Part I - The World Bank Explained

"The World Bank is a failure. It has spent 60 years and $525 billion dollars on poverty alleviation, but the world has more poor people than ever. The primary beneficiaries have been transnational corporations."(3)

02. The World Bank: Then and Now

The World Bank (WB) was conceived of in 1944 at a meeting that later became known as the Bretton Woods Conference. This famous meeting was planned as World War II was coming to an end. In order to foster the growth of capitalism and maintain a dominant economic position, US and British business classes and elite converged in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire and created two of today's most powerful financial institutions, the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund). In its early years the World Bank provided loans to countries ravaged by World War II, mainly for infrastructure and development projects. Later they shifted their focus to granting loans to poor countries for development projects. The IMF was established as the World Bank's partner organization and its mission is stabilizing the economies of its member countries.

03. What is the Link Between the WB and the IMF?

Although they are separate institutions, the World Bank and IMF work in unison to formulate and enforce major economic policy decisions for many highly impoverished and indebted countries. The World Bank and the IMF use poverty and debt to influence the economies of these countries. For example, in order for a poor country to receive a loan from the World Bank, a country must first be a member of the IMF. This country is then subject to IMF imposed economic restructuring. If a country is resistant to IMF pressure, the World Bank and other financial institutions often threaten to withhold aid until that country agrees to the IMF's demands. The Bank and the IMF work together with other international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Trade Organization, the European Investment Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank.

4. A Democratic Institution?

Decision-making at the World Bank is far from democratic. The Bank operates on a one dollar - one vote system, meaning that the Bank's policy is dictated by the countries that invest the most. The US originally put up 75% of the capital to fund the Bank, and because they have always owned the greatest number of shares in the bank they are entitled to the largest share of the vote. To approve major decisions at the Bank, an 85% majority rule is required. The US currently holds 16.41% of the vote meaning that they have complete veto power over all major decisions. In contrast to the 16.41 % of the vote held by the US, all 47 Sub-Saharan African countries combined are entitled to less than 6 % of the Bank's vote.

5. What Does Conditionality Mean?

According to the World Development Movement, “Conditionality is a term used to describe what a poor country must do in return for receiving loans, aid or debt relief.(5) In the following sections we will look at some examples of how the World Bank and IMF impose economic conditionalities on poor nations in the name of Structural Adjustment, Poverty Reduction and Debt Relief. As mentioned above, these conditionalities often require countries to privatize or sell their natural resources to private companies, increase export production and cut social spending. Conditionalities imposed by the World Bank and IMF have increased poverty rather than alleviated it. Throughout the toolkit, we will look at examples of how these conditionalities have eroded human rights by limiting access to health care and education.

6. World Bank and Debt in the Global South

The World Bank and the IMF are among the world's largest lenders to impoverished countries. The loans they've provided have historically been designed in a way that makes it difficult for countries to keep up with their loan payments. At the beginning of the debt crisis, debt grew faster than it could be paid back and poor countries found themselves stuck in the debt trap. In 1970 for example, the world's 60 poorest nations owed a total of $25 billion dollars in debt. In 2002 this debt had jumped up to $523 billion. (6) In many cases, indebted nations have long since paid off the amounts originally owed to their creditors, but due to factors such as high interest rates, these countries still struggle to keep up with their payments. When countries are unable to service their debt, they are forced to adopt WB/IMF imposed economic restructuring policies that enable the WB/IMF to gain access to the economies and resources in countries caught in the debt trap. As a result, a lot of much needed funding is diverted away from urgent requirements like the need to improve social services such as health care and education, and re-directed towards debt re-payments.

