Lima, Peru — As finance ministers from 46 member countries of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) arrive for the Bank’s annual meeting in Peru this week, hundreds of civil society organizations from throughout the continent join their Peruvian counterparts calling attention to the Bank’s failing social and environmental policies and weak enforcement mechanisms. The international spotlight is turning to the IDB, which has largely escaped the kind of scrutiny traditionally focused on the World Bank and IMF.
Given this year’s meeting in Peru, the controversial Camisea gas project in the Peruvian Amazon and the bank’s failing environmental policies will be a major focus of civil society criticism. The Camisea project—which received conditional approval from the IDB for $75 million in September 2003—is paving the way for the destruction of some of the world’s most pristine rainforests and threatening the lives isolated indigenous peoples. Indigenous leaders are also concerned that the project consortia are attempting to divide and weaken local indigenous organizations and manipulate local and national authorities to serve their own interests.
As a result of pressure from civil society and indigenous organizations, the Bank’s Executive Vice President, Dennis Flannery sent a letter last week announcing the IDB’s delay of the Camisea loan, dealing a blow to the Peruvian Government and the companies who had hoped for a ceremonial loan signing with the Bank’s President at the annual meeting.
In his statement Flannery wrote “You may know that parties involved in this [Camisea] project had hoped that our bank could finalize this commitment to finance the project at or prior to the Annual Meeting of our Board of Governors scheduled for the last days of this month in Lima. After a careful review of the status of various elements of the project this past Monday, we made the decision to postpone financial closure beyond our annual meetings.” Flannery’s statement was in response to an NGO letter based on information collected from affected indigenous communities in the lower and upper Urubamba valley which documented numerous serious unresolved impacts and failures of loan conditions by the Camisea consortium and the Peruvian Government.
The IDB also voted last week to approve the release of a new draft environmental policy, which environmentalists feel fails to meet minimum international norms and positions the Bank at the bottom of all major international financial institutions at a time when both public and private financial institutions are adopting stronger environmental policies.
The Bank is also under scrutiny of anti-globalization movement for its policies promoting privatization of water, free trade agreements and economic integration that is based heavily on the unsustainable expansion of export-driven extractive industries.
Civil society groups and representatives from indigenous communities affected by IDB projects converging in Lima this week will be holding parallel forums and meeting with senior Bank officials. Background information, video footage and press interviews in English and Spanish are available upon request. # # #
