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Viewpoint
Two continents
Kenya: political and popular moves against corruption
Brazil: economic policy shaped for and by society
Brazil: economic policy shaped for and by society
02/2003
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Sustainable development as the World Bank sees it
Dr. Rainer Barthelt, Bonn
Admittedly, the World Bank's World Development Report 2003 is not light reading. But work your way through it and you may well reach conclusions which differ sharply from those presented in the article by Liane Schalatek and Barbara Unmüssig.
For one thing, the World Bank is not at all preoccupied with the "mantra of economic growth as the motor of development"; it is concerned with the question of how to achieve the growth that is desperately needed in poor countries and at the same time keep the social and ecological cost within acceptable limits. Incidentally, what the article's authors do not tell us is how a world population set to grow by a third in the decades ahead is supposed to manage without economic growth. Instead, they complain of structural adjustment programmes having a devastating social and environmental impact and poverty reduction strategy papers failing to take account of the need for sustainable development. However, Schalatek's and Unmüssig's article makes no mention of the exemplary arrangements made under structural adjustment programmes – and described in the World Bank's report – to protect the biodiversity of Cameroon's forests. In the face of resistance by foreign companies and their associates and allies in Cameroon, the opaque practice of awarding concessions for the use of forestry resources was replaced by a transparent system which guarantees nearby communities priority access to woodland areas. This is a first in Central Africa.
What is particularly astonishing in the article is the authors' remark that the report "regrettably fails to join in the debate about the reform of existing institutions and the creation of new ones". It is true that the World Bank makes no recommendations for "a reorganisation of the global institutional community (global governance)", as Schalatek and Unmüssig observe. But the report does look in detail at the role of local and national institutions and stresses the need for international cooperation on issues of sustainable development as long as there are no institutions at global level with clout. This, too, is simply ignored by Schalatek and Unmüssig.
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