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[Thread] What are the main criticisms of the #WorldBank and the #IMF?

Bretton Woods Project - Critical voices on the world bank and IMF

4 June 2019

"World Bank-funded projects have also continually been found to be in direct, serious violation of international human rights standards. Major recurring issues include mass evictions and the forced displacement of peoples and communities for major infrastructure and agricultural projects (see Observer Spring 2015), violations of the rights of indigenous and forest peoples, targeting of human rights defenders, triggering local food insecurity, and serious labour rights violations, such as child and forced labour reportedly being used in Bank-funded projects (see Observer Winter 2016). The IFC has also been shown on several occasions to have invested in companies that avoid or evade taxes (see Observer Autumn 2016). More recently, the Bank has also acknowledged that its projects can create an environment that can foster gender-based violence, including sexual abuse and the spread of HIV/AIDS (see Observer Spring 2017).

"To safeguard against risks like these, the World Bank launched its revised Environmental and Social Framework in 2018, although it applies only to its project lending and not to its DPF.

"Many in civil society remain unconvinced that the safeguards are fit for purpose if the Bank is to deliver on its mandate to implement policies that benefit the poorest, especially as the Bank is set to focus on more complex and difficult environments from 2018."

https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2019/06/what-are-the-main-criticisms-of-the-world-bank-and-the-imf/

#HumanRights #HumanRightsViolations #IndigenousPeoples #ForestPeoples #Exploitation #IMFLoanSharks #CorporateColonialism #CorruptGovernments #BigOilAndGas #BigMining #SaveTheForests

What are the main criticisms of the World Bank and the IMF? - Bretton Woods Project

This Inside the Institutions sets-out some of the most common criticisms of the World Bank and IMF under three broad lenses: democratic governance, human rights and the environment.

Bretton Woods Project

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DoomsdaysCW Nov 23, 2024

From the Bretton Woods Project:

"The [#WorldBank] and [#IMF] have also been heavily criticised for the role played by the political expediency of important shareholders in its decision-making and choice of interventions, including its support to dictatorships. The IMF’s decision to break its own rules and support the highly controversial Greek loan programme, agreed in 2010, prompted Brazil’s Executive Director to the IMF to protest that, '… the program … may be seen not as a rescue of Greece, which will have to undergo a wrenching adjustment, but as a bail-out of Greece’s private debt holders, mainly European financial institutions.'"

From 2018: The Greece Bailout’s Legacy of Immiseration

The cynicism and brutality of what happened there is for the whole world to see.

James K. Galbraith
August 20, 2018

"2010 to 2018 will go down in Greek history as an epic period of colonization; of asset stripping and privatization; of unfunded health and education; of bankruptcies, foreclosures, homelessness, and impoverishment; of unemployment, emigration, and suicide. These were the years of the three memoranda, or 'financial-assistance programs' accompanied by 'structural reforms,' enacted supposedly to promote Greek 'recovery' from the slump and credit crunch of 2010. They were, in fact, a fraud perpetrated on Greece and Europe, a jumble of bad policies based on crude morality tales that catered to right-wing politics to cover up unpayable debts.

"This was a bailout? The word reeks of indulgence and implied disapproval. As it was often said, 'The Greeks had their party and now they must pay.' Yes, there was a party—for oligarchs with ships and London homes and Swiss bank accounts, for the military, for engineering and construction and armaments companies from Germany and France and the United States. And yes, there was a bailout. It came from Europe’s taxpayers, and went to the troubled banks of France and Germany. Greece was merely the pass-through, and the Greeks who paid dearly with their livelihoods were just the patsies in the deal."

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/greece-bailout-imf-europe/567892/

Archive:
https://archive.ph/2IB0c#selection-499.0-515.15

#Oligarchs #OligarchParty #CorporateColonialism #IMFLoanSharks #GreekAusterity #Exploitation #GreeceBailout #IMFBailout

The Greece Bailout’s Legacy of Immiseration

The cynicism and brutality of what happened there is for the whole world to see.

The Atlantic

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DoomsdaysCW Nov 23, 2024

From the Bretton Woods Project: Human rights

"A second stream of longstanding critiques has focused on the content of the policies, programmes and projects that the #BWIs [#IMF and #WorldBank] promote and enforce and how they have undermined a broad spectrum of human rights, with the [#WorldBank] even being labelled a 'human rights-free zone' in 2015 by the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights."

“The World Bank is a Human Rights-Free Zone” – UN expert on extreme poverty expresses deep concern

The World Bank and human rights

29 September 2015

GENEVA – "The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, has called on the World Bank and its member States to adopt a new and consistent approach to human rights.

