world bank

saviours or a bunch o' lying weasels? i vote for the bunch. perhaps they started out with good intentions. something went wrong somewhere

World Bank pledges to save trees... then helps cut down Amazon forest
month ago it vowed to fight deforestation. Now research reveals it funds the rainforest's biggest threat. By Daniel Howden
The World Bank has emerged as one of the key backers behind an explosion of cattle ranching in the Amazon, which new research has identified as the greatest threat to the survival of the rainforest.
Ranching has grown by half in the last three years, driven by new industrial slaughterhouses which are being constructed in the Amazon basin with the help of the World Bank. The revelation flies in the face of claims from the bank that it is funding efforts to halt deforestation and reduce the massive greenhouse gas emissions it causes.
Roberto Smeraldi, head of Friends of the Earth Brazil and lead author of the new report, obtained exclusively by The Independent on Sunday, said the bank's contradictory policy on forests was now clear: "On the one hand you try and save the forest, on the other you give incentives for its conversion."
There are now more than 74 million cattle reared in the Amazon basin, the world's most important eco-system, where they outnumber people by a ratio of more than three to one. Fuelled by massive illegal ranches, the South American giant has become the world's leading beef exporter, rearing more cattle than all 25 EU members put together. This industrial expansion comes despite international agreements to combat deforestation, and claims from the government of Brazil that it is succeeding in slowing the destruction of the world's largest standing forest............

center for economic justice-boycott world bank bonds now