In every case, it’s local residents who suffer the dislocation, eviction, destruction of livelihood, environmental damage and social destruction. And with tens of billions to spend every year, that means millions of people every year.

That the World Bank continues to exist, that its contributing governments continue to contribute, and that no one seems to want to put an end to this nightmare is a puzzle that remains unsolved.

Bruce Rich’s book is a stomach turner.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
DavidWineberg | Jul 16, 2013 |

Estatísticas

Obras
6
Membros
95
Popularidade
#197,646
Avaliação
½ 4.5
Críticas
1
ISBN
17
Línguas
1

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