"'For most purposes, the World Bank is currently a human rights-free zone. In its operational policies, in particular, it treats human rights more like an infectious disease than universal values and obligations,' Alston says in a new report published online on the approach to human rights by the World Bank, the most important international actor on poverty alleviation."

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2015/09/world-bank-human-rights-free-zone-un-expert-extreme-poverty-expresses-deep

#HumanRights #HumanRightsFreeZone #CorporateColonialism
#IMFLoanSharks
#Exploitation #WorldBank

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DoomsdaysCW Nov 23, 2024

From the Bretton Woods Project: #HumanRights (cont'd):

"Labour #unions, for instance, have long opposed the #BWIs’ systematic weakening of labour rights either directly through conditionality or indirectly through policy advice in flagship reports and surveillance, such as the IMF’s 2017 loan programme to Greece (see Observer Autumn 2017), or the World Bank’s 2018 World Development Report (see Observer Winter 2018), respectively. Other economic and social rights, such as the right to social security, health and education, as well as the broader right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing and housing, are all undermined by the BWIs’ promotion of excessively constrained fiscal policies and aggressive privatisation that preclude states from delivering core public services and meeting their international human rights obligations.

"A related and intersectional thread of human rights critiques focuses on how these policies supported, proposed or required by the BWIs are designed unevenly in favour of those already at the top of the economy and society, further exacerbating inequalities within and between countries and disproportionately harming the marginalised, who already are most vulnerable to human rights violations.

"Groups that are often disproportionately and cumulatively disadvantaged by the types of macroeconomic policies the BWIs promote include the poor, women, immigrants, the elderly, children and youth, ethnic and religious minorities, people with disabilities, and LGBTQI communities."

#ReligiousMinorities #EthnicMinorities #ChildLabor #LGBTQI #Exploitation #HumanRights #CorporateColonialism #IMFLoanSharks #WorldBank #LaborUnions

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DoomsdaysCW Nov 23, 2024

Causing major harms through development projects

"To safeguard against risks like these, the World Bank launched its revised Environmental and Social Framework in 2018, although it applies only to its project lending and not to its DPF.

#ForcedRelocation #ForcedDisplacement #HumanRightsViolations #EnvironmentalDegradation #IndigenousPeoples #ForestPeoples #SaveTheForests #Exploitation #CorporateColonialism
#IMFLoanSharks #WorldBank #GenderBasedViolence #ManCamps

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DoomsdaysCW Nov 23, 2024

From the Bretton Woods Project: #Growth-based model #unsustainable

"In general, the growth-based approach to poverty reduction that the World Bank and IMF both promote has immense environmental consequences, as is evidenced by the deepening climate crisis. As noted by former World Bank Chief Economist Sir Nicholas Stern in 2007, 'Climate change is a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen.' Since their inception, the BWIs have played a formative role in aiding and abetting the global forces that have caused this market failure, through promoting economic growth as the core component of their development model, despite – as noted in the aforementioned Deaton report – mixed evidence that economic growth and poverty reduction are linked. While the Bank, and to a lesser extent, the Fund, have both increasingly tried to account for environmental and climate factors in their work over recent decades, these efforts have largely been limited to attempting to integrate these concerns into a growth-based development model."

#DeGrowth #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #IMFLoanSharks #WorldBank #EnvironmentalDegradation #CorporateColonialism

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DoomsdaysCW Nov 23, 2024

From the Bretton Woods Project: Continued #FossilFuel investments

"In terms of its direct lending, the [#WorldBank] ’s investments in #FossilFuels have been criticised for undermining climate goals – with the Bank continuing to fund a considerable number of fossil fuel projects in the years after the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015, which saw countries jointly commit to limit average global temperature rise to 'well below 2°C” relative to preindustrial levels. Despite the Bank’s recent climate commitments (see Observer Spring 2018), CSOs remain concerned that the Bank lacks a comprehensive approach to align its entire lending portfolio with the Paris Agreement. In addition to project finance for oil and gas infrastructure, there are other remaining types of Bank investments that are a cause for concern. The IFC now invests nearly 50 per cent of its portfolio in FI, and a lack of sub-project disclosure in these investments makes it difficult to assess the exposure of these investments to fossil fuels, including coal (see Governance above). However, CSO research has linked IFC FI investments to the construction of 19 new coal-fired power plants in the Philippines, while another report found IFC FI investments linked to 41 new coal plants between 2013 and 2016. While the IFC announced a new Green Equity Strategy in October 2018 that will require new FI clients to divest from coal over time, this policy will not affect past FI investments (see Observer Winter 2018).

