Number: 1994-12
WHEREAS, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were founded at an international conference held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in July 1944, and are thus known as the “Bretton Woods Institutions”; and
WHEREAS, 1994 is the fiftieth anniversary of their founding, and it is therefore appropriate to recall the purposes for which they were founded and to examine how they have evolved over the years, and to consider whether their operations are useful or relevant to the world situation at the end of the twentieth century; and
WHEREAS, at its 48th Annual Meeting in 1984, the National Wildlife Federation noted that loans and economic advice from institutions such as the World Bank have played a major role in the development process in Third World countries; that natural resources conservation and environmental protection are essential to and compatible with sustainable economic development; that the World Bank, along with the other multi-lateral lending institutions (the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the African Development Bank) had pledged as long ago as 1980 to ensure the environmental soundness of their loans and projects; but that none of those banks was, in fact, complying with its promises and indeed none of them had the adequately trained staff, or policies and procedures in place, to enable them to do so; and
WHEREAS, experts have documented scores of cases of severe adverse environmental and social impacts, stemming from World Bank-financed operations, mostly affecting the poor in developing countries and the natural resources that they need to survive; some of the cases from Brazil, India, Botswana and Indonesia were covered in major newspapers and on TV all over the world, showing that ecosystems such as coastal wetlands and tropical rainforests were needlessly destroyed, and people already poor were made destitute in the name of development; and
WHEREAS, many of the projects with the worst environmental and social impacts have been economic failures as well, increasing the foreign debt of the countries involved but reducing their long-term productive potential; and
WHEREAS, the IMF has been similarly criticized for requiring developing country governments to undertake a prescribed set of drastic economic restructuring plans, with no understanding of, or provisions for, the resulting adverse impacts on the poor and the environment; and
WHEREAS, in combination with the mismanagement by many of the governments of the Third World, the IMF’s so-called Structural Adjustment Loans have contributed to prolonged depressions in many countries, to increased poverty and a growing gap between rich and poor, to burgeoning city slums without water or sewer services, to the degradation of health and education, and skyrocketing unemployment; and at the same time, to earn foreign currency to pay their debts, the IMF has encouraged countries to maximize exports by converting vast forests, wetlands and other eco-systems to government – or corporate-owned agribusiness plantations, or shrimp and timber operations, using unsustainable chemical-intensive and monoculture techniques; and
WHEREAS, in response to the public exposure of the impacts of their operations, and pressure from the United States government, both the World Bank and the IMF have adopted some reforms (for example, the World Bank has hired and/or retrained over 100 environmental experts, anthropologists and sociologists; revamped its policies on tropical forests, water resources and energy funding; established a Department of Sustainable Development; opened more documents to local public review; established an independent body to which affected people can bring complaints about impacts of projects; the IMF, by contrast, only recently has admitted that its policies have adverse impacts on the poor and the environment, has undertaken studies of how to reduce them, and has begun to require that its programs include social safety nets for the poor); and
WHEREAS, in June 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, known as the Earth Summit, was held in Rio de Janeiro and there all participants, including the Bretton Woods Institutions, agreed to an action plan to achieve environmentally sustainable economic development, called Agenda 21; and
WHEREAS, as a result of the Earth Summit, nation states and international bodies such as the Bretton Woods Institutions have an obligation to begin to implement Agenda 21 in the context of their day-to-day operations; and
WHEREAS, Agenda 21 implies that the purposes and methods of institutions should be reexamined to ensure that they are promoting development that is ecologically sustainable and socially equitable, not just economically viable, especially in light of the end of the Cold War, and the rising demand for democratic public participation in many parts of the world;
NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the National Wildlife Federation in annual meeting assembled March 4-6, 1994 in Austin, Texas, calls upon the Bretton Woods Institutions during their 50th anniversary year to review their purposes and operations so that they can fulfill their responsibilities under Agenda 21; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the National Wildlife Federation calls upon the governments of the donor nations that control the Boards of Governors of the Bretton Woods Institutions, to review within the year 1994 their own participation in these institutions, and to determine how they can use their voices and votes on the Boards to ensure that the Bank and the Fund promote sustainable development; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the National Wildlife Federation calls upon the United States Government, as represented by the Departments of the Treasury and State, to adopt and implement a plan to make the Bretton Woods Institutions accountable to the people of both the donor and borrowing nations, and to have these institutions concentrate on poverty alleviation, environmental protection, women’s empowerment, population stabilization, equity and public participation as specific goals of a new emphasis on sustainable development; this plan would start with developing an international consensus on the need for such reforms.