WB seeks partners in Bali for 'mission impossible'

WB seeks partners in Bali for 'mission impossible'

Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali

At the heart of sustainable development lies the fight against poverty. It is a daunting job, but under the drive for sustainable development the World Bank hopes global institutions will come together to get the job done.

"The World Bank has one mission, and one mission only, which is poverty reduction," said Mats Karlsson, the bank's vice president for external and United Nations affairs in an interview with The Jakarta Post.

According to him, the meeting on sustainable development in Bali should not only help countries but also global institutions to fight poverty better.

Delegates from around the world have gathered in Bali for a United Nations meeting on sustainable development. Talks are under way to align the global economy with environmental and social interests under an action plan, to be called the Bali Commitment.

The interdependence between poverty and environmental concerns led to the term sustainable development, coined during the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

A joint report by, among others, the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) says poor people tend to be most dependent on the environment and the direct use of natural resources.

The report says that water scarcity in Kenya, floods in India and poor land conditions in Uganda determine local living standards.

Such environmental conditions present the picture of poverty today.

Out of six billion people on Earth, 4.4 billion people live in developing countries, and 1.3 billion of those people live on less than US$1 a day, 2.8 billion on less than $2, according to the World Bank.

Most of the world's population lives in poverty, and the Earth is already at risk of running out of resources to allow them a better living standard.

The World Bank estimates that since 1950, half of the increase in the world's resources has been for the benefit of the richest fifth of the world's people.

Over the next 25 years, the Earth's population will grow by another two billion, adding to the environmental load.

"It's very clear that you cannot reduce poverty unless you address the issue of sustainable development," Karlsson said.

He said this had been agreed on in the 1992 Earth Summit, but countries must move on to produce a stronger action plan for sustainable development.

The Bali Commitment forms the basis for a political declaration, which heads of state will sign in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development from late August to September.

For the World Bank, participating in the campaign on sustainable development means getting a wider perspective on its mission. Karlsson said the bank had spent the last three to four years working with the UN and countries to embed its work in a comprehensive strategy to reduce poverty.

"We cannot afford to have a multilateral system that is fragmented. We have to come together and manage global issues better.

"If we can get the UN, WB, ADB (Asian Development Bank) bilateral partnerships system to align on country-led strategies that fully embody poverty reduction and sustainable development, we got a functioning global system."

Karlsson said progress had been made as could be seen in a number of international meetings, with one success being the UN's Millennium Summit in September 2000.

The international meetings, he said, helped improve developed countries' confidence in the multilateral system, resulting in more aid.

After a decade of falling aid levels, developed countries agreed at the Monterrey meeting on poverty in Mexico in March this year to set aside some $30 billion in additional funds by 2006.

"The multilateral system can be very effective in getting the job done," Karlsson said.

He said that $1 billion in aid had the potential to lift an average of 450,000 people out of poverty in a sustainable way. "It's a positive sum game, and people have come around to agree on that."

Still, Karlsson said, giving more aid was key to implementing poverty reduction strategies, and for that reason he criticized developed countries' lavish spending on agriculture subsidies.

According to him, developed countries spend six times more on subsidies than they do on foreign aid.

"You cannot on one hand invest through development corporation with foreign aid in developing countries' productivity, and then not let them export agricultural goods to developed countries. That's hypocrisy."

Developed countries are not cutting back on their subsidies, he said. The action plan delegates in Bali are discussing calls for the reduction of these subsidies, but an agreement has yet to be reached.

Karlsson said negotiation was progressing too slowly and that it should contain strong words to get countries to act. "We are inpatient to move on," he said.

Over the next 30 years, he said, the global economy will grow by threefold to fourfold and the world population by another two or three billion, adding pressure to agricultural productivity, energy resources and the planet's biodiversity. He said that progress to get multilateral systems to work better was "not by far fast enough".

"Making quantum leaps in improving and managing global resources: that's what Johannesburg can deliver, that's why a successful outcome in Bali is so important," Karlsson said.