Institutional Partnerships

The Bank partners with other international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the U.N., other multilateral development banks, OECD, the European Union (EU), and the WTO.

International Monetary Fund. The Bank’s foremost institutional alliance is with the IMF, with which it collaborates on a number of initiatives aimed at reducing poverty. The Bank and the IMF further strengthened their collaboration in fiscal 2003. Each organization concentrates on its area of comparative advantage: the IMF is responsible for the dialogue with country authorities on macroeconomic issues, and the World Bank takes the lead on social and structural issues.

In addition to the continuous delivery of debt relief to eligible countries under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC), the executive boards of the two institutions approved the achievement of completion-point status for two HIPC countries during fiscal 2003. The Bank’s Executive Directors also reviewed “Strengthening IMF—World Bank Collaboration on Country Programs and Conditionality—Progress Report.”

Under the PRSP framework for low-income countries supported by the Fund’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, the Fund and the Bank worked closely together in fiscal 2003 to support common country strategies and to focus their efforts on their respective areas of responsibility. For middle-income countries, greater efforts were made to improve coordination between the Fund and the Bank through consultation between the two staffs on emerging structural issues in individual country programs.

Two other joint programs of the Bank and the Fund are the Financial Sector Assessment Program and the Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC) initiative. In March 2003 the Bank and Fund Boards reviewed joint Bank-Fund papers and discussed the two programs.

United Nations. The Bank and the U.N. are committed to carrying out the universally accepted framework for development established by the international community. The Bank has established strong relationships with the specialized agencies, programs, and funds of the U.N. system.

In fiscal 2003 the Bank–U.N. partnership advanced in its commitment to a coordinated approach that supports country efforts in creating poverty reduction strategies. This has involved identifying complementarities between the MDGs and the PRSP process. The Bank and the United Nations Development Group have maintained an open dialogue on the harmonization of policies, procedures, and practices (see box 1.1). Attention is now being placed on better development effectiveness and deeper country ownership.

The Bank has supported the parallel process taking place at the intergovernmental level. In the 2002 meetings of the Bank’s Development Committee, ministers called for a focus on the global monitoring of actions and policies to achieve the MDGs. Many of the Bank’s senior managers are involved in the ongoing dialogue on these issues between the U.N. and the Bank, a dialogue that strengthens the understanding of respective roles and responsibilities in carrying out the development agenda.

The increasingly complex political, social, economic, and international dimensions of conflict adversely affect the ability of countries to work toward the MDGs. The U.N. and the Bank, in close partnership, are pursuing ways to strengthen cooperation among themselves and other key stakeholders during conflict emergencies and all phases of postconflict reconstruction.

Multilateral Development Banks. The Bank’s collaboration with other multilateral development banks, such as the African Development Bank (see www.AfDB.org), the Asian Development Bank (see www.ADB.org), the Inter-American Development Bank (see www.IADB.org), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (see www.EBRD.com), and the Islamic Development Bank (see www.ISDB.org), remained strong and intensified significantly in several areas, as highlighted in the jointly produced report, “Recent Progress in Cooperation among Multilateral Development Banks.”

Building on their joint statement on development effectiveness issued at the Monterrey International Conference on Financing for Development in 2002, the presidents of the MDBs maintained their regular consultations on policy and operational issues, with a particular focus on global and regional uncertainties facing various MDBs, and on further strengthening the MDB system. To inform MDB shareholders of the considerable progress made in cooperation in recent years, they circulated an “Update on Progress in MDB Cooperation” to all MDB boards and governors. On International Women’s Day the MDB presidents and the managing director of the IMF issued a joint statement on the importance of gender equality in MDB-IMF operations and within the organizations.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and Its Development Assistance Committee. The Bank’s partnership with OECD accelerated in May 2000 when the heads of the two institutions signed a joint statement of cooperation. Since that time the two institutions have established clear focal points for proactive collaboration.

