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."

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