-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 A WORLD WITHOUT THE WORLD BANK AND ADB Focus on the Global South Campaign note prepared for Sangharsh/ Action 2007 March 2007
Pushing a free market, pro corporate globalisation agenda: The World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) provide financing to governments and private companies for social, economic and infrastructure projects and trade liberalisation. The WB always works in partnership with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF sets the macro level financial and economic policy frameworks, while International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the WB and ADB focus on national, regional and global development programmes and policies. These are done through loans and grants. All financing comes with policy conditions that push borrowing governments to adopt economic strategies for rapid economic growth regardless of its costs, and promote privatization and trade and investment liberalization. The institutions believe that: * "Free" and open markets are the best mechanisms for providing basic/essential services (such as water, health care, education), goods (such as food), capital and technology. * Development should be market driven; * Free trade and private investment should form the basis of a country's development strategies; * The private sector must be promoted; in sectors such as water and sanitation, agricultural procurement, and financial services; * Governments must create "enabling policy environments" for privatisation, and establish laws and regulations that boost the abilities of private sector firms; The WB, IMF and ADB are agents of corporate led globalisation in developing countries and promote and support the interests of transnational corporations (TNCs). They derive their power and policy agendas from the wealthy governments of the North (especially, USA, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Japan), who sit on their governing boards and make the rules for institutional policies and decision-making. Governments of developing countries also sit on these boards and try to exercise their own influence in these institutions based on their positions of strength in their respective regions. China and India are the biggest borrowers from the World Bank and ADB, and can exercise significant influence in these institutions if they wish to. Many of the ADB's lending policies and projects are defined by what India and China want. The WB and ADB are dangerous and destructive institutions. They impoverish communities and nations through their policy conditions and the massive amounts of debt they create from local to national levels. Their operations have exacerbated hunger, poor health and malnutrition; increased unemployment and under-employment; created wage stagnancy; destroyed small-scale farming and fishing, environments and rural livelihoods; physically displaced entire communities and several generations, and; created tremendous economic, social and political insecurity for hundreds of millions of people. Women, children, indigenous peoples, socially marginalised and other vulnerable communities face the brunt of these negative impacts. Worst of all, the institutions fail to acknowledge the devastating effects of their projects and policies. They are unaccountable, irresponsible and amoral in the way they operate. Even when cases of project and policy failure are brought to their attention, they blame governments and local people, and make no changes to their policies and operations. A world without the WB and ADB will be a world where: ... countries are not impoverished by crippling debt repayments, and the loss of societal and natural wealth in the name of debt servicing: in order to repay IFI debts, public services, institutions, water bodies and lands are privatised, forests logged, rivers dammed and environments destroyed by aggressive extraction of mineral resources; governments spend more on debt servicing than on ensuring universal access to health care, education, clean water, food, employment and protection from disasters and crises; ... governments have sovereign power under popular democratic oversight to formulate economic, financial, social and environmental policies that benefit citizens, especially those who are vulnerable or disadvantaged; the economic conditions imposed by these institutions undermine popular democracy and genuine development at all levels (local to national), create social conflicts and encourage governments to become antagonistic to their own peoples; ... development policies, programmes and projects are formulated through open, transparent, publicly accountable and democratic consultative processes, and serve the needs and aspirations of all, especially disadvantaged and vulnerable populations; and further, public institutions and services and governments serve the needs of citizens, especially those who are poor and vulnerable, and not the interests of private corporations; ... food sovereignty is a reality for all people, communities and societies are able to feed themselves and others, hunger and malnutrition are combated on a long term basis, and all food producers (farmers, fishers, pastoralists, workers and indigenous peoples) are able to make a fair and just living; the WB and ADB promote privatisation and trade liberalisation policies that allow agribusiness and other private corporations to control the entire food supply chain and destroy local-national capacity for genuine food security; ... land, water, forests and all natural territories are conserved and shared among peoples as common public goods, and protected by strict governmental regulation against privatisation, commodification, concentration and exploitation; the privatisation of water and lands are two of the most prominent conditions demanded by these institutions; water privatization has led to price increases, growing water scarcity, disintegration of water and sanitation standards in many countries, and robbed local communities of their rights to clean and sufficient water supply; private water and bottled drink companies that gain access to fresh water resources are draining the aquifers of subsistence farmers and rural communities; fertile agricultural lands are being taken over by governments and companies for industrial production, plantations and special economic zones( SEZs); ... education, health care, clean water, safe and secure employment, housing and all that is needed for a decent life is equally available to all people, especially those who are disadvantaged and vulnerable. ... appropriate and advanced technologies are equally accessible to all peoples and are not the property or sole preserve of private companies and those who are wealthy and/or socially