World Bank

World Bank President Admits Past Errors, Predicts Revolts Over Inequality

April 6, 2014 Jon Queally, www.commondreams.org Educate! Climate Change, Food and Agriculture, World Bank

President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, is warning that the combined crises of planetary climate change and rising global inequality in a highly interconnected world will lead to the rise of widespread upheaval as the world's poor rise up and clashes over access to clean water and affordable food result in increased violence and political conflict. Despite the acknowledgement of the problem, however, and even as he made mea culpa for past errors by the powerful financial institution he now runs (including a global push to privatize drinking water resources and utilities), Kim laid the blame on inaction on the very people who have done the most to alert humanity to the crisis, saying that both climate change activists and informed scientists have not done enough to offer a plan to address global warming in a way he deems "serious."

World Bank Accused Of Destroying Small Farms for Land Grabs

April 2, 2014 Kristen Thomaselli, www.oaklandinstitute.org Educate! Food and Agriculture, Land Rights, World Bank

“The World Bank is facilitating land grabs and sowing poverty by putting the interests of foreign investors before those of locals,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. “Smallholder farmers and herders are currently feeding 80 percent of the developing world. Casting them aside in favor of industrial farming corporations from the West betrays the World Bank’s reckless and short term approach to development,” said Alnoor Ladha, Executive Director of /The Rules. The Bank’s “Doing Business” rankings, which score countries according to how Washington officials perceive the “ease of doing business” there, have caused many developing-country leaders to deregulate their economies in hopes of attracting foreign investment. But what the World Bank considers beneficial for foreign business is very often the exact opposite for existing farmers and herders.

World Bank’s New Agriculture Project Threatens Food Security

April 2, 2014 Sam Jones, www.theguardian.com Resist! Food and Agriculture, Land Rights, World Bank

A World Bank pilot project designed to measure and improve agricultural productivity will jeopardise food security in developing countries and create a "one-size-fits-all model of development where corporations reign supremely", according to a coalition of thinktanks and NGOs. An international campaign – Our Land; Our Business – is urging the Bank to abandon its Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture (BBA) programme, claiming it will serve only to encourage corporate land grabs and undermine the smallholder farmers who produce 80% of the food consumed in the developing world. The campaign, whose signatories include the US-based Oakland Institute think-tank and the Pan-African Institute for Consumer Citizenship and Development, argues that the Bank's attempts to adapt its ease-of-doing-business rankings to the agricultural sector will sow poverty "by putting the interests of foreign investors before those of locals".

Time To Reverse The World Bank Land Grab #OURBIZ

April 1, 2014 Staff, www.ourlandourbusiness.org Resist! IMF, World Bank

WHOSE LAND IS IT ANYWAY? #OURBIZ Right now, millions of people are being thrown off their land because large corporations are being given special rights. The World Bank is driving this destructive trend with its Doing Business rankings, which force countries to compete with each other to do away with things like environmental protections, workers rights and corporation taxes. Stand with us to tell the World Bank and the land grabbers it’s our land, our business.

Time To Shut Down The World Bank

January 28, 2014 Cyril Mychalejko, www.truth-out.org Educate! World Bank

Around the world, from Ethiopia to Indonesia and Peru, the World Bank finds itself embroiled in controversies surrounding human rights violations, environmental destruction, and social discord. NGO’s for years have been calling for sweeping reforms at the World Bank, but to no avail. It’s time to recognize that the World Bank is an institution incapable of reform, and is indeed unworthy of reform efforts. The only humane option is to focus efforts to close the bank immediately and to start building alternative financial institutions that promote local, community-led development projects guided by the principals of sustainability and solidarity rather than free market doctrine.

World Bank’s Lending Arm Linked To Deadly Honduras Conflict

January 11, 2014 Kate Woodsome, www.huufingtonpost.com Educate! Corporatism, Finance and the Economy, World Bank

The World Bank's private lending arm failed to apply its own ethical standards in disbursing millions of dollars to a palm oil company accused of turning a region of Honduras into a war zone, according to an internal bank investigation. The audit, released Friday by the World Bank’s Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, says IFC staff underestimated the social and environmental risks related to the security and land conflict associated with its investment in palm oil giant Corporacion Dinant. The audit and the bank’s response to it are a major test of World Bank President Jim Kim’s pledge to learn from mistakes made in the multi-billion dollar business of providing loans and risk guarantees for IFC private sector projects.

World Bank Whistleblower Karen Hudes Reveals How The Global Elite Rule The World

October 3, 2013 Michael Snyder, www.activistpost.com Educate! Finance and the Economy, Video, World Bank

Karen Hudes is a graduate of Yale Law School and she worked in the legal department of the World Bank for more than 20 years. In fact, when she was fired for blowing the whistle on corruption inside the World Bank, she held the position of Senior Counsel. She was in a unique position to see exactly how the global elite rule the world, and the information that she is now revealing to the public is absolutely stunning. According to Hudes, the elite use a very tight core of financial institutions and mega-corporations to dominate the planet. The goal is control. They want all of us enslaved to debt, they want all of our governments enslaved to debt, and they want all of our politicians addicted to the huge financial contributions that they funnel into their campaigns.

«1 2 3 4 5 »

Daily movement news and resources