7. Structural Adjustment and Poverty Reduction Strategies of the World Bank

In the early 1980's the World Bank responded to the growing debt crisis by imposing Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) on indebted member countries. As highlighted earlier, structural adjustment forces countries to adhere to economic conditionalities to qualify for loan assistance. Under Structural Adjustment, we have seen reduced access to health care and education in many countries. We have seen a loss of small farms, loss of access to clean water, acceleration of mineral resource extraction, loss of indigenous land, environmental degradation including pollution and deforestation, economic inflation and wage stagnancy. The adverse effects of structural adjustment led communities across the world to launch massive protests against this economic restructuring. With the IMF and World Bank's public image under fire, the two institutions went through a series of reforms concerning the implementation of structural adjustment. In 1999, SAPs were renamed PRSPs (Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers). PRSPs were supposed to take on principles of country ownership and public participation, and they were supposed to function in the best interest of the countries "writing" them. However, to date we have seen little evidence of this occurring. In fact, it has been nearly impossible for countries to truly create their own Poverty Reduction Strategies because in many cases PRSPs are guided by previous World Bank and IMF criteria. Even if a country has written its own PRSP with little interference from the International Financial Institutions, all PRSPs must ultimately be approved by the boards of the IMF and World Bank. This has meant that PRSP's are frequently drafted and redrafted until they agree with the interests of the IMF and World Bank, giving the two institutions the final say. Ninety percent of PRSPs for example require privatization, 62 percent of this being the privatization of natural water resources. (10) Water privatization has stripped local communities of the democratic control they are entitled to have over their own water supplies. Multinational water companies gaining full ownership of fresh water resources are literally drying out the livelihoods of thousands of subsistence farmers by draining their aquifers. In Ghana for example, a World Bank policy calling for water privatization caused the price of fresh water to jump so high that poor families were forced to spend over half of their income on water alone. Water privatization has not only led to price increases, but to growing scarcity and disintegration of water sanitation standards in many countries. Despite these problems, the World Bank continues to remain instrumental in pushing the water privatization agenda forward.

8. Social and Environmental Impacts of World Bank Project Financing

Various branches of the World Bank provide loans to governments and private corporations to finance "development projects". The Bank alleges that these projects are the first steps to poverty alleviation for the world's poorest countries. What the Bank fails to acknowledge is that many of these projects have had devastating effects on local communities and their environments. Examples of such projects financed by the World Bank include mining, gas and oil extraction, dam construction, and large-scale agricultural development. The Bank proclaims that these forms of development will aid in the economic advancement of their host countries. The Bank promotes this type of development for several reasons, one being that it provides jobs for local people. What the Bank fails to mention is that labor conditions are usually inadequate and the jobs do not usually provide sustainable, long-term employment for the workers (for more about labor and the World Bank see section 13). Mining, gas and oil extraction, dam construction, and large-scale agricultural development undermines the livelihoods of entire communities. It depletes and pollutes vital natural resources that local groups depend on for survival. Indigenous peoples are often the most disaffected by World Bank project financing. Women have also felt the heavy impact of World Bank financing. According to a World Bank study, seemingly "gender neutral" investment decisions can have a disproportionate impact on women. For example, in Sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls in rural areas spend as much as 2/3rds of their day looking for fuel and potable water for their families.(11) This is because World Bank supported privatization schemes and operations such as logging, mining, and large scale agricultural development require astronomical amounts of water. This water is diverted from communities, adding to the scarcity of potable water, and placing the burden on women in remote areas to find that water. In the following sections we will expand on the effects of specific World Bank-financed development projects by looking at several examples of how they have affected surrounding communities.

