Foreclosing the Future: The World Bank and the Politics of Environmental Destruction

Bruce M. Rich
{"title":"Foreclosing the Future: The World Bank and the Politics of Environmental Destruction","authors":"Bruce M. Rich","doi":"10.5822/978-1-61091-184-9","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has vowed that his institution will fight poverty and climate change, a claim that World Bank presidents have made for two decades. But if worldwide protests and reams of damning internal reports are any indication, it is doing just the opposite. By funding development projects and programmes that warm the planet and destroy critical natural resources on which the poor depend, the Bank has been hurting the very people it claims to serve. What explains this blatant contradiction? If anyone has the answer, it is arguably Bruce Rich - a lawyer and expert in public international finance who has for the last three decades studied the Bank's institutional contortions, the real-world consequences of its lending, and the politics of the global environmental crisis. What emerges from the bureaucratic dust is a disturbing and gripping story of corruption, larger-than-life personalities, perverse incentives, and institutional amnesia. The World Bank is the Vatican of development finance, and its dysfunction plays out as a reflection of the political hypocrisies and failures of governance of its 188 member countries. Foreclosing the Future shows how the Bank's failure to address the challenges of the 21st century has implications for everyone in an increasingly interdependent world. Rich depicts how the World Bank is a microcosm of global political and economic trends - powerful forces that threaten both environmental and social ruin.","PeriodicalId":236024,"journal":{"name":"Foreclosing the Future","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2013-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"23","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Foreclosing the Future","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-184-9","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 23

Abstract

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has vowed that his institution will fight poverty and climate change, a claim that World Bank presidents have made for two decades. But if worldwide protests and reams of damning internal reports are any indication, it is doing just the opposite. By funding development projects and programmes that warm the planet and destroy critical natural resources on which the poor depend, the Bank has been hurting the very people it claims to serve. What explains this blatant contradiction? If anyone has the answer, it is arguably Bruce Rich - a lawyer and expert in public international finance who has for the last three decades studied the Bank's institutional contortions, the real-world consequences of its lending, and the politics of the global environmental crisis. What emerges from the bureaucratic dust is a disturbing and gripping story of corruption, larger-than-life personalities, perverse incentives, and institutional amnesia. The World Bank is the Vatican of development finance, and its dysfunction plays out as a reflection of the political hypocrisies and failures of governance of its 188 member countries. Foreclosing the Future shows how the Bank's failure to address the challenges of the 21st century has implications for everyone in an increasingly interdependent world. Rich depicts how the World Bank is a microcosm of global political and economic trends - powerful forces that threaten both environmental and social ruin.
《阻止未来:世界银行与环境破坏政治》
世界银行(World Bank)行长金墉(Jim Yong Kim)誓言,他的机构将与贫困和气候变化作斗争。20年来,世界银行历任行长都是这么说的。但是,如果世界范围内的抗议和大量谴责的内部报告是什么迹象的话,那么它的做法恰恰相反。世界银行资助的发展项目和计划使地球变暖,破坏了穷人赖以生存的关键自然资源,这伤害了它声称为之服务的人民。如何解释这种明显的矛盾?如果说有人能给出答案的话,那就是布鲁斯•里奇了。他是一名律师,也是国际公共金融领域的专家,在过去的三十年里,他一直在研究世行的制度扭曲、世行贷款的现实后果以及全球环境危机的政治。从官僚主义的尘埃中浮现出来的是一个令人不安和扣人心弦的故事,涉及腐败、传奇人物、不正当的动机和制度性失忆。世界银行是发展金融领域的梵蒂冈,其功能失调反映了其188个成员国的政治虚伪和治理失败。《展望未来》表明,在一个日益相互依存的世界上,世行未能应对21世纪的挑战对每个人都产生了怎样的影响。里奇描述了世界银行如何成为全球政治和经济趋势的一个缩影,这些趋势是威胁着环境和社会毁灭的强大力量。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 求助全文
来源期刊
自引率
0.00%
发文量
0
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
确定
请完成安全验证×
copy
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
右上角分享
点击右上角分享
0
联系我们:info@booksci.cn Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。 Copyright © 2023 布克学术 All rights reserved.
京ICP备2023020795号-1
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:604180095
Book学术官方微信