Protesters, IMF and World Bank Wrangle With Information Gap in Issues by Sean OíDriscoll Itís a Friday morning, outside the Federal Triangle Metro stop in Washington, D.C. Confiscated bicycles lie in a heap on the grass while heavily armed police stand in the rain, listening to the chant of protesters. Office workers peer at the protesters and the bikes, confused by the scenes in front of them. ìI donít know what itís about,î said one, ìI just wish they would get on with it.î Itís the end of a ìbike strike,î one of the many protests held in late September to mark World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in the city. As both sides of this dispute agree, there is a serious information gap between those familiar with the huge issues involved, and most of the general public trying to get past the gnarl of political protests blocking downtown Washington. Protest co-coordinator, Jim Vallette, research director at the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, is very relieved to find a reporter interested in the issues and not the slogans. He is here to protest World Bank environmental and social policies, pointing to www.seen.org, a Web site containing informati on on hundreds of World Bank-funded fossil fuel projects since the Earth Summit in 1992. The 700-kilometer Chad-Cameroon pipeline particularly outrages Vallette, who claims that it has devastated the Cameroon rainforest and disrupted the local community. So how much of this is true? Are the protesters blowing hot air or alerting the world to real dangers? The World Bank confirms that its Inspection Panel, which investigates public complaints, has criticized the Chad-Cameroon project for a lack of environmental assessment as well as a lack of consideration for the environmental costs, and for not giving adequate thought to alternative measures. The Inspection Panel, which praised aspects of the project, also criticized the bank for not complying with economic evaluation and poverty reduction requirements. And that type of open criticism, says World Bank spokesman Damien Milverton, is precisely why the system is not the rigid, insensitive monolith that protesters make it out to be. ìWe are accountable to the World Bank Inspection Panel. We have a huge section dealing with environmental concerns,î Milverton said. ìThe fact that the project has been criticized and the findings published on the Internet shows that, unlike many of the protest groups, we are accountable, we cannot hide behind Web sites that disappear in weeks.î Ian Johnson, World Bank vice president for environmentally and socially sustainable development, said the bank is living up to a multivolume environmental assessment of the project. According to Johnson, even a small nongovernmental organization can make a complaint to the Inspection Panelóon issues from workersí rights to the environmentóand the panel then investigates the claim. ìWe are far more accountable than most governments, and we need to get that message across,î Johnson said. He added that the Inspection Panel has criticized only 27 of 1,500 current World Bank projects. ìItís 27 too many but a very good record nonetheless.î However, the World Bankís claim that the Inspection Panel is an independent investigative body is a source of derision for the protesters. As the Inspection Panelís own Web site explains, the bankís board of directors must approve a recommendation to investigate, and once the investigation has taken place, the board of directors makes the final decision on whether action is to be taken. The Inspection Panel is made up of three people appointed by the board of directors. The 24-member board, in turn, represents all 184 World Bank members. However, member-country representation on the board depends on their World Bank shareholding. France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States have permanent board representation, all with varying vote sizeóthe United States has nearly 17 percent of the total vote, Japan has 8 percent and Germany 4.5 percent. The other 179 countries have smaller votes and less representationóRussia, for instance, has only 2 percent of the vote and Afghanistan .03 percent. It is this weighted voting system that has enraged protesters. ìThe World Bank is an undemocratic organization that is rigged to allow corporate rule by friends of the World Bank,î said Patrick Reinsborough, an anarchist coordinator of the Global Justice Movement. Johnson flatly rejects the charge: ìIt is the developing countries who have the most to gain by infrastructure development. They are the ones coming to us asking for our help, and we are giving our best to help them. We are not here to promote any corporation.î Claims that the World Bank has allowed companies such as Enron to gain lucrative third-world business is also rejected by World Bank spokesman Milverton, who said that protesters are using ìrather lame tacticsî to attach the bank to U.S. corporate scandals. He pointed to the World Bankís decision to suspend its support for a $100 million water project in Ghana after it was awarded to Enronís Azurix unit. The World Bankís Ghana director, Peter Harrold, sent a strongly worded written cancellation to the Ghanaian government, which included serious questions about a $5 million unspecified allotment in Azurixís outgoing payments. ìWe cannot have made it plainer to you that the key issue is transparency,î Harrold wrote. Although criticized for World Bank projects, Johnsonís name is used to support some protestersí claims against the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the other big target of the protestersí wrath. Protesters say the IMF, which works out macroeconomic loans with individual countries, has crippled poor countries with debt and pressured them into diverting revenue from health and education into debt repayment. Debi Kar, who works for the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, attended a ìPeopleís Forumî in Farragut Park, where protesters discussed ways to spread their message. She said the IMF mission chief in Ecuador, Bob Traa, had put pressure on the Ecuadorian government to put 100 percent of a major new pipelineís revenue into debt repayment at the expense of health and education. IMF spokesman Bill Murray does accept that the fund ìpreferred that 100 percent of receipts from the new pipeline go toward debt reductionî to address Ecuadorís large debt load. He added that the Ecuadorian authorities have since decided not to go ahead with the standby loan agreement. ìWe have not criticized education and health spending by the government,î he said. ìThere has been a great deal of misinformation spread inside and outside Ecuador about what exactly our position has been, and the reputed views on education and health spending are a prime example.î Kar also pointed to environmental damage caused by the pipeline and said that the World Bankís Johnson raised such concerns when he wrote to the Ecuadorian government. The World Bank agreed that although it is not involved in the project, it did raise serious environmental issues with the Ecuadorian government about the pipelineís environmental and social implications. In addition, IMF officials were quick to point out that the fund operates at a macroeconomic level and is not involved in planning individual projects. They also said the IMF has made huge progress in setting new loan conditions so that countries use the funds for projects that are environmentally sound and are of benefit to the general public. According to spokesman Murray, the protesters have not kept up with the big changes in the organization and are caught up with ìold fundî issues. Not so, said Greg Wilpert, a sociologist and writer from Caracas, Venezuela, who says that the IMF conditions for new loans are far too strict and do not allow for sustainable development. He is measured in his criticism, and he was quick to correct an American protester who made wild claims about the IMFís involvement in Venezuela. Wilpert is the kind of protester the IMF says it can engage withópeople who know their facts and are not just spouting ill-defined slogans. According to Murray, the IMFís actions are clearly visible to the public. ìTen years ago, the information on our Web site would only have been a few pages. Now there is reams of information, how much countries owe, when they owe it, and the conditions of lending.î He noted that like all member countries, Venezuela has a choice on whether to accept IMF assistance or not. ìWe do not offer a blank check, and there are guidelines whic h help countries to reach their financial goals.î Murray pointed to highly indebted poorer countries (HIPCs), a World Bank and IMF proposal that aims to reduce the debt of the worldís poorest countries. The new arrangement, he said, will allow these countries to free themselves from debt while increasing investment in education and health. He added that the IMF would not work without clearly defined rules for repayment. ìPersonal finance is so complex as we all know. Now multiply that to the level of one country and multiply that by all the countries in IMF programsóyou see there simply need to be rules that we must respect if countries are to benefit.î The above is only a small sampling of the huge wad of disagreements between the protesters and the two institutions. A full back-and-forth dialogue between them would fill an encyclopedia set. ìWe could go on forever about each and every argument. We are not against all the protesters; not all of them are against us,î said the World Bankís Milverton. ìWe are willing to change. We are willing to debate. That is not a loss, that is how we grow.î Sean OíDriscoll is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.