World Bank: Climate Threatening Programs
The Houston Chronical is reporting World Bank: Climate Threatening Programs.
About one quarter of World Bank development programs may be at risk because of climate change, the organization warned Tuesday at an environmental summit.
Projects in small island states are already being affected because of rising sea levels and storm surges, which have affected the water supply and infrastructure, World Bank environment director Warren Evans said.
He said dry countries in sub-Saharan Africa also were bearing the brunt of the damage because of the impact of climate change on crucial farm production.
It’s not too surprising that poorer countries are being forced to bear the brunt of global warming. It’s certainly not fair either. And The World Bank is hardly guilt free here. It is, after all, an institution designed to rip the remaining wealth from the developing world. As the book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and others make abundantly clear, all aid is really just economic warfare. But The World Bank is rightly concerned about the future of their projects.
“We are trying to help countries deal with risk of climate change today, then they will be in better position to manage and adapt in future,” he said.
But he said there was huge uncertainty. For instance, decisions to build water dams were typically based on a century’s worth of hydrological data.
There’s no small irony in this. The World Bank foists these massive hydro projects onto countries that don’t need them and can ill afford them and imposes crippling structural readjustment programmes on the poor country whose head is on the pointy end of the stick. The construction of these projects only really benefits the massive engineering companies who do the building, and a handful of corrupt local leaders who get political largess and some skim as the money detours through their coffers on route from the banks. These guys will get their money regardless of whether the rivers dry up, the mountains crumble, and the populations starve. Warren Evans and his ilk are crying crocodile tears. — DS
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