 World Bank Focus on Sustainability 2005/2006
The World Bank's mission:
to fight poverty and help people help themselves
The World Bank is the single largest investor in the social sectors worldwide, with a portfolio of approximately USD 40 billion invested in over 600 projects for social development in 100 countries.
- improving health care, nutrition, childhood development and education
- setting up social security nets and pension systems
- protecting the most vulnerable groups of society
- empowering the rural poor, raising their productivity and income
- reducing urban poverty and improving living standards
Focus on the environment:
preserving the natural resource base through World Bank lending
The World Bank is the single largest financier of environmental projects worldwide, with over USD 12 billion in outstanding loans for projects with clear environmental objectives.
- reducing pollution and helping prevent natural resource degradation
- preparing national environmental action plans and legislation
- working in partnership with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and community groups
Avoiding harmful sectors and investments
World Bank's lending guidelines screen for harmful projects.
- No financing provided for nuclear energy, tobacco, gambling, alcohol, weapons, and environmentally harmful products
- Careful screening of all projects to ensure that they do not endorse child labor, violate human rights or threaten endangered species.
What does the World Bank do?
 The World Bank is the world's largest source of development assistance, providing about $20 billion in loans annually to its member countries. The Bank uses its financial resources, its highly trained staff, and its extensive knowledge base to help each developing country onto a path of stable, sustainable, and equitable growth. The main focus is on helping the poorest people and the poorest countries, but for all its clients the Bank emphasizes the need for:
- Investing in people, particularly through basic health and education
- Protecting the environment
- Supporting and encouraging private business development
- Strengthening the ability of the governments to deliver quality services, efficiently and transparently
- Promoting reforms to create a stable macroeconomic environment, conducive to investment and longterm planning
- Focusing on social development, inclusion, governance, and institutionbuilding as key elements of poverty reduction
The Bank is also helping countries to strengthen and sustain the fundamental conditions they need to attract and retain private investment. With Bank support — both lending and advice — governments are reforming their overall economies and strengthening banking systems. They are investing in human resources, infrastructure, and environmental protection which enhances the attractiveness and productivity of private investment. Through World Bank guarantees, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA)'s political risk insurance, and in partnership with International Finance Corporation (IFC)'s equity investments, investors are minimizing their risks and finding the comfort to invest in developing countries and countries undergoing transition to marketbased economies.
Investing in People
 No country will grow economically and reduce poverty while its people cannot read or write, or while they struggle with malnourishment and sickness. As we enter the new millennium, hundreds of millions of people lack the minimally acceptable levels of education, health, and nutrition that so many in the industrialized world take for granted. This is not just a moral issue, it is a global economic concern and a major impediment to the reduction of poverty.
Accordingly, the World Bank targets much of its assistance where the impact is greatest on basic social services such as reproductive and maternal health care, nutrition, early childhood development programs, primary education, and programs that target the rural poor and women. As the single largest investor in social sectors, the Bank has provided loans totaling over $40 billion for more than 500 projects for human development in 100 countries.
The World Bank also helps client governments restructure social security and pension systems and establish social safety nets to protect those most at risk from the effects of economic restructuring. In addition to lending money, the Bank provides technical assistance and policy advice through services such as indepth country assessments of poverty, country assistance strategies, and public expenditure reviews, so governments can set sound, longterm strategies for pursuing economic growth.
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A Country that Educates its Girls, Educates the Whole Nation
 An educated, skilled, and socially cohesive society is critical to sustainable development. Yet in the World Bank's client countries, hundreds of millions of adults are illiterate. More than 130 million children do not go to primary school and 80 percent of them are girls. Many governments are now making extra efforts to educate their young girls because of the proven benefits such targeting brings: Educated women are less likely to die in childbirth, are more likely to have fewer children, and to raise children who are wellnourished, nurtured, educated, and immunized. Simply being able to read a label on a bottle of medicine can make a world of difference.
The Balochistan Province in Pakistan sets an example of what can be done. Girls' schools are being established in many rural villages and special efforts are being made to ensure girls enroll by hiring female teachers and providing separate toilet facilities for girls. Local people help secure teaching facilities, hire female teachers, and monitor school attendance. In two years alone, 198 new rural schools for girls were established and enrollment of girls from villages with the new schools increased to 87 percent, compared to 15 percent in the province as a whole. |
Protecting the Environment
Poverty reduction is intrinsically linked to environmental and social sustainability. Sustainability means a number of things, but first and foremost it means that resources, including human resources, are enhanced or protected rather than damaged or depleted as part of the development process. Developing countries are, in most instances, much more vulnerable to environmental degradation than industrial countries. Problems such as air and water pollution, climate change, loss of biological diversity, desertification, and deforestation are threatening their ability to meet the basic human needs of their people: adequate food, clean water, safe shelter, and a healthy environment.
 The World Bank goes to great lengths to ensure that its projects do not harm the natural environment. All projects are screened to determine whether they pose environmental risks. Environmental assessments are undertaken on projects that may be harmful and the Bank includes special measures in such projects to avoid environmental damage. Environmental concerns have been mainstreamed into all Bank activities, because experience has shown that it is more cost effective to prevent environmental damage than to clean it up later.
To enhance these efforts, the World Bank works in partnership with other development agencies, NGOs, and community groups to gain the benefit of their knowledge and experience. The Bank works with IUCN, the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, and many other organizations to help facilitate programs to protect rivers, forests, and coastal areas. The World Bank is also one of the implementing agencies of the Global Environment Facility, the organization which is playing a key role in addressing global environmental priorities such as: biodiversity, climate change, ozone depletion, and pollution of international waters.
Assisting Countries Affected by Conflict
 Conflict and violence affect many of the world's poorest countries. The World Bank's comparative advantage in this area lies in facilitating the transition from dependence on relief to sustainable economic growth, and improving the coordination of postconflict reconstruction and recovery assistance. The institution's experience in this area stretches back to the rebuilding of Europe in the wake of World War II.
The World Bank's postconflict assistance has focused not only on rebuilding infrastructure, but also on programs to promote economic adjustment and recovery, address social sector needs, and build institutional capacity. Projects are also being designed to assist in demining, demobilization and reintegration of ex soldiers, and reintegration of displaced populations.
The World Bank is working around the globe in places as diverse as the Balkans, Burundi, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and Haiti and with a wide range of partners to help rebuild economies and bring stability and a better future to the people whose lives have been affected by conflict
Development is Everyone's Challenge
 The global challenges of the past several years have been unprecedented, and the World Bank has played a central role in dealing with many of these situations. The World Bank helped battle the debt crisis in Latin America in the 1980s and the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, and both regions continue to present significant development challenges. The World Bank is deeply involved in efforts to assist countries emerging from conflict as well as those struggling to deal with natural disasters. The World Bank is helping the poorest countries reduce their debts to manageable levels, and is increasingly focusing its efforts on building efficient and accountable public sector institutions.
But while global crises have succeeded in focusing attention and resources on these problems, a sobering fact remains: the number of people living in poverty is rising. Yes, some progress has been made: life expectancy has risen, infant mortality has dropped, and more girls are in school than ever before. But in many of the world's poorest countries, progress on poverty reduction and sustainable development is lagging.
Whether looked at from the social or the economic or the moral perspective, development is a challenge one cannot afford to ignore. There are not two worlds, there is one world. All humans breathe the same air. All share the same environment. All have the same health problems. AIDS is not a problem that stops at borders. Crime does not stop at borders. Drugs do not stop at borders. Terrorism, war, and famine do not stop at borders. The fight against poverty is the fight for peace, security, and growth for all human beings. |
