The IMF’s April 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa presents a clear warning: regional growth is slowing, debt pressures are mounting, and donor assistance is declining. Yet the report outlines critical opportunities particularly in domestic revenue mobilization, structural reform, and private sector activation that can shape a more resilient …
This project would conserve biodiversity by implementing the ecodevelopment stratey in and around eight protected areas (PAs) and would also include support for preparing future biodiversity projects.
EUROPE's largest remaining wetlands may yet be saved from devastation. The Global Environment Facility has given a $4.5 million grant to Romania to help it preserve the rare flora and fauna of the Danube delta. The greatest threat to the delta comes from the pollutants and waste accumulated by the …
EVEN AS the agitation in the United States, called Fifty Years is Enough, against World Bank (WB) activities continues, it has crossed into India. Here, the movement, started in May 1992, has emerged from the Narmada agitation, and is called the Campaign Against the World Bank and Destructive International Aid …
AFTER dithering for 2 years, the West Bengal government has agreed to restructure its forest administration to increase people's participation in managing forests. The government decision has come under pressure from the World Bank, which in June withheld further disbursement of grants to the Bank-funded, $34-million West Bengal Forestry Project …
FOR some time now, international funding agencies have been at pains to show that they are concerned about the environmental and social aspects of the policies they promote. Very often, such concern is expressed through velvet buzzwords used to cloak the sharp interventions they thrust upon the beneficiaries of their …
THE expansion plans of Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Paper Ltd (TNPL), funded by the World Bank (WB) to the tune of $75 million, has rung alarm bells in environmental quarters. J Paul Bhaskar, chairperson of the Dindigul-based Bhagwati Environment Development Institute (BEDI), has appealed to WB to consider the ecological …
"CARRYING capacity" is likely to be the Catchphrase of the Year. The term is liberally sprinkled throughout State of the World Report 1994, like some sort of mantra. To illustrate "a breach of carrying capacity", the report cites the reintroduction in 1944 of 29 reindeer to St Matthew Island in …
THE World Bank has commended the Chinese government's resettlement record - at "well over 30 million", the world's largest - as a "model" for most types of resettlements. A leaked report, in which the bank reviewed its own resettlement policy, said, "Over the past 40 years, tens of millions of …
JAPANESE environmentalists have objected to an Indian press report, which said Japanese non-governmental organisations had welcomed India's resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R;) package for oustees of the Sardar Sarovar Project. In fact, Yukio Tanaka, coordinator of the Narmada Action Committee of Japan, has denied this outright. The controversy erupted on February …
FOR ONCE, Indians can look forward to the sun doing the out-of-character job of cooling them. A new device -- a "suncap fan" that brings visions of a whirligig attached to a dunce"s cap -- that might soon hit the country"s overheated cricket stands will be powered by solar photovoltaic …
THE NUMBER of hungry people in South Asia -- who make up 49 per cent of the population -- can be cut by 50 per cent to 281 million, according to the World Bank. This can be achieved through far-reaching reforms backed by policies aimed at improving basic health and …
THE WORLD Bank will require more environmental protection by Asian loan recipients. The bank might demand the use of unleaded gasoline and better traffic management and might even require recycling of solid waste. The bank paints a particularly dismal picture of Asia and estimates approximately $38 billion a year is …
NEGOTIATIONS on how to structure a more democratic Global Environment Facility (GEF), which will finance the environmental treaties signed at the Earth Summit, broke down once again in Cartagena, Colombia, in December 1993. Participating countries were unable to agree to the proposed changes to restructure the GEF, set up by …
CITIZENS' groups have flayed the World Bank's (WB's) new information policy -- Expanding Access to Bank Information (EABI) -- for keeping information in and people out. In a desperate attempt to shore up its sinking image and secure a $18 billion capital replenishment, WB had recently cobbled together the information …
EVEN AS the threat to global biodiversity and the atmosphere increases, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has frozen all on-going projects and postponed decisions pertaining to others till early November, when the Independent Evaluation Committee will submit its final report. The freeze was prompted by an interim report, which suggests …
BRITISH aid agency Oxfam has flayed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) for their complacent approach to the problems caused in sub-Saharan Africa because of its huge external debt, which is in excess of $183 billion. "After a decade of structural adjustment programmes implemented under the …
DESPITE being warned about the pitiable plight of the Uru Eu Wau Wau Indians in northwest Brazil, the World Bank (WB) did not stop to consider the effect on the tribals of a road construction project it was financing in the region. And now, unfortunately, the warnings are coming true. …
THE US Congress approval of less than the requested funding for the world's poorest countries has put the International Development Agency (IDA) of the World Bank in trouble. Though the Clinton administration had requested an annual contribution of $1.25 billion to meet its three-year commitment of $3.75 billion, the Congress …
AS PART of the national environment action plan (NEAP), the Union ministry of environment and forests (MEF) is preparing numerous projects, financial assistance for which it will seek from the World Bank (WB). The NEAP was developed at the insistence of WB, which exercises considerable influence over developing countries because …
In a severe indictment of the World Bank's (WB) record of resettlement of people affected by its projects in India, the bank's own Operations Evaluation Division (OED) has recommended that funding of projects involving forcible relocation of people should be stopped. OED says a February 1980 policy makes the bank …
