The World Bank made a stumbling defence of its track record of causing environmental and social damage when financing projects in the Amazon.
Speaking at a seminar at the IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington on October 18, Valerie Hickey, practice manager for the environment and natural resources in LAC at the World Bank, said: “Development is hard and we have made mistakes, but we have learned. [Though] sometimes we forgot what we have learned.”
Deforestation caused by illegal fires has spiked under the administration of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
Livi Gerbase, policy adviser at the Brazil-based NGO Inesc, said that deforestation had jumped by 91.7% between January and August this year when compared to 2018 – the highest rate in over a decade.
She pointed to studies that prove that much of this deforestation is directly caused by large-scale infrastructure projects, many of which have been financed by the World Bank.
“Roads and ports create pathways to deforestation and the expansion of the agricultural frontier – which in turns leads to demand for further infrastructure,” says Gerbase.
