Poverty & Environment

Sustaining Life

Social Dimensions Poverty

Tools for Success

Thematic Perspectives

Promoting Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development

For the World Bank, promoting sustainable development means improving the linkages between poverty alleviation and the environment. It means enhancing food security, the overall well-being of rural people, and the sustainable use of natural resources. And it means ensuring greater civic engagement, particu-larly by the most vulnerable groups in society.

Poverty and the Environment—Improving the Linkage

Environmental degradation poses great harm to developing countries, which suffer annual losses of productivity and natural capital as high as 4 to 8 percent of GDP. Over the past year, the Bank’s environmental work has been informed by global consultations with institutions, governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), civil society, and the private sector, through in-country workshops as well as electronic and Web-based discussions. With country and external partners, the Bank seeks to help improve the:

• Quality of life—by reducing environmental health risks and vulnerability to environmental hazards.
• Quality of growth—by promoting sustainable management of resources, such as forests, land, and water, as an essential condition for long-term and lasting improvements in people’s well-being.
• Quality of the global environmental commons—by pursuing efforts targeted to benefit developing countries and local communities.

The Bank is exploring how environmental work can be better designed to improve health outcomes. Analysis in fiscal 2001 with India’s Andhra Pradesh state, in collaboration with the World Health Organisation and donors, examined the effects of poor household environments and lack of basic infrastructure on public health. The analysis influenced the state’s priorities in sector planning. At a regional level, "Cleaner Transport Fuels for Central Asia and the Caucasus," a two-year study, resulted in a commitment by authorities to improve fuel quality, monitor vehicle emissions, and establish new regulations. Progress was made on the Nile Basin Initiative—a regional partnership that brings together 10 African countries for the sustainable development of Nile waters.

The Bank is also working actively at the global level, with multiple partners, recognizing that a large number of environmental concerns cannot be addressed purely at the country level (click here for examples of partnerships in the environment area, and click here for a description of the Prototype Carbon Fund). As an implementing agency of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Multilateral Fund of the Montreal Protocol, the Bank continues to work with the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme, and United Nations Industrial Development Organization to help countries address global environmental challenges and meet their international environmental obligations.

Sustaining Life

About 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day, and 800 million people go to bed hungry every night; most of them live in rural areas. Slowing and reversing the decline in the natural resource base and improving the productivity of agriculture are imperatives for Bank assistance.

The Bank is basing its rural work over the past year on three pillars—enhancing the social and economic well-being of rural people, improving food security, and ensuring the sustainable use of natural resources. Supplementing the rural work is the Bank’s attention to the forestry sector, aiming to harness the potential of forests to reduce poverty, integrate forests in sustainable economic development, and protect global forest values. The Bank is involved in partnerships and special initiatives, such as the World Bank–World Wide Fund for Nature Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use, in which the Bank has invested close to $2 million. The Alliance aims at three targets by 2005: 50 million hectares of new forest protected areas, a comparable area of existing but highly threatened forest protected areas secured under effective management, and a global target of 200 million hectares of production forest under independently certified sustainable management. The Chief Executive Officer Forum on Forest Industry and Conservation—chaired by Mr. Wolfensohn—is a private sector–civil society dialogue process with ambitious objectives for improved forest management and forest conservation.

In fiscal 2001 the Bank actively supported efforts to sustain life in rural areas. A financial systems support project will increase access to microcredit in poor rural areas in Romania, for example, while support for farmed marshlands, commercial and export agriculture, and agricultural services delivery will help Rwanda on its road to recovery. Total lending for rural development rose to $2.2 billion in fiscal 2001, compared with $2.1 billion in fiscal 2000.

Efforts at a global level are aimed at scaling up development impact. In fiscal 2001 the Bank approved a grant to be used through the Global Mechanism of the Convention to Combat Desertification, which will help member countries combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought by engaging civil society and the private sector. Through the GEF, the Bank is also coordinating the Africa Land and Water Initiative Action Program to reverse the rapid trends of land and water degradation in Africa through comprehensive approaches.

