scholarly journals Boulevard to broken dreams, Part 2: Implementation of the Polonoroeste road project in the Brazilian Amazon, and the World Bank's response to the gathering storm

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 646-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT H. WADE
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Brazilian Amazon ◽  
Environmental Ngos ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Operational Policies ◽  
The World ◽  
Road Project ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACT: This is the second part of the essay on the circumstances that led the World Bank to embrace norms and operational policies for environmental and indigenous people's protection in the late 1980s, as traced through the turbulent history of the Polonoroeste road project in the Brazilian Amazon. Polonoroeste became the spearhead with which environmental NGOs made their first attack on the Bank for participating in large-scale environmental and indigenous peoples' destruction.

scholarly journals Boulevard to broken dreams, Part 1: the Polonoroeste road project in the Brazilian Amazon, and the World Bank's environmental and indigenous peoples' norms

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 214-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT H. WADE
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Brazilian Amazon ◽  
Us Congress ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Road Project ◽  
The Government

ABSTRACT Before the mid 1980s the World Bank conceived "nature" as something to be "conquered" and "environment" as a source of resources for "development". By the late 1980s the Bank incorporated norms of environmental sustainability and indigenous peoples' protection into its mandate, and other development-oriented IOs followed. This two-part paper describes how a fight over the Polonoroeste road project in the Brazilian Amazon - inside the Bank, between the Bank and NGOs supported by the US Congress, and between the Bank and the government of Brazil -helped to generate the far-reaching change of policy norms. The first part describes how the project was designed as an innovation in sustainable development in rainforests; and how it provoked a firestorm inside the Bank as it moved towards project approval.

The History of the World Bank

2002 ◽  
Vol 112 (477) ◽  
pp. F119-F135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Marcus
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

The Operational Policies of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel D. Bradlow ◽  
Andria Naudé Fourie
Keyword(s):  
International Finance ◽  
World Bank ◽  
International Finance Corporation ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Institutional Accountability ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
Operational Policies ◽  
The World ◽  
Rule Making

International financial institutions (‘IFIs’), such as the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (‘IFC’), have progressively refined their own operational policies and established institutional accountability mechanisms, such as the Inspection Panel and Compliance Advisory Ombudsman, in response to external and internal demands for their enhanced accountability. This article argues that these two developments are instrumental in transforming IFIs such as the World Bank and the IFC into law-making and law-governed institutions. We argue that the operational policies, as well as the institutional processes surrounding these policies (that is, rule-making, rule-application and rule-enforcement processes), should be assessed in legal terms – even though the legal nature of the operational policies are contested, and the policies are only applicable to IFI staff and their borrowers. The main objective of this article is to provide an analysis in support of this contention.

Gunboats and Diplomacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor St John
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
British Government ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The World ◽  
The Icj ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Memories

Chapter two outlines antecedents of the ICSID Convention. The antagonisms emerging from the long history of investment dispute settlement are briefly discussed, in particular historical memories about separate courts and separate law for foreigners. Early twentieth-century efforts to replace the use of force with arbitration and later work to reframe foreign investment as a tool for development instead of a tool of imperialism provided more hopeful antecedents. Decolonization brought with it high expectations, but also disillusionment: disputes like Abadan (in which the British government sent gunboats, then asked the UN Security Council, the ICJ, and the World Bank to act, before ultimately staging a coup) made capital-importing governments wary and led many officials to believe the world needed new machinery to resolve disputes between investors and states.

Indigenous Peoples’ Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) and the World Bank Safeguards: Between Norm Emergence and Concept Appropriation

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-244
Author(s):  
Stéphanie de Moerloose
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Informed Consent ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Law And Development ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Literature ◽  
Norm Emergence

The question of the consent of indigenous peoples is at least as old as colonization. Indeed, the consent of indigenous peoples was already an issue at the heart of treaty-making between colonial settlers and indigenous peoples. The issue of indigenous peoples’ consent, understood as their Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), has been re-emerging and gaining acceptance internationally in international Human Rights law over the last 30 years. When the new World Bank safeguards were adopted in 2016, one of the most discussed topics during the consultation rounds had been the integration in the safeguards of the concept of the FPIC of indigenous peoples, as it had been notoriously absent from the previous safeguards. Finally, FPIC was made part of the new safeguards. This paper first maps the concept of FPIC under international law from a postcolonial perspective. Then, it attempts to analyze the processes of operationalization of the concept by the World Bank in the new safeguards, drawing on Human Rights and on law and development literature. The paper argues that there is a tension between the re-emergence of FPIC as a customary norm and the fragmentation of the interpretations of the concept of consent by different actors. The operationalization of the concept of FPIC, understood as a negotiated process rather than a process of self-determination, may in fact limit its remedial objective and diminish its quality as a resistance tool.

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