-
HCVF and the World Bank's Forests Policy
When
the World Bank adopted its new Forests Policy (OP 4.36) in 2002,
it stated that ‘the Bank does not finance projects that, in
its opinion, would involve significant conversion or degradation
of critical forest areas or related critical natural habitats’.
However, in the ensuing five years, despite repeated enquiries
from NGOs like the WRM, the World Bank has not been able to clarify
how it determines which areas are ‘critical’. All it has said
is that critical forests and critical habitats include existing
and officially proposed protected areas, culturally important
areas like sacred groves, ‘sites that maintain conditions vital
for the viability of protected areas’ and sites identified on
supplementary lists prepared by the Bank or by an authority it
recognises. The Bank’s 2001 ‘Natural Habitats’ policy only says
that ‘the Bank expects the Borrower to take into account the views,
roles and rights of groups, including NGOs and local communities.’
It is clear
that the World Bank still lacks a clear process for determining
what are ‘critical forests’, although this has not stopped it
from pouring money into forestry projects. A desk review carried
out by the Forest Peoples Programme of 21 forest-related
projects approved since early 2003, shows that the concepts of
‘critical forests’ and ‘critical natural habitats’ have been applied
in a very patchy way. The projects examined, which have a total
value of over US$ 1.3 billion dollars, are those listed by the
World Bank as affecting forests and the research was limited to
a review of those documents that are available on the World Bank’s
website.
Based on
what can be discerned from these documents, it seems that most
of the projects have not screened for ‘critical forests’ at all.
This includes the ‘Moldova Soil Conservation Project’ and the
Republic of Congo ‘Economic Recovery Credit’ even though the Bank
website lists them as forestry sector projects. The Azerbaijan
‘Rural Development Project’, which promotes the establishment
of national parks, community natural resource management schemes
and rural enterprises in an acknowledged ‘biodiversity hotspot’
in the Caucasus, will not attempt to screen for ‘critical forests’.
The China Changjiang/Pearl River Watershed Rehabilitation Project,
which involves extensive afforestation and land use planning,
is considered to have ‘triggered’ the Forests policy, although
not the Natural Habitats policy, but does not seek to identify
‘critical forests’, nor does the Philippines ‘Laguna de Bay Community
Watershed Rehabilitation Project’ screen for ‘critical forests’.
In India
the US$ 620 million ‘National Highways Project’, while classed
as a category A project - requiring maximal environment
assessment - is not considered to have ‘triggered’ the Forests
Policy and will not screen for ‘critical forests’. In this case,
the project preparation team also thought that the concept of
‘critical natural habitats’ was ‘not applicable’. Two projects
in Honduras, the ‘Forests and Rural Productivity Project’ and
the ‘Pico Bonito Sustainable Forests Project’ only seek to avoid
existing protected areas and buffer zones, with no evident efforts
to first identify which forests might be ‘critical’ from the point
of view of community livelihoods or from other points of view.
In the Benin ‘Forests and Adjacent Lands
Management Project’ and the Romania ‘Forest Development
Project’ there is no evidence that the ‘critical forests’ concept
are to be applied at all. In the Lao
‘Environment and Social Project’, which will affect wide areas
of the forested uplands where ‘activity locations will typically
be in close proximity to important natural habitats and in areas
inhabited by ethnic minorities’, Bank staff have not proposed
measures to screen for ‘critical forests’. In Gabon, the ‘Natural
Resource Management Development Policy Loan’, even though it will
support national planning capacity to develop the mining, oil
and gas, forestry, fisheries and conservation sectors, does not
screen for ‘critical forests’, while the complementary ‘Forest
and Environment Sector Project’ is presented as not resulting
in the ‘significant degradation or conversion of critical natural
habitats’. In Costa Rica a joint World Bank/GEF ‘Mainstreaming
Market Based Instruments for Environmental Management Project’,
‘is designed to comply fully with the letter and spirit of all
World Bank Safeguard Policies’, but project documents do not mention
any screening for ‘critical forests’.
Likewise,
in Cameroon, the World Bank’s ‘Forest
and Environment Sector Program’ does not apply the concept
of ‘critical forests’. Instead zoning is being carried out in
line with the (much criticised) national zoning system which allocates
lands to parks, logging and roadside communities, a process in
which forest dwellers are invisible. A progressive Indigenous
Peoples Plan elaborated as part of this project is not being implemented
effectively. In Vietnam, the ‘Forest Sector Development Project’
only screens for ‘critical natural habitats’, when developing
areas for plantations. The Madagascar
‘Third Environment Program Support Project’ is bizarrely recorded
as not ‘triggering’ the Forests policy even though it does trigger
the Natural Habitats policy and does seek to conserve Mikea forests.
The project thus does not seek to identify ‘critical forests’
though it is being developed within the framework of Madagascar’s
Environmental Action Programme. Even the progressive Albania ‘Natural
Resources Management Project’, which effectively promotes community
management of forests, does not apply the concept of ‘critical
forests’. The available documents for
the Kazakhstan ‘Forest Protection and Reforestation Project’,
which aims to enhance forest development country-wide show that
the project team have decided the safeguard policy on Forests
is not triggered and they have not yet decided whether the Natural
Habitats policy applies. No screening for ‘critical forests’ is
mentioned.
There do
seem to have been three exceptions to this tale of non-compliance.
The first is the Bosnia-Herzegovina ‘Forest Development and Conservation
Project’ which explicitly includes a Technical Assistance component
co-funded by the German aid agency, GTZ. This will extend the
usual forest inventory study in order to identify critical forest
ecosystems, explicitly described as ‘High Conservation Value Forests’
for forest and biodiversity conservation. The second is the Tanzania ‘Eastern Arc Forests Conservation and Management Project’ which
seeks to identify critical watershed forests, montane forests
and miombo woodlands, which are identified as important
to local livelihoods including as a source of fuelwood. The
Mexico ‘Second Community
Forestry Project’ also plans to include screening to avoid any
interference with critical forest areas and critical natural habitats,
although it notes that the local institutional capacity for carrying
this out is limited. Exactly how this screening is to be done
is not made clear, however.
During the
evolution of its Forests Strategy the World Bank had proposed
that, in addition to its project level screening, it would also
carry out national assessments to identify ‘critical forests’.
This, it was planned, would be done as part of enhanced ‘Economic
and Sector Work’ and ‘Country Assistance Strategies’ that would
ensure that the new Forests Policy was applied broadly to all
Bank lending to a country. However, in the absence of a defined
process to identify what are ‘critical forests’ this has not occurred.
The World
Bank’s Forests Team is aware that one of the key elements in its
safeguard policy is not being applied consistently. Continuing
delays in the development of a ‘Sourcebook’, which was meant to
explain to staff how they should screen for impacts on ‘critical
forests’, have contributed to this problem (see WRM Bulletin 93).
The remedy now proposed by the Bank is to develop sound methods
for identifying ‘High Conservation Value Forests’, and for this
reason it is supporting the High Conservation Value Resource Network.
This makes it all the more important that the concept of High
Conservation Value is developed in a credible way, which ensures
that community interests and rights are properly respected and
given priority.
Source:
Forest Peoples Programme, info@forestpeoples.org,
www.forestpeoples.org
