July 22, 2008

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Source: New York Times

The World Bank and its partners need to do a far better job of considering the environmental effects of projects they finance in poor countries, its internal review group concludes in a new report.

The review, released Tuesday, examined some of the $400 billion in investments in nearly 7,000 projects from 1990 to 2007. It found that recent pledges for environmental sustainability by the bank and sister institutions, including the International Finance Corporation, were often not put into practice when dollars were turned into dams, pipelines, palm plantations and the like.

The report is available at http://www.worldbank.org/oed

The authors of the 181-page environmental report, the first by the bank's Independent Evaluation Group since 2002, said it was crucial for the bank and its partners to intensify their focus on measurable environmental protection, given rising vulnerability to environmental risks and the increasing flow of financing for projects related to climate change.

"They need to begin to see the inextricable link between sustaining environment and reducing poverty," Vinod Thomas, the director general of the evaluation group, said in an interview. "It is clear now from the Amazon to India that if environmental sustainability is not raised as a priority, then all bets are off."

For the full article, please visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/science/earth/23enviro.html?_r=1&oref=slogin  

Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)

Date: 23 Jul 2008

KABUL, 23 July 2008 (IRIN) - Up to 100,000 people have been deprived of access to basic health services in different parts of Afghanistan over the past four months, due largely to worsening insecurity, with attacks on health workers and health centres, the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) said.

The new figure is in addition to the over 300,000 people who last year lost access to primary health facilities, mostly in the volatile south and southeast.

"Currently some 400,000 people in the country do not have access to basic health services because of attacks on health personnel and health centres, and also due to lack of security for health workers," Abdullah Fahim, a spokesman for the MoPH, told IRIN in Kabul on 23 July.

About 32 health centres were torched, destroyed and/or closed down due to insecurity in 2007. Over the past four months 19 health facilities have been shut down or attacked, MoPH said. 

For the full article, please visit:  http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/PANA-7GTGNY?OpenDocument&RSS20=18-P