The World Bank Group aspires to “eradicate global poverty and create sustainable development,” but its projects and policies have often led to the opposite result, with devastating environmental and human rights consequences throughout the world.  The World Bank persists in propping up and investing in natural resource-based megaprojects in developing countries – like big dams and coal mining - despite displacement of communities, harm to Indigenous Peoples, release of greenhouse gases, and other serious negative impacts.

Deforestation accounts for some 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but the Bank continues to promote industrial logging and agrofuels. Throughout tropical rainforest areas, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – the private sector lending arm of the World Bank Group – finances soy and oil palm plantations and cattle ranching, as well as financing shrimp farming in mangrove forests.

From logging and gold mining to building big dams and gas pipelines, the World Bank is behind many initiatives dangerous to people and the planet. But the decision to fund these initiatives is far from democratic. The World Bank’s decision-making structure, based on how much money a country contributes to the Bank, marginalizes developing countries. For example, the United States has the most voting power of all countries, and it is also the sole country that determines who will be the World Bank’s president.

Friends of the Earth is working to make sure that the World Bank -- with its troubling record on the environment, human rights, climate impacts, and development -- cleans up its act as a major climate polluter with a poor development track record.

The World Bank and Fossil Fuels

Fossil fuel projects extract a heavy toll on people and the planet, leaving toxic legacies of social injustice, degraded water, land and air, and global warming pollution. Yet the World Bank Group funded over $3 billion in fossil fuels between 2007 and 2008. Despite professed concern regarding climate change, the World Bank Group increased its fossil fuel lending by 94 percent. Lending for coal -- the dirtiest of the fossil fuels - increased 256 percent.

In April 2010, the World Bank approved a $3.75 billion loan that will help electricity company Eskom build the world's fourth-largest coal plant in South Africa, the 4800 MW Medupi. In addition to being highly polluting, this project is actually expected to decrease access to electricity for South Africa's poorest citizens as a result of steep rate hikes for household customers that Eskom plans to implement to help pay for the plant and repay the World Bank.