9. Extractive Industries and the World Bank: Gas, Oil and Mining

By providing financial assistance to the gas, oil and mining sector, the World Bank is one of the biggest investors in the extractive industries. Historically the bank has been a long-time funder of large scale extraction operations either by providing loan assistance to governments so that they may construct roads and other infrastructure specifically for these projects or by giving loans directly to large corporations wishing to invest in the resource extraction. Projects such as the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline demonstrate how the Bank's role in gas and oil extraction has led to several social and environmental consequences and resulted in years of protest by numerous civil society organizations. The Chad-Cameroon Pipeline is a 1,070 km long pipeline extracting oil from the Doba oil reserves in Chad to Cameroon's coast. It is one of the largest private sector development projects in Africa and is led by Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Petronas. (12)
Originally the World Bank justified its support for the $3.7 million dollar pipeline by claiming that enough revenue would be generated for the governments of Chad and Cameroon to invest in poverty reducing initiatives such as health care, education and rural development. However, these poverty reduction strategies were inadequately implemented and to date evidence shows that rather than revenue going into poverty reduction initiatives, the money has been lost to corruption and used, for example, by the Chadian government to purchase arms, which as you can imagine, has contributed to even more civil unrest in the Chad Cameroon region.(13)
Food security in the Doba Basin region has also been threatened by the project. Most agricultural production and cattle ranching was concentrated there and the oil exploration and production is reducing the fertility of the land. The oil extraction requires massive water usage, reducing access to clean water in Chad, where water scarcity is already a problem. Pollution of local river systems is another repercussion of the pipeline (14a). The government of Chad has a long track record of human rights violations and in 1997 and 1998 hundreds of civilians were murdered by National troops to make way for the projects. Civilian groups were forced to sign statements claiming they were in support of the project (14b). World Bank development researcher Paul Collier claims,

"high dependence on the export of primary commodities such as oil significantly increases the risk of internal conflict in a state." (14c)

10. The World Bank and climate change

The Bank's contribution to climate change

The World Bank invests between $2 to $3 billion a year in greenhouse gas-producing projects, which fuel climate change and fail to help the world's poor. The poorest one third of the planet suffer most of the environmental and social costs of fossil fuel extraction, but they receive very little benefit from World Bank's energy investments. Between 1992 and 2004, the World Bank Group invested $28 billion in fossil fuel projects, including extraction, power plants, and transportation. The estimated lifetime carbon emissions resulting from these projects is 43.4 billion tons, which is almost twice the global emissions of CO2 from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels in the year 2000. Renewable energy projects, on the other hand, make up less than 5 percent of the Bank's overall energy financing.
More than half the fossil fuel projects are export-orientated and end up benefiting the consumers and oil companies of the Global North. The US-based oil and gas company Halliburton is leading the list: it received funding for 13 projects, for over $2.5 billion from the World Bank and other International Financial Institutions. Other beneficiaries of the World Bank fossil fuel extraction finance include the world's largest oil and oil service companies such as Shell, ChevronTexaco (US), Total (France), ExxonMobil (US), Bechtel (US) and BP (UK). (35)

The World Bank's solutions to climate change

The Bank acknowledges that climate change will primarily affect the poor. Therefore it is a problem the Bank has to deal with to effectively tackle poverty. The WB's methods for solving the problem are investing in renewable energy projects in developing countries, and trading in carbon emissions. But there is little evidence to prove that these methods have been effective in addressing the problem of climate change, let alone in the eradication of poverty.
First we will briefly address the matter of renewable energy projects. In 2004, the WB made a commitment to increase its renewable energy financing by 20% each year for the next five years. However, in 2005, the increase was only 7%. It is worth noting that 51% of the money did not come from WB's own funds but from carbon finance funds and the Global Environment Facility. On top of this, WB did not include the IFC or MIGA in the 20% target, so they do not have concrete goals to increase their financing for renewables.(21) Also, the ratio of WB investment in fossil fuel projects to renewable energy and energy efficiency projects is approximately 17 to 1.(22)
In recent years, the Bank has become a major player in the carbon trade. It has become the largest public broker of carbon purchases, with up to $1 billion in its carbon credit portfolio. Nobody asked the WB to take up this initiative; it simply stepped in and took over. The Bank worked its way into the carbon trading business initially with the Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF), established in July 1999. The fund invests money from companies and governments in projects designed to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. On all the carbon credits it purchases for the fund, the Bank makes between 5 and 10 percent in commissions. Internal documents on the origins of the Prototype Carbon Fund show that it was created as a way to make profits for the Bank. (36) PCF was originally supposed to be “entirely renewable“, with solar, wind, micro-hydro and geothermal power projects.(22) But as it turned out, the PCF was after the low-hanging fruit of the carbon market, going for easily achievable projects with little environmental benefits.
The idea behind carbon trading is that companies can earn carbon credits by investing in pollution reduction schemes in other countries. There is no need to reduce emissions at home if a polluting company can simply purchase carbon credits by buying them off polluters that do not use up their full quota. (23) Carbon emissions trade is an example of free market environmentalism, an ideology that argues that the free market is the best tool to preserve the environment. Trading programs privatize pollution problems and, as the incentive emission reduction turns into profit, there is a great pressure to cheat by over-estimating reductions and underestimating emissions. For example, the WB only calculates on-site emissions produced by a project, not those it indirectly causes by the fuel that it helps to extract. The PCF and the World Bank's other carbon funds have a disgraceful record of buying credits from projects that would likely be completed regardless of whether they received carbon credits. For example, the Xiaogushan hydropower project in China was already under construction when the World Bank proposed supporting it with carbon credits. In this case the carbon credits provided a nice financial bonus to the developers. What is more - the financial incentive did not prevent even one ton of greenhouse gases from being emitted.

