Urgent: Move to Weaken World Bank Forest Policy
11/21/97
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Headline: Urgent: Move to Weaken World Bank Forest Policy
Source: Environmental Defense Fund
1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009
Tel. 202-387 3500
Fax 202-234 6049
e-mail: korinna@edf.org or
wild@edf.org (Ken Walsh)
Date: 11/21/97
To: NGOs working on World Bank Forest Policy
From: Korinna Horta
Re: Urgent: Move to Weaken World Bank Forest Policy
Dear friends & colleagues,
The move within the World Bank to weaken the existing Forest
Policy, especially with regards to eliminating he current ban on
logging in primary moist tropical forest, is gaining speed. Some
NGOs (we only know of WWF and The Nature Conservancy) are
supporting the move to get the World Bank back into financing
logging in these areas. They hope to attract funding for their
own pilot-logging projects in Papua New Guinea. Since their
position may be presented as representing "mainstream NGO
thinking", we need to make our views known. What follows is a
letter to Mr. Wolfensohn. I hope your organization will sign
onto the letter. In addition, we ask that you try to help obtain
signatures for the letter from other NGOs in your country. The
more we are, the stronger our message will come across.
Please contact Ken Walsh or myself by December 3, if you wish
your organization to co-sign this letter.
Many thanks,
Korinna Horta
LETTER
Mr. James Wolfensohn
President
The World Bank
1818 H Street, NW
Washington, DC, 20433
Re: Forest Policy Implementation Review
Dear Mr. Wolfensohn,
We are writing to you because we are very concerned that the
World Bank is working towards changes in its Forest Policy
without having undertaken a thorough review of how the existing
policy has been implemented on-the-ground. Although there is a
Bank commitment dating from 1994 to carry out this review, some
Bank officials are now trying to put the cart before the horse
by calling for a quick review of the forest policy itself and by
anticipating amendments to the policy (i.e. eliminating the present
restrictions on direct World Bank funding for logging
operations in primary tropical moist forest).
The World Bank's 1991 Forest Policy was written after extensive
World Bank consultations with the international NGO community in
a process that received high praise from NGOs for its openness
and frank debate. As a result the Forest Policy breaks new
ground on different fronts. It takes a cross-sectoral approach by
considering the impacts on forests by non-forestry lending, it
places some emphasis on social issues and indigenous peoples
questions, it commits the Bank to limit its forestry lending to
governments which are committed to conservation, and it bans
direct funding for logging in primary tropical moist forest.
At the request of the World Bank's Board the policy was to be
reviewed three years after its entry into force in 1991. The
period of three years, however, proved to be too short for a
thorough review since implementation of projects prepared under
the new policy was not far enough advanced. A commitment was then
made to carry out a thorough implementation review at a later
stage. This would have included, in particular, an examination
of the extent to which the policy had improved the performance
of non-forestry sector lending with regard to forests.
This review is now overdue. In discussions with Mr. Andrew Steer
(in his previous capacity as head of the Environment Department),
he assured the NGO community that the Quality Assurance Group
review, which focused only on a limited number of projects, was
in no way a substitute for the more in-depth forest policy
implementation review He also assured us that the implementation
of the Forest Policy would involve broad consultation about the
terms-of-reference and the practical execution of the review (Mr.
Steers letter to the Environmental Defense Fund of May 24, 1996).
At present, however, some parties within the World Bank
are pushing ahead with changing the policy without the benefit of
evaluating the results obtained in implementing the existing
policy. It is our understanding that at a senior management
meeting on November 14 changes in the Forest Policy were
discussed and were represented as being supported by some
mainstream NGOs. This referred especially to the elimination of
the ban on direct support for logging in primary tropical moist
forest. We believe that a mistaken impression may have been
created since our national and international environmental
organizations (fill in No. of signatories, representing ?
members) directly oppose such a change.
In absence of solid empirical evidence, changes in the Forest
Policy risk opening the floodgates for large investments in
unsustainable forest operations, thereby further contributing to
the world's forest crisis. As a result the World Bank would be
seen as seriously backsliding on its environmental commitments.
We thank you for your attention.