The Bank and OECD work together on the OECD/DAC agenda, aligning donor support for the Comprehensive Development Framework and PRSPs, sharpening the focus on results, improving harmonization of donor policies and practices, and dealing with the problems of low-income countries under stress.

A systematic effort has been under way to strengthen collaboration on the non-DAC agenda as well. Priorities include governance and public sector management, tax policy and administration, trade, corporate governance, sustainable development, agriculture, and the knowledge economy. The Bank and OECD together with the IMF also have launched an International Tax Dialogue aimed at sharing experience and fostering multilateral communication on tax systems.

In addition to work in these areas, the Bank is collaborating with OECD in countries where both institutions are active. This collaboration includes developing countries that are members of OECD, such as Mexico and Turkey, the EU accession countries, and nonmember countries that are the special focus of OECD: Brazil, China, and Russia. These efforts have allowed the Bank and OECD to avoid duplication and gain synergy from their respective work.

European Union. The European Union is a natural partner for the World Bank Group. Its multilateral aid program, managed by the European Commission, is the world’s third largest.

The EU provides 55 percent of the total official development assistance in the world—more than $26 billion in 2001—and is the developing world’s most important trading partner, absorbing 21 percent of its exports and extending preferential arrangements to developing regions. Expected to take in 10 new member states—or 100 million more people—in 2004, the EU works toward political and economic reform and poverty reduction in the world, especially in neighboring regions such as the Middle East and North Africa, with which it has active trade, investment, and migration links.

Collaboration between the EU and the World Bank Group has expanded on many fronts in recent years, including the PRSP process, the HIPC Initiative, postconflict reconstruction in the Balkans and Afghanistan, and the Strategic Partnership with Africa, as well as in policy dialogue on trade and development.

World Trade Organization. Strengthening the Bank’s capacity on trade and establishing the new Trade Department has enabled an expanded partnership with the WTO, based on the shared objectives of open trade and development. An initial visit to the WTO by the president of the World Bank led to the preparation of a strategy for institutional collaboration, which focuses on (a) cooperation in the sharing of policy research and knowledge; (b) joint work in implementing the Integrated Framework for Technical Assistance for the Least-Developed Countries; (c) cooperation in the delivery of trade training and capacity building by the World Bank Institute (WBI) and the WTO; and (d) cooperation in promoting a stronger global dialogue on trade and development.

Global Civil Society

Beyond institutional partnerships the Bank interacts with the broader international civil society, private foundations, parliamentarians, and the private sector.

Civil Society. The emergence and growth of civil society during the past two decades have been two of the most significant trends in international development. The World Bank recognizes that civil society plays an especially critical role in ensuring that the voices of the poorest people are heard, holding governments and policymakers accountable, and improving development effectiveness and sustainability. At present the Bank consults and collaborates with thousands of CSOs throughout the world, including community-based organizations, indigenous peoples’ organizations, labor unions, faith-based groups, and foundations.

The World Bank engages CSOs in three ways. First, it facilitates dialogue and partnership between civil society and governments by providing resources, training, and technical support, and often by playing a convening role, such as in the process of formulation of the country PRSPs now under way in more than 40 developing countries. Second, the Bank consults with CSOs on issues, policies, and programs, listening to their perspectives and inviting suggestions. During fiscal 2003 the Bank held global consultations with civil society on adjustment lending policy and extractive industry investments, as well as on the forthcoming World Development Report 2004 on basic service provision. Third, the Bank partners with CSOs by contracting technical assistance and training services, funding civil society initiatives, and managing joint programs. The Africa Stockpiles Programme, for example, was recently launched by governments, CSOs, and donor agencies to clean up and safely dispose of all obsolete pesticide stocks from Africa, and to establish preventive measures to avoid future accumulation. CSO involvement in Bank-funded projects has risen steadily during the past decade-plus, from 21 percent of the total number of projects in fiscal 1990 to an estimated 71 percent in fiscal 2003.

