World Bank May Have Vastly Overstated Financial Committment To Environment - By Tens Of Billions

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) - The World Bank overstated its commitment to environmental projects since 1990, possibly by billions of dollars, an internal watchdog group reported on Tuesday. The bank's official estimate for commitments to programs specifically aimed at helping the environment is $59 billion from fiscal 1990 to 2007, according to the Independent Evaluation Group.

But the watchdog group, established by the bank to monitor its activities, found only $18.2 billion allocated by the poverty-fighting institution went to projects deemed to be at least 80 percent environmental in nature. The rest of the $59 billion went to projects with a smaller environmental component. The $59 billion figure "appears to overstate the actual volume of resources going directly for environmental improvement," the group's report said.

"Because of the way (World) Bank commitments are identified, it is unclear exactly how much lending has gone directly for environmental improvement. But the priority given to lending for ENRM (environment and natural resource management) appears to be modest," the report said.

Bank officials disputed this and maintained that investment in environmental projects is being underestimated due to a subjective but internationally accepted coding system that is also used by the United Nations.

EDIT

http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN2228710120080722

[Hydra]

1. Great stewards of the world we have

:puke:

[Nihil]

2. Figures ...

... I would have been surprised if one of the main tools of global
destruction was actually supporting environmental projects as much
as it had claimed ...

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Why am I not surprised??

[excess_3]

4. carbon offsets are a fraud, who cares how much the ..

World Bank invests?