11. Dam Construction and the World Bank

The World Bank is the greatest single source of funding for large-scale dam projects and has constructed more than 500 large dams in over 92 countries (24). The construction of these dams has led to a massive loss of livelihood for hundreds of thousands of people. Large-scale dams have resulted in flooding, ecological damage, forced dislocation of local peoples from their land and violent human rights abuses. An example of human rights abuses related to World Bank funded dam construction occurred in Guatemala in the 70's and 80's. The World Bank lent $72 million dollars for the construction of the Chixoy dam, a project that dislocated thousands of indigenous people without their consent. Indigenous resistance to the dam led to a massive wave of military repression, intimidation and a massacre. In 1982, over 400 indigenous people were brutally murdered for refusing to leave their homes and were kept in impoverished villages under strict military control. In addition to suffering from loss of land, they have suffered physical, psychological, cultural, and material losses caused by the violence. Three years after the massacre, the World Bank, in spite of their knowledge of the civil unrest the construction of this dam was causing, approved an additional $44.6 million in loans for continuation of the dam's construction. (25) To this day thousands of indigenous people continue to demand compensation from the World Bank for the damage caused by the Chixoy Dam.

(Photo: The site of Nam Theun dam in Laos before construction.)

The Nam Theun 2 in Laos is another example of a large-scale dam project backed by the World Bank. Since 1995, the World Bank has spent an undisclosed amount of money on planning for this $1.1 billion dollar hydroelectric Dam in Laos. The Nam Theun 2 will flood 450 kilometers of tropical forests, a habitat for tigers, elephant, antelope and several other wildlife species. More than 7,000 subsistence farmers will be forced from their land. The bank plans on providing a $50 million dollar loan to the government for the development of "rural livelihood programs." This is unacceptable because it removes responsibility and accountability from the multinational corporations invested in the dam and places it on the Laotian people and government. The bank claims that this time, the relocation process will be functional and that the income of the re-settlers will triple in seven year's time. Evidence, however, shows otherwise. The new farm plots, for example, are too small, the soil is unfit for traditional rice production and the re-settlers are not being offered enough land for their livestock grazing. The Bank claims there will be new trees planted and new logging operations to provide jobs, but these logging operations will destroy local food and medicine found in the forests. Aquatically, there will be a collapse in the food chain along the largest tributary of the Mekong River. Fish catches are expected to drop by 40-60% and river plants and creatures, such as snails and mussels, which have been traditionally sold at local markets will disappear. This harm to the river's ecosystem is expected to affect 40,000 additional people. The Bank claims it will open a new fishing reservoir to provide jobs for the disaffected fishermen, but this reservoir will only be big enough to serve 1,000 fishers.(26)

(Photo: March 14, 2005: More than 100 Thai villagers and environmentalists protested the construction of the World Bank-financed US$1.2-billion Nam Theun 2 dam today outside the Bank's Bangkok headquarters. Source: www.probeinternational.org

