The World Bank has recently launched a plan to reduce the conditions on which it lends up to $50bn a year to developing countries. Experts have condemned this decision as potentially disastrous for the environment, representing a measure able to weaken the protection of indigenous peoples and the poor. Experts show that existing environmental and social protection will be undermined to allow logging and mining in most ecologically sensitive areas. Moreover, indigenous peoples will not have the possibility to be consulted before major projects like palm oil plantations or large dams palm go ahead on land that they traditionally occupy. According to World Bank watchdog groups including the Bank Information Centre (BIC), the Ulu Foundation and the International Trade Union Confederation, the new program will damage existing protection for biodiversity. Additionally, countries will be allowed to establish harmful projects for the environmental safety. In line with this, environmental groups point that this plan represents an alarming attempt to undermine protections for the poorest, allowing the destruction of forests and the natural environment. The plan will lessen the usual requirements to evaluate impacts on people and the environment of a project, allowing governments to use their own discretion, weakening the existing standards. In addition to that, the Bank Information Centre has stressed that the plan could strongly damage the respect of international human rights law. To address these concerns, the World Bank has outlined that the new plan will foster sustainable development, highlighting its efforts to protect people and the environment. In this way, this new policy represents an instrument to address extreme poverty, promoting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner in its partner countries. The gLAWcal Team The EPSEI project Saturday, 26 July 2014 (Source: The Guardian)