"CSOs are also concerned that the World Bank has thus far not developed a framework to assess the climate impacts of its Development Policy Finance. CSO research has found that in some cases, these contain ‘prior actions’ that benefit the fossil fuel and extractive industries. Finally, the Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) has in recent years provided a number of guarantees that have backed fossil-fuel projects. According to CSO research, in FY16, MIGA did not support a single renewable energy project: '[its] guarantees to energy were worth $1.9 billion … of which $0.9 billion went to fossil fuel projects', with the rest going to projects such as hydropower dams, often with detrimental environmental and human rights impacts."

Report from #OilChangeInternational

Cross Purposes: After Paris, Multilateral Development Banks Still Funding Billions in Fossil Fuels

October 12, 2017

"A new report shows how multilateral development banks, including the World Bank, gave over $9 billion in funding for fossil fuel projects in 2016, nearly all of it following the Paris Agreement being reached and despite claims that they were acting on climate and adjusting their investment strategies."

https://www.oilchange.org/publications/development-banks-still-funding-fossils/

#HydropowerDams #EnvironmentalImpacts #HumanRights #ParisAgreement #ParisClimateAgreement #BigOilAndGas #CorporateColonialism #CoalFiredPlants #Phillipines #IFC_FI #MIGA #IMFLoanSharks

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DoomsdaysCW Nov 23, 2024

From the Bretton Woods Project: Focus on #MegaProjects

"The [#WorldBank] ’s shift towards leveraging private sector finance for development (see Governance above), which has gained momentum since 2015, includes a particular emphasis on promoting ‘infrastructure as an asset class’, in order to crowd in institutional #investors. This policy initiative is highly dependent on mega-infrastructure projects – and, as noted by a letter sent by concerned economists in October 2018, currently lacks a framework for aligning such mega-projects with the Paris Climate Agreement or the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

"This is of major concern, given that many planned ‘mega-corridors’ in developing regions are predicated on building a new generation of carbon-intensive infrastructure. In many cases, the Bank continues to support such projects that, while not ‘fossil fuel investments’ per se, are part of such carbon-intensive mega-corridors (see Observer Autumn 2018)."

Paper: Infrastructure Megaprojects as World Erasers: Cultural Survival in the Context of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

Author: Susanne Hofmann, November 8, 2024

"This article explores the meaning of infrastructural changes resulting from the Corredor Interoceánico del Istmo de Tehuantepec (CIIT) infrastructure project for the cultural survival
of Indigenous peoples resident in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region through the lens of ontological justice. The CIIT is being promoted as a multimodal road and rail transport corridor that will link the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific Ocean, speed up global trade and benefit local residents. Based on interviews with affected residents in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz, this research found that there is a strong desire for the continuity of existing, collective life
projects, Indigenous languages, cultural identities, beliefs, spirituality, established political and legal systems, and solidarity economy. De facto, the CIIT infrastructure project functions
as a technology of erasure of other lifeworlds, imposing integration into the One-World World (Escobar, 2016) and assimilation of Indigenous peoples and Afrodescendant communities.
Contemporary legal frameworks are not sufficient to guarantee alterlivability (Hamraie, 2020). Therefore, infrastructural megaprojects based on modern/colonial-extractivist-
developmentalist premises continue to threaten the futurity of Indigenous and
Afrodescendant life projects.

[...]

"An increasing number of infrastructure corridors, such as the Corredor Interoceánico, are currently being built across the globe (e.g. the Belt and Road Initiative/China, Corredor Bioceánico/Paraguay; Corredor Interoceánico/Chile-Bolivia-Brazil; The Northern Transport Corridor in East Africa/Kenya-Ethiopia-South Sudan – just to name a few). These projects are directed at reducing ‘economic distance’ –i.e. speeding up the transport of goods across
geographical distance whilst lowering the cost (Hildyard, 2016: 20). In the process, infrastructure megacorridors restructure whole regions into purpose-specific zones for export, logistics, transit, housing development, resource extraction, manufacturing etc.

"Thereby, they fragment geographic space, generating a distinctive reterritorialisation of the space to develop sites of capitalist growth. Megacorridors connect what Lerner (2010) called 'sacrifice zones' – geographic areas where processes of natural resource extraction cause permanent environmental damage – to global circuits of capital. Across Latin America the social and environmental impacts of extractive megaprojects and resistance against them has
been widely documented (Aguilar Rivero & Echavarría Cango, 2019; Domínguez, 2015, 2017;
Domínguez & Corona, 2016; Ibarra García & Talledos Sánchez, 2016; Pérez Negrete, 2017; Rodríguez Wallenius, 2015). This article explores the meaning of infrastructural changes resulting from the CIIT project for the cultural survival of Indigenous peoples resident in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region through the lens of ontological justice."