Due to a long history of protest and criticism of the Bank's involvement in large scale dam financing from civil society organizations and disaffected communities, the bank announced the establishment of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) in 1997. The WCD was the first group set up to do an independent review of the impact of Large-Scale Dam construction. After two and half years of research, the WCD had commissioned over 1000 submissions internationally on the "environmental, social, economic. technical, institutional and performance dimensions of large dams" (27) In November of 2000, the WCD report was released and highly acclaimed for its "non-partisan and progressive frame-work for decision making for future water and energy planning."(27) Although this report was the first to extensively look at global dam development through consensus and a World Bank-supported participatory research process, the bank dismissed the 26 demands posed by the WCD. They claimed they would take the recommendations into consideration while planning new projects, but there is quite a lot of evidence that the Bank has paid little attention to the recommendations of the WCD, and thus has failed to learn from past mistakes.(27)

The following is a letter from Heriberto Luis Cabral of the Network of those Affected by Yacryta. Heriberto has been actively resisting the construction of the Yacyreta Hydroelectric Dam in Argentina and Paraguay for the adverse effects the dam has had on surrounding communities. Yacyreta is financially backed by the World bank, in fact this dam project received $878 million dollars in World Bank Loans between 1979 and 2002.(28)

Dear Friend, Its a pleasure to write you, what you are doing is important, both for your community and for us from the south. The construction, already begun, and the execution of the Yacyreta Hydroelectric Dam, brought with it not only what the investors call progress, but also the consequent man made destruction of the living environment of endangered species on the verge of extinction, such as the siervo de los pantanos, (a rare marsh animal). Construction of the Dam has changed our unique ecosystems, led to the destruction of social networks, and the disappearance of natural forms of livelihood such as the loss of the fish that depended on the streams for the upward migration to spawn. The dam firm constructed fish elevators but these elevators only make it easier for dam employees to take fish. They do not actually help the fish to migrate, but they contribute to the fishes' endangerment. Clay beds have been flooded, and with that a material that has been used by my community from ancient times to make clay and wood bricks. This was a traditional, functional art form used to construct high quality living spaces and at the same time it gave employment to thousands of families. The flooding of the clay beds to make the lake for the Yacyreta hydroelectric dam caused the loss of these families' jobs. At first the families were aided by a binational organization but since then, they have had to migrate to other cities or countries to look for work or in many cases turn to prostitution. Even if there were thousands of homes constructed with the corresponding infrastructure, the population would still be deprived of the social and economic resources with which it has been functioning for decades. That is to say, you can't just pull something out of the habitat where it developed socially and move it suddenly many kilometers away. The affected community denounced this and filed other complaints. The World Bank then sent its Inspection Panel for a site visit, as well as the Blue Ribbon Panel to evaluate the viability of the project. Recently the affected community presented concrete complaints in the headquarters of the World Bank in Washington, DC, against the Binacional and the ENTE. Heriberto Oficina de Afectado Roga Avda. Ucrania y Ruta Nº 1 tel:595-71-07508

Although the World Bank acknowledged many of the problems highlighted by the inspection panel, and claimed they would take action to correct some of these problems, they have failed to follow through with these promises.

12. Agriculture and the World Bank

The World Bank encourages countries to adopt large-scale, export-oriented agricultural models that often lead to harmful environmental and social consequences for the following reasons; First, when a country is forced to focus on producing food for export and consumption in other countries, its own food security is threatened. World Bank and IMF conditionalities force governments of poor countries to cut subsidies to their farmers while at the same time northern countries are allowed to subsidize large agricultural giants who already dominate the world's grain trade. These agro-giants are then able to produce large amounts of grain quite cheaply. Free trade agreements permit these companies to dump the cheap corn on local markets in developing countries where it is sold at a price below the cost of production for small farmers. This type of agricultural dumping forces small farmers out of business as they are no longer able to compete with the big agro-companies. In addition to destroying indigenous farming and market practices, large monoculture farming has also destroyed biodiversity. Biodiversity is the key to sustainability and the world's greatest biodiversity is located in the tropical countries of the Global South. According to globalization scholar Vandana Shiva, all species are interconnected and play vital roles in their ecosystems, meaning that if one species is threatened, the "life-support systems and livelihoods of millions of people in Third World countries" are also threatened (29). The preservation of biodiversity ensures food sustainability for millions of farmers. The IFC (International Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank Group) provides loans directly to agricultural companies that promote monoculture development. For example, the IFC has recently approved a second loan to the Amaggi Corporation, the biggest monoculture soy exporter and producer, in Brazil in 2004. Despite numerous complaints from civil society organizations and evidence that this funding contradicts the Banks stated goals of "Improving land use management and support environmentally-sound economic activity and infrastructure, especially in the poorest areas of the Amazon and in areas of serious or anticipated land use conflict."(30)

