The World Bank and Other Financial Institutions
“Poverty alleviation,” “sustainability,” “prosperity” and "development" are key words in the public relations materials of the World Bank, its private arm, the International Financial Corporation (IFC), and other development finance agencies. In reality, the policies, programmes and projects promoted by these institutions have time and again caused more poverty, violence and forest destruction.
A young man was killed and other people are still in prison. It was after a protest against the failure of the PHC company to provide local communities with any benefits after 100 years of illegally occupying their land.
WRM spoke with close allies from Brazil, Gabon, India, Mexico and Mozambique, to hear from them and learn about their understandings of development.
The development narrative continues to be revived despite its role in driving the current crisis and the millions of livelihoods it has destroyed through displacement and dispossession.
European development banks have financed a plantation company in DRC that is built on injustice and violence dating back to a colonial-era land grab. When the company went bankrupt in 2020, the banks chose to uphold the plantation model.
In June 2019, a report from the AfDB and WWF Kenya made a call to development-funding agencies, mainly from Europe, and the World Bank, to provide aid money to a new Fund for financing 100,000 hectares of (new) industrial tree plantations, to support the potential development of 500,000 hectares, in Eastern and Southern Africa.
On the eve of the International Day of Struggle against Monoculture Tree Plantations, an open letter signed by more than 730 members of Mozambican communities, and 120 organizations from 40 countries has been released.
Sign this letter to alert people in the global North! Stop development agencies from promoting expansion of large-scale tree plantations.
