New World Bank Policies Imperil Environment and Land Defenders
New World Bank Policies Imperil Environment and Land Defenders
By: Cyril Mychalejko
Published 4 August 2016
Just 5 months since the murder of Honduran environmental defender Berta Caceres, the Bank is passing new safeguards that do more harm than good.
The World Bank is expected to approve Thursday its new “Environmental and Social Framework” which civil society groups say weakens human rights protections and will likely endanger the very communities the safeguards are intended to protect.
At issue are a series of contradictions which strengthens the oversight authority of the very governments that are pushing the mammoth development projects typically opposed by poor, Indigenous and working class communities. The likely result, critics say, will be more conflicts and more corpses, doubling down, as it were, on 2015, a year which the environmental NGO Global Witness says was the deadliest recorded year for environmental defenders, with an average of three slayings per week, worldwide.
This year already saw the March 3 high-profile assassination of Berta Caceres an Indigenous rights and land defender from Honduras who tirelessly campaigned against a widely unpopular dam project once funded by the Bank’s financial lending arm, underscoring yet again the violence often associated with international development projects.
More:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/New-World-Bank-Policies-Imperil-Environment-and-Land-Defenders--20160804-0001.html
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016164773