World Bank: retirement overdue (letter in FT)

Financial Times
Feb 6, 2004
by By Njoki Njehu

Sir, Your report ("World Bank chiefs reject proposal to quit oil and coal
finance", February 3) that World Bank management intends to disregard all
but the least challenging of the recommendations of the Extractive Industries
Review (EIR) should be astonishing. The review was initiated by the World
Bank at its annual meetings in 2000, and Bank staff co-designed and
participated in every step of the review.

Imagine if a high-level independent review commissioned by the US
president and involving high-level government officials called for a
restructuring of the intelligence apparatus and the president responded that
the findings were simply wrong.

Unfortunately, the World Bank's response is another case of déjà vu. In 1997
it entered into a comprehensive review, with national governments and civil
society, of the impact of its structural adjustment deregulation-and-austerity
programmes, only to disown the project when it became clear it would
condemn the controversial, and still ongoing, policies. It also rejected the
recommendations of the World Commission on Dams, which it co-initiated,
when the final report called for a far more cautious approach to funding large
dams and has even announced a new commitment to high-risk infrastructure
projects.

Can the Bank's credibility, and that of James Wolfensohn, its president,
survive another snubbing of the principle of accountability? Will Mr
Wolfensohn or the Bank's board, which can still reverse the recommendations
of management, try to salvage some sense of fidelity to the institution's
proclaimed goals? Or will business go on as usual, as your article predicts,
with every pledge made to open-minded analysis ignored when the results
would require a change in policy? If so, it will certainly add fuel to critics' calls
for the World Bank, in its 60th year, to start planning for early retirement.

Njoki Njoroge Njehu, Director
50 Years Is Enough: US Network for Global Economic Justice
Washington, DC 20017, US

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