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By Daryl Lindsey

April 18, 2000 | WASHINGTON -- In Round 1 of Salon's debate on the role of global organizations, we brought together a diverse and intellectually rowdy round table of free-trade proponents and environmental and debt-relief activists (who often approach globalization skeptically) and even the economics correspondent for a leading daily paper. We asked each to scrutinize the track records of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and the Seattle protesters who took their anti-globalization street theater (replete with puppets that even Julie Taymor would endorse) to Washington last weekend.

Today, the same group tackles the IMF and World Bank's records on international economic bailouts, which some critics say helped fuel the spread of the Asian flu of '97; the fiscal austerity measures attached to IMF loans that labor organizers say devastate local working conditions and widen the trade deficit; the controversial environmental impact of certain World Bank projects; and the overall impact the Bretton Woods institutions have on Americans and the world.

Here's the final round of debate:

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What role should environmental policy play in IMF and World Bank programs?

Pete Leyden is coauthor of "The Long Boom" and former managing editor of Wired: Environmental policy should be central, but not in the conventional sense. The way to truly solve the environment problems of this planet is to accelerate the migration to new generations of technologies. This needs to happen not just in the developed countries, but especially in the developing ones. We need Western autos to increasingly be super-efficient hybrids and ultimately be based on hydrogen fuel cells. But what we really need to do is ensure that China starts off with these most-efficient technologies rather than older, dirtier ones. If they're building a modern auto industry, then start clean. These global institutions, particularly the World Bank, can play a big part in getting this kind of thinking incorporated into all development plans.

Mark Hertsgaard is the author of "Earth Odyssey," a book about the human toll of environmental devastation: The bank itself says that practicing "sustainable development" is essential to its mission of fighting poverty. Too bad it doesn't do a better job of practicing what it preaches. The bank is too important a force in the world to write off as irredeemable, however. Its battered reputation might still be restored, but only through a thorough reform of its attitudes and behavior.

Instead of financing rain forest destruction and climate change, the bank should support a Global Green Deal: A program to renovate human civilization environmentally from top to bottom while truly fighting poverty. And make no mistake: Poverty is central to humanity's environmental predicament. To accommodate this mass ascent from poverty without ruining the natural systems that make life on Earth possible in the first place will be an enormous challenge. But the World Bank is uniquely situated to jump-start the environmental revolution needed to meet it.

Consider China, the world's largest consumer of coal and second largest producer of greenhouse gases. With its huge population and grand economic ambitions, China could doom the world to severe global warming if it keeps expanding coal use. But China would use 50 percent less coal if it simply installed the energy efficiency technologies -- better lights, motors and insulation -- now available on the world market.

Merrill Goozner is chief economics correspondent in the Chicago Tribune's Washington bureau: Mr. Hertsgaard said it all in his comments [Friday] about Chad and Cameroon, which has become the poster project for the anti-WB demonstrators. But I have to object to his thoughts that they should go for solar power. Getting the proven oil reserves out of the ground and into the international market is a way for Chad and Cameroon to earn foreign currency. A pipeline through Cameroon is the only way for Chadian oil to get to sea; is it impossible to run a pipeline through a rain forest without environmental damage? If the world is going to use oil, there is no reason in principle why those countries shouldn't be allowed to participate in that market. Yes, Chad has a quasi-military dictatorship oppressing its Christian/animist south and a breakaway government faction in the north; and Cameroon was ranked as the most corrupt government on earth by Transparency International. So the WB involvement there is ipso facto absurd. But even if the governments were clean, the people would still be extremely poor. Western environmentalists telling them to use solar power has a Marie Antoinette ring about it.

As for the larger issue, of course, the WB shouldn't bankroll environmentally destructive dams, oilfield projects, etc. But that doesn't mean all dams and all oilfield projects are harmful. I have to think some can be designed in environmentally benign ways.

Next page | "World Bank loans are just Band-Aids"