My work on international financial institutions (IFIs), with Amazon Watch has deep roots. As far back as 1995, I was part of a creative campaign to draw attention to the environmental threat posed by World Bank projects in Ecuador – my native country. Now as the Policy Director at Amazon Watch, my work in coordination with a dozen of other organizations from North and Latin America has been mostly devoted to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
This is a critical year to push the multilateral banks for deep changes, following the G-20 commitment in London in 2009 to re-capitalize the banks conditioned on a series of reforms. Our informal IDB working group is perhaps the most consolidated North-South effort to engage one of the multi-lateral banks across a spectrum of environmental and social issues. We have addressed a host of initiatives with the IDB, including: the Ninth Capital Increase, environmental and social safeguards, climate change and renewable energy, the implementation of civil society committees at the country level, and Bank reforms to evaluation, planning and policy.
As we gain traction with the IDB, new challenges have emerged from national development banks like the Brazil’s BNDES as well as Chinese investors. These new entrants threaten to undermine the gains on human rights and accountability made over many decades with traditional IFIs through a “race to the bottom” to invest with minimal conditions for maximum financial return.
We have learned much from our work around the IDB and other banks and know that there is great potential to influence critical actors through North-South collaborations. At the same time, it is clear that we need more participation from the region, especially from indigenous and local communities from the Amazon. We are reaching out to new groups in to gain insights and potential collaborations to address these challenges.
