杏吧原创

EFFORTS to 鈥済reen鈥� the World Bank鈥檚 development projects have produced
mountains of paper, plenty of work for environmental scientists, but very little
impact on the projects themselves. This is the bank鈥檚 own admission in an
internal study, completed in June and distributed this week during its
conference in Washington DC on environmentally sustainable development.

For five years the bank has insisted that governments who want its aid must
carry out environmental assessments. The idea is to weed out or modify schemes
likely to do more harm than good. Instead, says the study of 53 projects in
eight countries from the Philippines to Poland, the assessments 鈥済enerated
massive documents that are of little use鈥�.

Assessments 鈥渇ailed to give serious consideration to alternative designs and
technologies鈥�, and were often 鈥渟uperficial . . . a mere formality鈥�. Moreover,
they landed on engineers鈥� desks too late to influence project designs that had
already been approved.

Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth, which leaked the report, says: 鈥淭he
bank has mastered some beguiling green rhetoric, but the environmental damage
谤别尘补颈苍蝉.鈥