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PANUPS: NGOs Condemn World Bank



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                   Pesticide Action Network 
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November 15, 1996

NGOs Condemn World Bank for Gutting Pesticide 
Policy

The World Bank is backtracking on earlier 
commitments to reduce pesticide use in agricultural 
projects, according to over 100 environmental, 
consumer and development organizations from the 
United States and around the world. The World Bank 
recently issued a new operational policy which 
offers only vague guidance to its staff about what 
kinds of pest management practices should be 
funded, and says nothing about farmer participation 
in project design. In a letter sent to World Bank 
President James Wolfensohn on November 8, 1996, the 
groups call for the Bank to reinstate an earlier 
policy which gave specific direction to Bank staff 
on how to minimize pesticide use and promoted an 
ecologically sustainable approach known as 
Integrated Pest Management (IPM).

IPM controls pest problems through biological 
controls and other natural means. IPM also 
emphasizes ecological education, with farmers 
taking the lead in developing locally appropriate 
pest control methods, often relying on traditional 
practices in combination with scientific analysis. 
This insures that agricultural projects actually 
meet the needs of the rural poor whom they are 
supposed to help.

In the letter, the NGOs state that as the Bank's 
only current mandatory policy on IPM, this new one 
and a half page document represents yet another 
retreat from the Bank's first 1985 policy on pest 
management, which contained an articulate 
definition of "sound pest management" with 22 
operational requirements. Over the past 10 years, 
the Bank has moved to downgrade this original 
policy. 

In 1988 and 1989, the Bank convened a panel of 
experts, which included one NGO representative, to 
advise the Bank on how to upgrade its existing pest 
management policy with detailed step-by-step 
guidelines that would enable task managers to 
implement IPM successfully. The Bank adopted the 
panel's core findings in its 1992 directive but 
announced that detailed recommendations from the 
panel's report would be incorporated into an 
"Agricultural Pest Management Handbook" that would 
be released, according to Bank officials, "fairly 
soon." Four years later, the Handbook has still not 
been published. Moreover, the Bank's 1996 IPM 
strategy paper showed that implementation of the 
requirements in the 1992 policy has been virtually 
nil. 

According to a recent internal Operations 
Evaluation Department study, only about half of the 
Bank's agricultural projects are satisfactorily 
achieving their goals. The situation is even more 
serious since the Operations Evaluation Department 
has found that only about a third of agricultural 
research and extension projects are satisfactorily 
implemented, and that the Bank's "Training and 
Visit" system does not engage active participation 
of farmers and fails to develop appropriate farming 
practices for local farming systems.

"The World Bank has just taken a giant step 
backwards," said Mimi Kleiner, a policy analyst 
with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). The Bank 
appears to be weakening its policies, because it is 
under increasing pressure to actually carry them 
out," said Kleiner. "For years, both NGOs and 
internal Bank reports have documented the World 
Bank's failure to implement its own policies. Now 
an independent 'Inspection Panel' exists which can 
actually hold the Bank accountable for how its 
projects affect poor farmers around the world." 
Along with their letter, the NGOs provided as 
evidence an internal Bank memorandum which states, 
"Our experiences with the Inspection Panel are 
teaching us that we have to be increasingly careful 
in setting policy that we are able to implement in 
practice." According to Kleiner, "Rather than 
making an effort to live up to its own guidelines, 
the Bank appears to be lowering its standards."

Sources: Consumer Policy Institute/Environmental 
Defense Fund/Pesticide Action Network press 
release, November 11, 1996. Joint letter to Mr. 
James Wolfensohn, November 8, 1996.
Contact: 
Mimi Kleiner, Environmental Defense Fund, 1875 
Connecticut NW, Suite 1016, Washington DC 20009; 
phone (202) 387-3500; fax (202) 234-6049; email 
mimi@edf.org.
Michael Hansen, Consumer Policy Institute, 101 
Truman Avenue, Yonkers, NY 10703; phone (914) 378-
2455; fax (914) 378-2928; email 
hansmi@consumer.org.
Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Pesticide Action Network 
North America, 116 New Montgomery, San Francisco, 
CA 94105; phone (415) 541-9140; fax (415) 541-9253; 
email panna@panna.org.

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