Environmental Priorities for Financing Institutions

The reasons which recently forced the World Bank into environmental improvements are discussed, so that other financial institutions can profit from this experience. The reasons include due recognition that environmental abuse is constraining economic development, that environmental damage has now assumed massive proportions, and that such abuse is intensifying. The electorates of the World Bank's industrial shareholding nations began to pressure their representatives. Advocates of the poor, and of people affected by environmentally-bungled development projects, joined forces with environmental NGOs and added to the pressure for environmental reform.The World Bank's positive response led to a series of major institutional, procedural, and policy, reforms, which are provided as examples and suggestions to other financial bodies that need or at least desire to improve their environmental stance. The Bank's environmental policies are outlined, and the most powerful — Environmental Impact Assessment — is treated in detail.Based on this experience, the environmental opportunities available to other financiers are discussed. The case is presented that financiers becoming environmentally prudent in the ways suggested will out-compete their environmentally imprudent colleagues. The latter will go bust or be prosecuted. The paper ends with a rich menu of ideas through prosecution of which environmental responsibility can be sought by financiers.