The Bank is also contributing to efforts to double global food production to feed an additional 2.9 billion people by 2050. With the growing scarcity of land and water, future increases in food supplies have to come from increased productivity (rather than expanded cultivation and irrigation). Supported by 58 public and private sector members, including the Bank, the 16 international research centers that make up the Consultative Group on International Agricul-tural Research (CGIAR) are at the forefront of mobilizing modern agricultural science on behalf of the world’s poor and hungry (see box 6.2). CGIAR technologies support the Bank’s rural lending programs to alleviate hunger and poverty, improve rural productivity and raise agricultural incomes, manage natural resources sustainably, and build partnerships with national agricultural research programs. In fiscal 2001 the CGIAR launched a fast-track, participatory reform process toward a revitalized, world-class knowledge network—an agile South-North partnership that works at the frontier of science for the poor and provides public goods research.

Dealing with the Social Dimensions of Poverty

Sustainable development also requires addressing the social dimensions of poverty—that poor people must have more say and participate as equal partners. The Bank is working to improve the quality of such operations and is developing a methodology for including social dimensions in programmatic lending. A review in fiscal 2001 found that good social assessments are helping promote social inclusion, participation, and ownership in Bank operations.

Helping countries affected by conflict— frequently in partnership with other agencies—is a fast-growing priority for the Bank. People affected by conflict are among the most vulnerable to poverty and ill health, including HIV/AIDS. Conflict and violence remain among the most pressing social and economic problems in several parts of the world: 16 of the world’s 20 poorest countries are in—or are just emerging from—conflict, and some 35 others may currently be considered affected by conflict. Reconstructing societies after conflict is as much, if not more, about helping people rebuild their lives and meet their social and political security needs as it is about repairing physical infrastructure. Given its overall mandate, the Bank hopes to contribute to conflict prevention in two ways: by providing assistance that may help countries become more resilient to eruption of violent conflict, for instance through strengthened capacity to address root causes and trigger issues; and by strengthening its own and partners’ sensitivities to the potential positive and negative impacts of conflicts on development policies and programs. The Bank provides substantial lending and nonlending support to countries emerging from conflict, particularly in Africa, ranging from comprehensive reconstruction packages to small grants from the Post-Conflict Fund. Examples include a program to help Eritrean excombatants demobilize and re-integrate into normal life, and another to promote the transition from conflict to peace in Mindanao, in the Philippines.

The Bank’s new operational policy, "Development Cooperation and Conflict," guides its work in countries affected by conflict. The Post-Conflict Fund has, since 1997, provided financing for early phases of Bank work in post-conflict situations, with $29 million in grants allocated to more than 30 countries. Over the past year, and with increased bilateral donor financing, this fund has supported projects in East Timor, Eritrea, and Georgia.

Cultural identity is another essential part of empowering communities to take charge of their own destinies. The Bank continues to promote, currently through over 80 stand-alone or component operations, efforts that recognize the role of culture in poverty reduction. Examples include a cultural heritage management project in Eritrea, and a project in China to upgrade urban infrastructure.

Sharpening the Tools for Success

Strengthening the safeguard system. The Bank’s environmental and social safeguard policies are designed to prevent and mitigate undue harm, to people and their environments, that may potentially result from Bank operations. In fiscal 2001 the Bank restated its operational policies to ensure greater clarity and reflect important lessons learned, appointed regional safeguard coordinators, established a safeguards "helpdesk" for staff, and upgraded the safeguards training program.

Participation and civic engagement. The Bank increasingly recognizes that inclusive, participatory development is key to more equitable and sustainable development. Over the past year, it sponsored events on civic engagement and participatory approaches, with participants representing governments and NGOs in about 40 countries. Civic engagement is a vital underpinning of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Program and also central to the Community-Driven Development (CDD) approach, which is about transferring funds to community groups so that they can invest in their own development priorities, as well as ensuring poor people’s access to information to enable them to make informed investment decisions and engage in entrepreneurial activities (box 3.5).

Science and technology (S&T). Dealing effectively with urgent global issues—communicable diseases, environmental degradation, or food security—requires increased scientific and technological capacity. The Bank is looking to S&T to help provide solutions to the most pressing needs of poor people. Looking farther out, the Bank aims to improve reliance on knowledge to inform development policies and to build capacity in client countries to generate and use knowledge on their own.