The Bank’s evolving partnerships with faith communities have continued to expand and deepen across a broad range of issues, including HIV/AIDS, education, health, conflict resolution, and gender. The Bank maintains ongoing dialogue with a worldwide network of faith and interfaith leaders, including the World Faiths Development Dialogue (www.wfdd.org.uk), the World Council of Churches, and the World Conference on Religion and Peace. In October 2002 the president of the World Bank and the Archbishop of Canterbury convened a meeting of world faith and development leaders in Canterbury, England, to discuss the challenges of poverty, globalization, and social justice, with a particular emphasis on the MDGs. It attracted a diverse group of leaders from development agencies, the world’s major faiths, business, foundations, and the arts.

Civil society dialogue and relations with the international labor union movement have improved steadily over the last few years. The Bank and the IMF agreed this year to a joint work plan with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the World Confederation of Labour, which included a meeting of senior Bank and Fund managers and labor leaders in October 2002, joint research projects, and staff exchanges. (See www.worldbank.org/civilsociety.)

Foundations. The Bank works in partnership with foundations to strengthen the development impact of assistance in member countries. Such partnerships help mobilize external technical and financial resources and identify business process innovations, thereby strengthening the Bank’s learning process. (See also box 1.2, "The Development Gateway Foundation" and the Development Gateway, 'an interactive site for information on sustainable development and poverty reduction, and a space for communities to share experiences on development efforts'.)

At local levels, the Bank’s partnership with foundations, such as Ford, Gulbenkian, Hewlett, MacArthur, Mott, Packard, Rockefeller, Soros, and Eurasia, is helping promote the PRSP process, supporting thematic initiatives that complement the MDGs, and sponsoring CSO participation in such Bank consultations as the World Development Report. A new initiative with the Ford and Mott Foundations and the Council on Foundations will explore the concept of community foundations as a vehicle for building the capacity for community-driven development in Bank client countries.

At the regional and global levels, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rotary International, the United Nations Foundation, and the World Bank are sponsoring an innovative financial effort to acquire polio vaccine through buy-down loans in order to help eradicate polio worldwide by 2005. (See Overview - Fiscal 2003 Highlights and Thematic Perspectives - Investing in People.)

Parliamentarians. The Parliamentary Network on the World Bank (PNoWB) is an independent organization of more than 400 parliamentarians from approximately 60 developed and developing countries. Created in 2000 by a small group of European parliamentarians, its purpose is to increase their role in international development and poverty alleviation. The PNoWB’s many initiatives include a Parliamentarians’ Implementation Watch to promote and monitor action to meet the MDGs, a program of field visits, and the creation of a special committee on HIV/AIDS. Its annual meeting has become a major platform for interaction on development issues among the parliamentarians themselves and between parliamentarians and the Bank. (See www.pnowb.org.)

Private Sector. Increasing numbers of private businesses are engaging in corporate social responsibility—open and transparent business practices that meet or exceed the ethical, legal, commercial, and public expectations of society. This trend coincides with the World Bank Group’s increasing focus on its relationships with the private sector, as it does what it can to make private flows bigger, better, and of greater benefit to the poor. Units across the World Bank Group are implementing private sector partnership approaches designed to maximize development gain while acknowledging participating companies’ needs to maximize their own business benefits. The most successful of these approaches are not stand-alone activities; rather, they build partnerships into World Bank Group global and regional programs or country-based activities. This stronger link to core operational business, along with tighter alignment and focus between partner objectives, enhance both development impact and business benefit.

For example, in Angola the World Bank Group is exploring the alignment between local content, revenue transparency, and social development activities in the oil sector, and public sector priorities for postwar Angola. This is a joint project between the Angola country team, the Fundo de Apoio Social, the Bank Group’s Oil and Gas division, and the Bank’s Corporate Social Responsibility Practice. The World Bank Group is working with civil society, the major national oil companies and multinational organizations active in Angola, and the Angolan ministries of petroleum and planning.