13. The World Bank and Labour Rights

Improving labor rights is a critical factor in the fight against global poverty. According to the World Development Movement, measures to improve labor rights have been nearly absent in the World Bank's Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs).(31) The World Bank and IMF have failed to critically assess either the past impacts of SAPs or the future impacts of PRSPs where labor rights are concerned. At the World Bank's annual meeting in September 2005, a statement from the Global Union also confirmed the opinion that the Bank's poverty reduction strategies have done little more than mirror old structural adjustment strategies (32) Due to the principle of country-ownership (that is central to the idea of a PRSP), PRSP's should be drafted in consultation with stakeholders such as labor unions. Also monitoring and evaluation of the PRSP should involve civil society. The World Bank recognizes this concept and boasts this is the strength of the PRSP, but points out that it needs to make a trade-off between country-ownership on the one side and the speed of the PRSP drafting-process and the interests of the shareholders of the World Bank on the other.(33) The Global Unions states, “ Trade union participants noted that while the number of countries where unions are invited to take part in PRSP consultations has increased, unions are often consulted only late in the process, are never included in the drafting phase, and are seldom invited to take part in monitoring and implementation. Restrictions on freedom of association remain an obstacle to meaningful trade union participation in some countries and insufficient access to government and IFI documentation and to capacity building has been frequently mentioned. Overall, unions expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of attention to labor concerns ” employment creation strategies, improvement of working conditions and respect of labor rights ” in most finalized PRSP's. ”(32) The Global Unions also observe a discrepancy concerning labor rights between the World Bank's theory and its practice. In some publications the World Bank does recognize the importance of core labor rights, but in practice “ these are only rarely followed up in country-level Bank analyses and policy recommendations.&a ” (32 ) The World Bank itself even published a report showing its “simplistic and harmful approach on labor reform&a ” (32) One example can be seen in a penalty system that was developed to punish countries for having labor regulations, such as protection against firing and regulations on working hours and minimum wage.(34)

Go to: Part II - How Does the Disinvestment Campaign work?

Sources

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlending

2)“Measuring the Impact of Microfinance: Taking Stock of What We Know“ by Nathanael Goldberg December 2005 Grameen Foundation USA Publication Series www.microfinancegateway.org/redirect.php?mode=link&id=30153&PHPSESSID

3)“US Cuts World Bank Funding: Corruption, Secrecy Prompt 20% Cut“ Center For Economic Justice. November 2005

4)The Limits of Reform: The Wolfehnsohn Era at the World Bank by Walden Bello and Shalmali Guttal (Much of this report is drawn from Bello's latest book Dilemmas of Domination: the Unmaking of the American Empire (New York:Henry Holt and Company, 2005)

5)World Development Movement. (2005). One Size For All: A Study of IMF and World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategies, 09-2005, London

6)Jubilee South. (2005) We are the Creditors! Jubilee South's Response to the G-8 Debt Proposal: Justice Demands Unconditional and Total Debt Cancellation for All South Countries, Quezon City, Philippines

7) George, Susan. (2000).The Global Citizens Movement: A New Actor For a New Politics, 30-08-2001

8) ACTSA. (1998). Paying Twice For Apartheid, 05-1998, London

9)Jubilee South. (2005) We are the Creditors! Jubilee South's Response to the G-8 Debt Proposal: Justice Demands Unconditional and Total Debt Cancellation for All South Countries, Quezon City, Philippines

