Multilateral development banks are not doing enough to stem the rate of forest destruction around the world — and in some cases are funding projects that speed up the loss of tree cover, experts warn.
Ladd Connell, environment director at the Bank Information Centre, a Washington-based non-profit that lobbies for sustainability in development finance, said the worst culprits were the African Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation.
He pointed to the example of a palm oil plantation in Gabon, set to be financed by a $285m facility from the IFC. The private sector arm of the World Bank has since postponed the facility, without actively cancelling it, but Connell questioned why the multilateral had offered it at all, “given that it would have clear-cut primary tropical forest in one of the most heavily forested countries in the world”.
The World Bank, he said “was doing a better job” than some development banks but warned that it “still was not doing enough”. He noted that the multilateral “doesn’t have an active policy against [funding projects that] log in primary forests”, a startling fact given that deforestation has been a global issue of concern since at least the 1990s, and that this year has been dominated by images of forests ablaze in places as far afield as Indonesia, Siberia and the Amazon.
Joined-up thinking?
Development banks faced three obstacles, Connell said. The first is funding: the World Bank spends just 4% of the amount it allots to agriculture to projects that preserve and protect forests. The second is a lack of joined-up thinking, with forestry management seen as less valuable to agencies that preach the values of growth and employment, than, say, agriculture or new infrastructure.
Finally, he said multilaterals mislead themselves into believing they do more than they are.
Garo Batmanian, lead environmental specialist at the World Bank, admitted that the Bretton Woods institution “can do more and should do more” to protect disappearing forests in areas like Africa, Asia and Central America.
But he said the larger and more layered challenge was to convince governments, notably in the developing world, to view forests as valuable and irreplaceable resource. “We have to work with governments everywhere to do that,” he said.