advantaged; ... local knowledge and bio-diversity are protected within the public realm and not pirated by corporations and wealthy research institutions for their own profits; the "intellectual property rights" regimes promoted by the institutions have resulted in the theft and exploitation by private companies of the knowledge, and seed, plant, aquatic and livestock varieties nurtured by local producers and national institutions for generations; ... our environments, ecologies and communities are nurtured and not destroyed by large infrastructure projects such as large dams, highways, ports and irrigation schemes, and by indiscriminate extractive industries such as mining, oil and gas extraction; WB-ADB supported infrastructure projects destroy terrestrial and aquatic eco-systems, use energy-intensive technologies, pollute the environment and add to global warming; the WB is the greatest source of financing for large dams and one of the largest financiers of extractive industry projects; poorer, often indigenous, forest and pastoral communities suffer most from these projects but receive no benefits; in almost all such projects, people face declining living standards, loss of livelihoods, flooding of homes grazing, fishing and agricultural lands, ecological damage, forced dislocation of local peoples from their territories, political persecution and violent human rights abuses; ... energy sources are developed in ways that minimise ecological, social and economic costs, and renewable energy sources and technologies are prioritised and made equally accessible to all users; the WB and ADB routinely support fossil fuel and polluting energy sources; even where they claim to support renewable energy, their financing goes largely to wealthy, mostly northern companies; beneficiaries of WB fossil fuel extraction finance include Haliburton, Shell, Chevron- Texaco, Total, Exxon-Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum . How can we dismantle the power of the WB and ADB? Increase and maintain strong pressure on our governments (national and state) through democratic means and platforms to not agree to the policy conditions of these institutions. Most borrowing governments do not resist the WB and ADB either because they support the development model promoted by them, or because they are scared that they will not be able to find developing financing from other source and will become economically isolated. But India, being one of the largest "clients" of the WB and ADB, can set the terms of engagement with these institutions and reject the policy conditions imposed by them. The impacts of WB and ADB operations must be urgently assessed, and their legitimacy and usefulness should be challenged more aggressively and publicly. There is enough evidence to show that WB and ADB projects and policies are impoverishing people, increasing economic inequalities and undermining democracy at all levels. We need to gather this evidence and force our state legislatures and national parliament to conduct independent and comprehensive assessments of the impacts of India's relationships with the WB and ADB. The results of these assessments should be used to educate the public and dis-engage from these institutions. Avoid calls for "reform" and instead demand outright rejection of the WB and ADB, and demand legal, external accountability. Past calls for reform have not resulted in real positive change in the operations of these institutions; instead the institutions have learned to adapt themselves to criticisms and confounded the world with new names for more or less the same old destructive policies. Past calls for reform have also undermined demands by project affected communities and peoples' movements for accountability, reparations, and deeper political and economic change. The WB and ADB must be forced to bear responsibility for the damage they have done to peoples' lives and livelihoods and environments. At present, they enjoy immunity from external liability and legal actions by their founding charters. This immunity must be stripped and they should be forced to pay reparations to affected communities and for environmental restoration. Understand better and expose the web of material interests and actors that drive the WB, ADB and their development model. These include national and transnational corporations and national elites, including those in government. Understand and expose the means by which the WB and ADB create "consensus" for their policies and projects. The WB and ADB win or buy societal acceptance of their development model through their "knowledge functions." They hire private consultants, research institutions, universities and NGOs to produce research reports that support this model. These practices should be exposed to the public and be challenged by our own research that documents their failures. Seek out and promote alternative models of development, development financing and economic governance. There is enough natural and material wealth, knowledge and human capacity in India to formulate, refine and implement alternative models of development that are based on sustainable resource use, redistribution of wealth and social ad political justice. We need to put the full force of our political and economic support behind peoples' alternatives to the current model of economic globalisation. Educate the general public in India and elsewhere about the destructive impacts of WB-ADB operations and get other social actors-academics, lawyers, local businesses, local, state and national elected representatives to work with us more systematically in disempowering the institutions. Collaborate closely with peoples' movements and campaigns outside India committed to dismantling the WB and ADB. These include boycotts of WB and ADB bonds; initiating legal actions against the WB-ADB and private corporations; bringing international attention to human rights violations in WB-ADB projects; securing reparations for damaged lives and environments; declaring the debts created by these institutions (and their collaborating donor governments) illegitimate. We need to make links with these and other similar campaigns, and all local and national movements struggling to protect their communities, resources and communities. - -- Anivar Aravind moving Republic Global Alternate Information Applications(GAIA) Peringavu.P.O Thrissur-680018 Kerala Ph. +91 9446545336 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGAgM/F+jWtLmEaycRAkpfAJ9A3WRWjcgVaY0+vnMQ1sT96cmpGwCfWHYZ hDvsEbHlDuUSVWxs9AqTeOE= =q/xo -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ greenyouth mailinglist is the activist support mailinglist for kerala run by Global Alternate Information Applications (GAIA) To post to this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