10) World Development Movement. (2005). One Size For All: A Study of IMF and World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategies, 09-2005, London

11) www.womensnews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/866-extend

12) Broken Promises The Chad Cameroon Oil and PipelineProject; Profit at Any Cost? by Friends of the Earth International, CED/FoE-Cameroon, Milieudefensie, FoE1, June 2001

13)“Chadian President Spends Pipeline Windfall on Arms“ Bretton Woods Project December 2000 http://brettonwoodsproject.org/article.shtml?cmd[126]=x-126-15314 14 a,b,c) Broken Promises The Chad Cameroon Oil and PipelineProject; Profit at Any Cost? by Friends of the Earth International, CED/FoE-Cameroon, Milieudefensie, FoE1, June 2001

15)“Bank freezes pipeline funds to Chad“ Bretton Woods Project January 2006 http://brettonwoodsproject.org/article.shtml?cmd[126]=x-126-507557

16)“Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline, Caucasus“ www.bankwatch.org/index.htm

17) http://www.whirledbank.org/environment/mining.html

18) Pumping Poverty (a film released by Friends of the Earth International in Oct 2005)

19)“World Bank attacked over gold mine“ Swann, Christopher. Financial Times. August 21-2005 http://www.probeinternational.org/pi/mining/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=13625

20)The Limits of Reform: The Wolfehnsohn Era at the World Bank by Walden Bello and Shalmali Guttal (Much of this report is drawn from Bello's latest book Dilemmas of Domination: the Unmaking of the American Empire (New York:Henry Holt and Company, 2005)

21) Power Failure: How the World Bank is Failing to Adequately Finance Renewable Energy for Development. October 2005, Friends of the Earth US. www.foe.org/camps/intl/institutions/renewableenergyreport10242005.pdf

22)A Wrong Turn from Rio: The World Bank's Road to Climate Catastrophe Institute for Policy Studies 2004 By Jim Vallette, Daphne Wysham and Nadia Martinez 23)The Sky Is Not The Limit: The Emerging Market in Greenhouse Gases by Carbon Trade Watch /Transnational Institute Briefing Series: No. 2003/1

24)http://www.whirledbank.org/environment/dams.htm

25)“Guatemalan Citizens harmed by World Bank- Bank Financed Dam Seek Justice Rio Negro Massacre Trial“
26)“World Bank dam poses huge risk to Laotian farmers“ Ryder, Grainne. Probe International Briefing. August 23/2004

27)The Limits of Reform:The Wolfehnsohn Era at the World Bank by Walden Bello and Shalmali Guttal (Much of this report is drawn from Bello's latest book Dilemmas of Domination: the Unmaking of the American Empire (New York:Henry Holt and Company, 2005)

28)Letter from Heriberto. Officina de Afectado Roga Avenida. Ucrania y Ruta No 1 tel:595-71-207508 29)Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge by Vandana Shiva. South End Press 1997 pg 66 30)http://www.aseed.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=160&Itemid=107)Sources for Rabbe's Part on Labor

31) PRSP Briefing - Poverty Rhetoric & Surreptitious Privatisation? June 2002 http://www.wdm.org.uk/campaigns/cambriefs/debt/prspbrf.pdfsource

32)http://www.union-network.org/uniindep.nsf/0/1C009E3D61FCF556C125707A002E728Csource

33)http://web.worldbank.org 34)http://www.doingbusiness.org/Documents/DB-2005-Overview.pdfsource

35)36) How the World Bank's Energy Framework Sells Climate and Poor People Short. A Civil Society Response to the World Bank's Investment Framework for Clean Energy and Development. September, 2006. Bank Information Center, Bretton Woods Project, Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale, CEE Bankwatch Network, Friends of the Earth-International, Institute for Policy Studies, International Rivers Network, Oil Change International, Urgewald. www.ifiwatchnet.org/documents/item.shtml?x=46133