Re: World Bank/IMF: Shpetimtar apo shkatrrimtar?
Statement on the Occassion of the World Bank and IMF Meetings
Oilwatch
April 15, 2000
WASHINGTON, DC -- The role, the constitution and the politics of the International Monetary Fund and of the World Bank have been strongly questioned at the international level for the social and environmental impacts that they have caused in the non-industrialized countries.
The governments and the social, environmental and human rights organizations of the Third World have criticized how the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund make decisions and have exposed them, because they are the vehicle that condemns the economies of the Third World to progressive de-capitalization.
These institutions impose their policies on the Third World by accusing these countries of corruption, overlooking that corruption is a two way relationship, where there are just as many who corrupt as those who are corrupted, and that this problem will not be solved while the bases and origins are not address.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are promoting in the Third World countries, the liberalization of investments and commercial competition as part of globalization. These policies have forced an increase in oil production and impose a model of deregulation and privatization of the energy sector that brings about an intensification of environmental, social and economic problems in the Third World.
The energy policies brought about by these bodies, have played a central role in the destruction of local resources, through an economical model based in the promotion exportation that have severe social and environmental impacts, and through the proposition of models based on large infrastructures.
The World Bank is supporting the construction of a series of oil and gas pipelines that will cross fragile and forested areas, like the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, the West Africa gas pipeline, the gas pipelines to be constructed in Indonesia, the Bolivia-Brazil gas pipeline. All of these have been strongly questioned for social and environmental reasons.
Additionally, the World Bank development programs, spring from a false concept of poverty, they disregard that the countries of the Third World are rich in biodiversity, in resources, in culture, and that, we are decapitalized owing to the economic measures imposed by them, which implies the intensive extraction of raw materials and the reduction of the state budget in education, health, and social aspects.
Moreover, they disregard that the industrialized model is not a model to follow, it presupposes the environmental space and the resources of other countries or regions of the world. A model that has been being established and increasing an ecological debt of the countries of the North to those of the South.
The policies related with clean energy, social justice and local development should be address within a fare relationship between countries and where the interests of the southern countries are adequately represented. These are the conditions needed to resolve the energy problems, above technical considerations, and from a perspective of energy sovereignty including the sources of energy production, fair distribution and control of the entire energy process.
