On February 22nd, a three-day consultation on the World Bank’s social and environmental safeguards policies began in Washington, DC. Safeguards policy consultations provide a space for civil society and government officials to discuss the proposed safeguards draft with World Bank representatives. The consultation in DC is one of over thirty such meetings taking place in …
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Water Disputes Persist as Rio Tinto Pushes Ahead with Second Oyu Tolgoi Mine (PRAGUE; KHANBOGD SOUM, MONGOLIA, February 10, 2016) – A large new copper mine in Mongolia could cause irreversible damage to terrain and deprive water from some of the world’s last remaining nomadic herding groups, finds a new report released today …
BIC Forest Associate Rachel Baker co-wrote the following article with Beatriz Zavariz and Paulina Deschamps, originally posted on the Bretton Woods Project website. Beatriz Zavariz and Paulina Deschamps, Mexico, and Rachel Baker, Bank Information Center
New research from p4ges project and the UK ecosystem services for poverty alleviation programme: Livelihood projects designed to compensate for the local costs of conservation may not be reaching the right people A team of researchers from the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar and Bangor University in the UK have found that REDD+ social safeguards do not …
The World Bank Group is currently rolling out their new Country Engagement Approach, moving towards engagement based on rigorous analysis and the inclusion of citizens as active stakeholders. As input to this process, civil society groups who work to monitor and engage with the World Bank recently presented recommendations to the Bank as it refines …
On January 21 and 22, BIC hosted a child rights expert meeting to discuss how to operationalize the World Bank’s proposed new requirement to assess risks to children in its investment loans. The Bank’s latest draft of the updated safeguards, now known as the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF), was released in the summer of …
Report finds development banks fail people harmed by their projects: Civil society calls on banks to strengthen their complaint mechanisms to provide remedy A new report launched today by several BIC partners documents the hurdles communities and workers face in obtaining remedy from development banks whose projects cause them harm. Glass Half Full? The State …
On December 28 2015, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim announced the cancellation of funding to the deeply troubled Uganda Transport Sector Development Project (TSDP), a project BIC’s child rights program has long been raising concerns about. The project cancellation was due to concerns over labor issues, social and environmental concerns, poor project performance, …
[Valerie Plesch/Al Jazeera] BIC’s Nezir Sinani was quoted in an Al Jazeera article on Kosovo’s coal country by Valerie Plesch. The article finds that “residents living in the polluting shadows of two power plants may soon contend with a third.” Find the full article here.