ENVIRONMENT
GRI EN7/F12
The World Bank's mission to reduce poverty means achieving the sustainable use of natural resources and managing resources, effectively to minimize pollution, degradation, and risks. This requires a broad range of efforts at the global, national, and local levels, across a number of critical and interrelated sectors.
When working on key environmental issues, World Bank teams are guided by the following principles:
| focus on the positive linkages between poverty reduction and environmental protection |
| focus first on local environmental benefits and build on the overlaps with regional and global benefits |
| address the vulnerability and adaptation needs of developing countries | | facilitate transfer of financial resources to client countries to help them meet the costs of generating environmental benefits | | | stimulate markets for environmental public goods. |
Commitments in environment and natural resource management have kept pace over the past years, with an unusually high level in fiscal 2005 due to two atypically large development policy loans in Latin America – the Programmatic Reform Loan for Environmental Sustainability Project in Brazil and the Programmatic Development Policy Loan for Sustainable Development Project in Columbia.
The total active portfolio of World Bank projects with environmental and natural resource activities amounted to $9.7 billion in fiscal 2006, or about 10.4 percent of the total Bank portfolio. This broader portfolio includes project components from the agriculture, energy, urban development, and water supply and sanitation sectors. Increasingly, environmental management activities are being integrated into projects in these other sectors. For example, more water and sanitation loans are addressing water quality management issues. Irrigation and other water management operations include support for policies that address sustainable water resource management, and urban projects include components for wastewater and solid waste management. The Betim Municipality project in Brazil is an example of how environment concerns are integrated in other investment lending. In addition, projects like the Betim Municipality involve investment in urban infrastructure, social services, project, and strengthened municipal governance and regulatory policies that improve the urban environment.
FIGURE 9
Environment and Natural Resource Management, New Lending Commitments,Fiscal 2000 to 2006 ($millions)
Complementing the operational and sector environmental work, the World Bank works with our client countries to help them meet the objectives of the international environmental conventions and associated protocols that they have ratified. To accomplish this, the World Bank actively engages in public and private partnerships to facilitate technical assistance, the transfer of financial resources and environmentally friendly technologies, and the development of markets for environmental goods and services. The World Bank is also an implementing agency of the Global Environment Facility(GEF), the Multilateral Fund for the Montreal Protocol, and the Convention to Combat Desertification. These facilities have enabled the institution to become the largest funder of projects in support of the Biodiversity Convention and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).
The World Bank's Global Environment Facility program supports projects addressing climate change, biodiversity, international waters, ozone layer depletion, land degradation, and persistent organic pollutants. The World Bank's active portfolio in fiscal 2006 consisted of 231 projects. Total GEF grant commitments were $1.61 billion (including EAs). This was an increase in commitments of 9 percent over fiscal 2005 compared with increases of 1, 5.6 and 3.4 percent respectively in the previous three years.
FIGURE 10
Total Active World Bank-GEF Portfolio, Fiscal 2000 to 2006 ( $ millions)
| The Global Program on Sustainable Fisheries (PROFISH) Marine fisheries are heavily overexploited and coral reefs are seriously threatened. While total fish yields are about the same every year, large commercially valuable species have been overfished, and increasingly smaller fish species are being captured, depleting the entire food chain. As Environment Department Director Warren Evans notes: “The crisis stems from a simple fact. We are currently taking fish out of the sea much faster than our existing fish stocks can replenish themselves.” Overfishing has dramatic implications for developing countries. Many people worldwide rely on fisheries for income and, even more important, as their primary source of protein. The depletion of fish stocks threatens people's health in coastal and inland communities, and overfishing leads to fewer jobs, higher fish prices, and is reducing an important source of revenue for developing countries – directly affecting economic development. The World Bank has established a new Global Program on Fisheries in association with key donors and stakeholders to meet this growing crisis. PROFISH is a programming and funding partnership working to create incentives for sustainable fisheries, better enforcement, and the equitable distribution of benefits. PROFISH serves as a platform for dialogue among stakeholders on contentious issues, such as subsidies for fleets, foreign access agreements, and transparency in fisheries management. |
Development Policy Loan for the Environment:
Dialogue with Finance Authorities on Sector Environmental Linkages Biodiversity |
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