Global Partnerships in Action

Global programs complement the Bank’s country assistance activities. These programs respond to new and emerging challenges such as environmental degradation, the spread of communicable diseases, financial instability, and international insecurity. They require concerted international action as a vital complement to policies at the national and local levels. Global programs cut across all client groups and are a critical part of Bank operations. Consistent with its mandate, the Bank participates in global programs and partnerships where global action can complement and reinforce country programs and where the Bank can work with partners to provide public goods that cannot be generated at the country level alone. To augment this effort the Bank is active in country programs that are the essential complement to global action. Communicable disease is an outstanding example, with programs in HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis (TB), and polio under way in many countries, thereby reinforcing global efforts. The Bank is involved as founding member, financier, administrator, or participant in 70 global programs, the majority of which are less than 5 years old, although 12 of the 70 are 10 to 30 years old.

Examples of the Bank’s partnerships in action include the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), energy partnerships, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and other environment partnerships; and global efforts in health, nutrition, and population; knowledge networks; and urban development.

Agricultural Research. The CGIAR is a strategic alliance of countries, international and regional organizations, and private foundations supporting 16 international agricultural research centers that work with national agricultural research systems, the private sector, and civil society. The alliance mobilizes agricultural science to reduce poverty, foster human well-being, promote agricultural growth, and protect the environment. CGIAR scientists develop improved technologies in every critical component of the agricultural sector, including agroforestry, biodiversity, food, forage and tree crops, fisheries, forestry, livestock, and food policies, and they strengthen agricultural research services. The benefits of such public goods research are significant: CGIAR scientists are providing seeds and technical assistance for rehabilitating agriculture in Afghanistan, the New Rices for Africa (NERICA) program is boosting agricultural production and farmer incomes in Sub-Saharan Africa, and new techniques are increasing rice and fish production in Asia. Innovative “Challenge Programs” are helping tackle micronutrient deficiencies, water scarcity, and other problems of global significance. CGIAR scientists have won the World Food Prize three years in a row. (See www.cgiar.org.) In fiscal 2003 the Operations Evaluation Department delivered to the Board a special report on the CGIAR, the findings of which are discussed in chapter 3.

Energy. The Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership has visited client countries and company stakeholders to discuss details of their cooperation and to identify practical and economic solutions that would overcome the barriers currently inhibiting investments in flaring reduction. The first steering committee meeting, which was held in December 2002, approved a three-year work program and budget.

The original partnership formed by the Bank, Shell, BP, Sonatrach of Algeria, and the governments of Ecuador, Nigeria, and Norway has since been joined by the governments of Angola, Cameroon, and the United States, as well as by ChevronTexaco and TotalFinaElf.

The Global Village Energy Partnership works to increase delivery of modern energy services to those who are unserved or underserved. The partnership is managed by the Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme, a joint program of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank. Currently 150 organizations have committed to the partnership’s Statement of Principles. They range from BP Solar to the United Republic of Tanzania and represent a wide range of stakeholders involved in modern energy service delivery. In fiscal 2003 the partnership’s technical secretariat coordinated regional energy-poverty workshops in Addis Ababa and Dakar, which involved 13 different country delegations, and it is planning follow-up workshops in Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia to develop and coordinate further strategies to increase access.

Environment. The World Bank plays a key role in the success of the GEF, a dynamic partnership that channels multilateral funds to developing countries for projects that have local and global partnership benefits. GEF supports efforts to conserve biodiversity, reduce the risks of climate change, protect the ozone layer, clean up international waters, combat land degradation, and phase out toxic organic pollutants.

Since its creation in 1991, GEF has produced impressive results that address key global environmental problems—for example, significantly reducing ozone-depleting substances in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, combating deforestation and desertification in Sub-Saharan Africa, and bringing renewable energy to people in developing countries who live far from existing power grids.

As one of three GEF-implementing agencies, the Bank helps its client countries prepare and supervise GEF projects. More than 370 Bank-GEF projects, including some joint projects with other implementing agencies, are being carried out in 129 countries. The projects are financed by $2.7 billion in GEF grants and more than $12.2 billion in additional funding from public and private partners. The Bank’s GEF Secretariat plays a key role in managing Bank-GEF projects.