Original paper:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X241294080?journalCode=lapa

PDF version:
https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/120254/1/SHofmann_infrastructure_megaprojects_as_world_erasers_LSE_eprint.pdf

#MegaInfrastructureProjects #CarbonIntensive #MegaCorridors #SDGs #CIIT #GulfOfMexico #SustainableDevelopmentGoals #DeGrowth #IMFLoanSharks #SacrificeZones #CulturalGenocide #CulturalErasism #EnvironmentalDegradation #EnvironmentalDamage #Capitalism #CorporateColonialism #IndigenousPeoples #CulturalSurvival #IsthmusOfTehuantepec #OntologicalJustice #Tehuantepec #ExtractiveIndustries #Oaxaca #Veracruz #CorredorInteroceánico #BeltAndRoadInitiative #CorredorBioceánico #NorthernTransportCorridor #China, #Paraguay; Corredor #Chile #Bolivia #Brazil #EastAfrica #Kenya #Ethiopia #SouthSudan #IndigenousCulture #AfrodescendantCulture

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DoomsdaysCW Nov 23, 2024

From the Bretton Woods Project: #Forests

"Finally, the [#WorldBank] ’s #forest policy and #WeakSafeguards on #ForestProtection have also been observed to infringe the rights of local communities and have failed to protect one of the planet’s most important ‘#CarbonSinks’ (see Observer Spring 2017). CSOs have called for the Bank to open up its Forest Notes – which are meant to guide the interface between its lending and forests – to consultation (see Observer Winter 2017-2018). CSOs have also been highly critical of one of the forest initiatives the Bank manages, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), a climate investment fund that supports Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) projects. A March 2017 post in REDD Monitor called the FCPF, 'the most cost-inefficient tree-saving scheme ever,' owing to high administrative costs between fiscal years 2009-2015 absorbing 64 per cent of FCFP’s $55 million expenditure. More generally, the Bank’s overall approach to lending has undermined the protection of vital natural ecosystems in borrower countries. As noted by Bruce Rich in his influential 2013 book, Foreclosing the Future: The World Bank and the Politics of Environmental Destruction, 'When one examines the failures to conserve ecosystems, or to mitigate environmental impacts of development, one finds that failed governance at all levels is almost invariably at the root. …Many of [the Bank’s] problems are associated with a dysfunctional institutional culture in which the relentless pressure to move money out the door, even in violation of the Bank’s own policies and rules, often overrides all other considerations.'"

2017: World Bank policy lending undermines climate goals

"One of the main problems is the Bank’s refusal to adequately assess the social and environmental risks of their policy loans" - Harlem Mariño, Derechos, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales

6 April 2017

"A late January report by US-based NGO Bank Information Center (BIC), together with partners in Egypt, Indonesia, Mozambique and Peru, claimed that the Bank is undermining its climate commitments by supporting investment incentives for coal, gas and oil projects through its development policy financing (DPF) mechanism. DPF accounts for approximately a third of all Bank funding and provides resources for programmes of policy and institutional reforms that are agreed by the Bank and the borrowing government (see Update 82). The report argued that the Bank’s financing through DPF contradicts the internationally agreed and Bank-supported goal of limiting the global average temperature increase to 2°C, which according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would require that at least two-thirds of existing fossil fuel reserves are left in the ground.

"BIC’s report looked at the Bank’s DPF measures in four countries: Egypt, Indonesia, Mozambique and Peru. It found that DPF introduced subsidies for coal in all countries, apart from Peru. For example, the report argued that Bank-supported subsidies for coal infrastructure have helped Indonesia become one of the world’s top coal exporters. It found some DPF support for renewable energy, but argued that the Bank could do more given that all countries examined have potential to develop renewable energy. For example, while Peru’s DPF provides subsidies to public-private partnerships to develop oil and gas infrastructure, it does not include plans for solar or wind power projects."

https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2017/04/world-bank-policy-lending-undermines-climate-goals/

#FCPF #REDD #Ecosystems #ProtectTheForests #EnvironmentalDestruction #ForestDegradation #Deforestation #EnvironmentalImpacts #Egypt #Indonesia #Mozambique #Peru #LeaveItInTheGround #Coal #BigOilAndGas #ExtractiveIndustries #Exploitation #EnvironmentalImpacts
#HumanRights #ParisAgreement
#ParisClimateAgreement #BigOilAndGas #CorporateColonialism #IMFLoanSharks #RenewablesNow

World Bank policy lending undermines climate goals - Bretton Woods Project

A CSO report has found that the World Bank’s development policy lending is supporting incentives for fossil fuels in Egypt, Indonesia, Mozambique and Peru.

Bretton Woods Project

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Phil Stevens

Nov 23, 2024

@DoomsdaysCW The approach is based on extraction of natural capital to service financial debt (the proceeds of which flow to the global North). Colonialism on sterioids.

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DoomsdaysCW Nov 23, 2024

@phil_stevens Yup!