World Bank’s ‘green growth’ ??? Ετοιμαστείτε να ακούσετε έκδοση ομολόγων με ρήτρα τα Δάση, τους Ωκεανούς και τις Θάλασσες, τα Ποτάμια και τις Λίμνες, και τη ΠΩΛΗΣΗ ΤΟΥΣ ως ιδιωτικοποιήσεις και ρευστοποιήσεις. 
Βασίλειος Σωτήρας Ετοιμαστείτε να ακούσετε έκδοση ομολόγων με ρήτρα τα Δάση, τους Ωκεανούςκαι τις Θάλασσες, τα Ποτάμια και τις Λίμνες, και τη ΠΩΛΗΣΗ ΤΟΥΣ ως ιδιωτικοποιήσεις και ρευστοποιήσεις.
[
... Για να επιτευχθεί αυτό, ισχυρίζεται ότι οι χώρες πρέπει να
εκχωρήσουν νομισματική αξία στα φυσικά τους οικοσυστήματα, όπως τα δάση,
οι ωκεανοί και η βιοποικιλότητα, και την ενσωμάτωσή τους στους εθνικούς
λογαριασμούς για να συμπληρώσει το φυσικό και το ανθρώπινο δυναμικό και
να μετράται με το ακαθάριστο εγχώριο προϊόν (ΑΕΠ), και τη χορήγηση
δικαιωμάτων ιδιοκτησίας επί αυτού του φυσικού κεφαλαίου, το οποίο θα
μπορούσε να διαπραγματεύονται, δημιουργώντας έτσι νέα μέσα και τις
αγορές χρηματοδότησης... ]
[...
To achieve this, it claims countries must assign monetary value to their
natural ecosystems, such as forests, oceans and biodiversity,
incorporate them into national accounts to complement the physical and
human assets measured by gross domestic product (GDP), and grant
property rights over this natural capital, which could be traded, thus
creating new financing instruments and markets... ]
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World Bank’s ‘green growth’ approach denounced
3 JULY 2012
At the
United Nations Rio+20 conference on sustainable development held in
Brazil in late June, the World Bank promoted its ‘green growth’ approach
(see Update 80), despite concerns from civil society groups.
Green
growth is often used interchangeably with the term ‘green economy’,
which was at the top of Rio+20′s agenda. In May, the Bank released a
report on ‘inclusive green growth’ (IGG) that defined the concept as
“growth that is efficient in its use of natural resources, clean in that
it minimises pollution and environmental impacts, and resilient in that
it accounts for natural hazards and the role of environmental
management and natural capital in preventing physical disasters.”
Recognising that current growth patterns are unsustainable because of
the environmental degradation involved, the report calls for a
sustainable development path that reconciles “developing countries’
urgent need for rapid growth and poverty alleviation with the need to
avoid irreversible and costly environmental damage.”
To
achieve this, it claims countries must assign monetary value to their
natural ecosystems, such as forests, oceans and biodiversity,
incorporate them into national accounts to complement the physical and
human assets measured by gross domestic product (GDP), and grant
property rights over this natural capital, which could be traded, thus
creating new financing instruments and markets. Critics have condemned
this as essentially a privatisation of nature that would turn the
planet’s common goods into commodities and further their exploitation in
the name of economic growth. This market-based approach to natural
resources is not new, being behind the UN’s Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programme, which has been
criticised for not benefitting poor communities and for violating the
rights of indigenous people (see Update 76).
Liane
Schalatek and Nancy Alexander of the German political foundation
Heinrich Boell said in a May paper that the Bank’s IGG report does not
address the risks of these approaches in terms of enhancing resource
exploitation and violation of human rights: “the report ‘recycles’
previous arguments, including in the UNEP [United Nations Environment
Programme] Green Growth Report and elsewhere, that the inefficiency in
dealing with ‘natural capital’ comes from the fact that the commons are
governed by ‘open access regimes’ … which leads to overuse and waste. …
It ignores the fact that devastation of the commons arises principally
from industrialisation and intensification of natural resource use,
driven by corporate interests with vested political support, at the
expense of local livelihoods.” They also criticise the report for giving
“little attention to the ‘inclusive’ and ‘social’ dimensions of IGG”,
for failing to “question the links between growth, poverty reduction,
and inequality”, for pushing infrastructure (see Update 81)
as “the heart of green growth”, and for ignoring the issue that “trade
and investment rules can ‘tie the hands’ of governments by paralyzing
their capacity to implement environmental and social regulations or
green technological approaches.”
According
to them, “among the more critical suggestions is the proposal to
support a ‘fund of funds’ under which a government or [multilateral
development bank] invests a relatively small amount of long-term capital
in a range of private, professionally managed funds … that then invest
in clean energy or energy sufficiency. The report does not address the
lack of transparency and accountability inherent in such … investments,
nor the fact that social and environmental safeguards are often not
observed or enforced with little recourse for taxpayers and affected
people.”
These concerns over the Bank’s prioritisation of the role of the private sector (see Update 81)
were echoed by environment groups in early June, when the Bank released
its new environment strategy for 2012-2022, following the line of the
IGG report. Expanded to cover the entire World Bank Group, including its
private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the
strategy “articulates a new vision for a green, clean, and resilient
world for all [in which] good policies enable the private sector to use
natural resources sustainably as part of good business.” However, Karen
Orenstein of NGO Friends of the Earth told press agency IPS News that
“the lesson the Bank should have learned from past efforts on
liberalisation is that privatisation doesn’t work. The most marginalised
[people] are the ones that end up worst off.”
The Bank at Rio+20
In
May, ten African countries, including Ghana and South Africa, pledged to
include the economic value of natural resources in their national
accounts. Nigerian environmentalist Nnimmo Bassey told IPS News that the
pledge would “help corporate interests in Rio while impoverishing
already disadvantaged populations, exacerbate land grabs and displace
the poor from their territories.” The Bank stepped up its push for
natural capital accounting by promoting its programme on Wealth
Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services (see Update 80)
at Rio+20, where 57 countries and the European Commission, as well as
over 80 private companies, signed up to support the initiative.
The
conference also saw the launch of the Natural Capital Declaration, set
up by the financial sector and backed by the IFC, which aims to
integrate natural capital considerations into financial products and
services. BankTrack, a global NGO coalition tracking private sector
banks, condemned the initiative as “a false and disturbing response … to
the profound ecological crises of today” and “another attempt to
promote the liberal, market based ‘green economy’ model sought by
business as outcome of the Rio conference.”
Rio+20
culminated in a document signed by leaders of over 190 countries that
included a plan to define global sustainable development goals by 2015,
but was criticised by civil society groups for being too weak and vague.
George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian that “16 times in their text they
pledged to pursue ‘sustained growth’, the primary cause of the
biosphere’s losses.” An alternative event, the People’s Summit, was held
parallel to the UN conference by civil society groups that were
unsatisfied with the green economy agenda of the official conference.
The international coordination group of the event, made up of 35
networks, social movements and organisations from 13 different
countries, argued in a statement that “nothing in the green economy
questions … the economy based on extraction of fossil fuels, or the
models of consumption and industrial production. On the contrary … [it]
opens new territories to the economy that exploits people and
environment, increasing the myth that unlimited economic growth is
possible.” They added that Rio+20 focussed on “facilitat[ing] this
‘green economy’ through the World Bank and other financial institutions …
which would result in a new cycle of debt and structural adjustment
dressed in green”. Rio+20′s green economy agenda also drew further
opposition, including from a coalition of over 80 Asian movements and
organisations and a group of over 500 indigenous peoples that issued
declarations rejecting it.
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