Community Controlled Impact Assessment and Impact and Benefit Agreements: Relevance for upward harmonization of World Bank Group Safeguard Policies Presentation and Panel Discussion with Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh Professor of Politics and Public Policy in the School of Government and International Relations, Griffiths University, Australia Panel Moderator: Vince McElhinny, Sr. Policy Advisor, Bank Information Center Respondents: Meg Taylor, …
Representatives of civil society, indigenous communities, government and the press gathered in San Pedro Sula, Honduras from Sept. 23 to Sept. 25 for the “First International Workshop on Social and Environmental Safeguards in Indigenous Territories and Forest Communities of Mesoamerica,” an initiative of the Bank Information Center, and for the Community Forestry Pre-Congress, organized by …
BIC, behind the efforts of Senior Policy Advisor Vince McElhinny, now has an informational brief on lending trends with the World Bank available. The document, replete with informational figures and facts, forecasts a further decline in safeguard coverage and points to signs of a return to to higher risk/reward lending. With these lending policies and …
Photo credit: Atossa Soltani/ Amazon Watch/ Spectral Q Mayalú Txucarramãe and Patricia Gualinga engaged an audience of civil society members, including BIC, in their discussion on Wednesday of women’s role in the struggles of indigenous communities to protect their lands, their rights, and their way of life from destructive infrastructure and extractive projects in the …
Image: A visually impaired respondent raises concerns during FGD at pawel parish in Patiko Sub County, Gulu district, Uganda The Disability and World Bank Safeguards Campaign, a partnership between the Bank Information Center and the Lebanese Physical Handicapped Union, submitted revised World Bank Environmental Assessment Policy (OP 4.01), Indigenous Peoples Policy (OP 4.10), and Involuntary Resettlement …
On August 2, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) opened the first phase of public consultations on its Independent Consultation and Investigation Mechanism (ICIM), aiming to revise and update the ICIM policy that has been in effect since September 2010. The ICIM (commonly known by its Spanish acronym, MICI) is an IDB policy that establishes an independent body …
The Community Forestry Pre-Congress, an initiative by the Mesoamerican Alliance of People and Forests, will take place on September 24th and 25th in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. BIC and more than twenty other organizations from eight different countries will participate in the Community Forestry Pre-Congress: “Community Forestry as the Basis of Governance and the Starting …
Mexican civil society and indigenous representatives convened on June 24th and 25th in Mexico City for a workshop entitled “Towards the Construction and Articulation of Knowledge in the Process of Shaping REDD+”. With the goal of creating a new space for dialogue and shared learning around REDD, regional representatives from the Yucatan Peninsula, Central Mexico, and Northern …
A group of Egyptian civil society organizations have submitted their recommendations to the World Bank as input to Phase 1 of the Social and Environmental Safeguard policy review process. The document was endorsed by many of the same organizations that pushed the Bank to hold a civil society consultation in Cairo since such a meeting …
In the consultations, which took place in Delhi, Bangalore, and Bhubaneshwar, civil society moved beyond the confines of Bank’s formal consultation meetings where assessments in earlier consultations have been mixed. In the protests against the consultations, Indian civil society has charged the World Bank with funding environmentally unsustainable projects while claiming the Bank has been complicit in numerous human rights abuses and environmental violations.