The Bank also serves as the trustee of the GEF Trust Fund and provides administrative support for the GEF Secretariat. (See www.theGEF.org or www.worldbank.org/gef.)

The Trust Fund for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (www.worldbank.org/tfessd) is a new type of partnership between the participating donors and the Bank. It provides grant resources for World Bank activities that incorporate the environmental, social, and poverty dimensions of sustainable development in their project design.

The World Bank launched a new carbon fund in fiscal 2003 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development: the Community Development Carbon Fund (www.communitycarbonfund.org), a partnership between the World Bank and the International Emissions Trading Association that is expected to raise $100 million. This collaboration will provide financing for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in projects such as small-scale and rural renewable energy, energy efficiency, solid-waste-to-energy conversion, and agroforestry in developing countries. The effort will complement the Prototype Carbon Fund (www.prototypecarbonfund.org).

Health, Nutrition, and Population. Partnerships are key to achieving the health, nutrition, and population-related MDGs. Reducing child mortality is central to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, which administers $12 billion reaching 64 countries to increase access to vaccines. The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition works to reduce micronutrient deficiencies. Improved maternal health is fundamental to partnerships such as the Nutrition and Gender Initiative, which emphasizes improved nutrition outcomes throughout the life cycle, and the Human Reproduction Program, a 30-year effort to help ensure the safety of widely used contraceptives. Finally, because reliable data are essential for monitoring MDG achievements, partnerships such as INDEPTH (the international network of field sites in developing countries that performs continuous demographic evaluations of populations and their health) are helping improve the availability and flow of information about disease and health, including nutrition and reproductive health, to policymakers and others.

The Bank is playing a key role in shaping the global response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic as one of eight cosponsors of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. During fiscal 2002–03 the World Bank chaired the group’s Committee of Cosponsoring Organizations. The Bank is actively working with these cosponsors, national governments, and others to improve the quality of monitoring and evaluation of AIDS-related projects and programs at the country level. (See www.worldbank.org/hivaids.)

Working with private sector partners, the Bank is helping to accelerate and improve access to drug treatment for people with HIV through such mechanisms as the International Treatment Access Coalition. (See www.who.int.)

The Bank has been an active partner in establishing the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. (See www.globalfundatm.org.) The fund is an independent public-private partnership, which so far has committed $1.5 billion to the fight against those three diseases. The Bank continues to be involved in two other long-standing partnerships: Stop TB and Roll Back Malaria.

Together with UNDP and the World Health Organization, the Bank supports development of improved tools for control of other communicable diseases, such as leprosy and schistosomiasis, through the Tropical Disease Research Program.

Knowledge Networks. The World Bank Institute works with an alliance of partner organizations that provide funding, content, and training facilities to support knowledge networks that enhance the capacity of countries to carry out development projects. Increasingly, donor partners such as the governments of Belgium, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland are making multiyear financial commitments and offering innovative means of support (see box 1.3, “Switzerland and the World Bank Institute: Partners in Enhancing Capacity”). Partnership arrangements strengthen the impact of our capacity-building efforts. WBI now has formal partnership agreements with more than 115 organizations and informal agreements with some 250 more.

Urban Development. The Cities Alliance is a global partnership of cities and their development partners. Launched by the World Bank and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) in 1999, the Cities Alliance now has 18 members, including all Group of Seven countries, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the four international associations of organized local government, the United Nations Environment Programme, and the Asian Development Bank.

The alliance has focused on two areas: first, supporting comprehensive city development strategies for cities that wish to fundamentally reassess the way they do business and, second, providing support to cities and countries undertaking citywide and nationwide programs to upgrade slums. One of the Cities Alliance’s first products was the Cities Without Slums action plan. The Alliance undertakes its work through its members and is supported by a small secretariat based at the World Bank.