Memorandum submitted by Zoe Young, BSc
MSc
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is a publicly
funded, multi-billion dollar experiment in global resource management.
The GEF is almost unknown outside the communities managing or
seeking access to its funds, but it is both highly problematic
and largely ineffective for global conservation—not least
because it is hosted and for the most part implemented by the
World Bank. The UK is the GEF's fourth largest donor, contributing
around #30 million a year, with next to no parliamentary oversight.
The GEF was formally established under the auspices
of the World Bank in 1991, officially to provide "additional"
aid to render Bank and UN development projects "globally"
environmentally friendly. At the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 the
GEF was designated the interim "financial mechanism"
ie funding body of the UN Conventions on Climate Change and Biodiversity.
Yet the GEF also appears to have been created to help the World
Bank "green" its public image and sweeten its new loans,
while simultaneously controlling the scope of the new treaties
and co-opting sections of the international environmental movement
with the promise of funds and access to shaping policy.
The GEF's procedures may be more participatory
and transparent than the rest of the Bank, and many of its (particularly
smaller) projects are welcomed by host communities. But for cultural,
linguistic, logistical and political reasons, mostly large and
established NGOs take advantage of GEF's unprecedented openness.
When project-affected communities make complaints, they are dealt
with through the procedures of the project's implementing agency—in
many cases the World Bank, which rarely stops projects even when
its own independent inspection panel reports that numerous guidelines
have been broken: see for example the Nagarhole case study in
the book, article and film.
Although ostensibly intended to promote reform,
the GEF cannot challenge the economic policies, powerful industries
and interest groups that shape global development to the detriment
of ecological and human sustainability. Instead it has employed
an army of environmental economists in a vain attempt to put prices
on nature at the same time as opening up Southern resources and
markets to "global" experts and investors. Certainly
the GEF assist projects that are important in the conservation
of high risk areas and promotion of efficient technologies etc.
Yet overall the GEF's work seems to be shaped less by scientifically
identified need than by politically influenced lobbying on the
part of US and large European governments and the particular scientific
and business communities with access to their ears. The GEF CEO
has taken his strategic guidance from a semi-secrety and entirely
unaccountable "senior advisory panel" made up of for
example a former World Bank president, an Indonesian minister
under Suharto's murderous regime, and an African proponent of
genetic modification. The CEO is also able to reward supportive
NGOs with project funding of up to $750,000 without the approval
of the governing Council (on which contributing governments are
represented).
Critical voices such as those of indigenous
people, small business in the South and academics (like myself)
whose conclusions about GEF are not welcomed by its political
masters are neglected or avoided by GEF management. GEF's own
monitoring and evaluation reports raise the same problems time
and again, and in 2000, the DFID official responsible for the
GEF declined to be part of discussions around the screening of
our ESRC-assisted, Hull University research-based documentary
on the GEF. In this context I submit that the committee might
want to ask DFID some questions about management of the GEF.
Zoe Young also submitted a copy of her 2002
book: "A New Green Order? The World Bank and the Politics
of the Global Environment Facility", a refereed article from
the journal Geoforum which deals with two case studies of GEF-assisted
projects and a video documentary "Suits and Savages—Why
the World Bank Won't Save the World", which also deals with
the GEF and was made with support from the UK's ESRC. These have
not been printed or reproduced within this volume.
Rich, B, The Smile on a Child's Face: From the
Culture of Loan Approval to the Culture of Development Effectiveness?
The World Bank Under James Wolfensohn, Environmental Defense,
Washington DC, 1999, pp6-7. See also: World Bank Memorandum, Human
Resources Policy Reform, 6 March 1998 (internal document).
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