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.