Environment Forum

The World Bank’s $6 billion man on climate change

As the special envoy on climate change for the World Bank, Andrew Steer might be thought of as the $6 billion man of environmental finance. He oversees more than that amount for projects to fight the effects of global warming.

“More funds flow through us to help adaptation and mitigation than anyone else,” Steer said in a conversation at the bank’s Washington headquarters. Named to the newly created position in June, Steer said one of his priorities is to marshall more than $6 billion in the organization’s Climate Investment Funds to move from smaller pilot projects to large-scale efforts.

While the World Bank is not a party to global climate talks set for Cancun, Mexico, later this year, it is deeply engaged in this issue, Steer said. Acknowledging that an international agreement on climate change is a long shot this year, he said there are still opportunities to make changes to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that spur climate change.

“We do see there are opportunities,” Steer said. “The mistake would be if it’s sort of all or nothing.” The bank is strongly supporting action to limit deforestation, offer quick financing to start climate projects and reform carbon markets to extend them to countries that have been left out so far.

Even though the World Bank won’t be at the negotiating table in Cancun, its members will be there, and 80 percent of them want the bank to focus on climate change, Steer said. It’s all part of a what he sees as a fundamental shift in the international attitude toward dealing with this problem.

“There is a new revolution that’s going on now,” he said . “It’s not only driven by personal commitment, like it would have been 15 years ago … Now it’s driven by just the sheer logic … If you care about long-term poverty reduction, you simply cannot avoid this issue.”

Photo credits: REUTERS/Supri Supri (Andrew Steer (right) then the World Bank’s Indonesia country director, with World Health Organization’s Georg Peterson at a news conference in Jakarta, August 24, 2006)

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Pakistan’s cry for water

Pakistan is running out of water so fast that the shortage will strangulate all water-based economic activity by 2015, a Pakistani thinktank says.  And that pretty much covers 70 percent of the population  who are involved in farming.

This is not a new warning.  In recent months,  as this blog itself has noted, experts have painted an increasingly bleak scenario of Pakistan's rivers drying up, the ground water polluted and over-exploited and the whole water infrastructure in a shambles.

But Pakistan, as the Islamabad-based Centre for Research and Security Studies says, is not listening.  Pakistan has gone from a "water scarce" country to a "water-stressed" country, worse than Ethiopia, the Centre says quoting a  2006 World Bank study. In 10 years time, it will become a water-famine country.  

Among the 25 most populous countries, South Africa, Egypt and Pakistan are the most water-limited nations, that study said.

According to the World Bank data, Pakistan only stores 30 days of river water, India stores 120 days, while the Colorado river system in the U.S. has storage capacity of up to 900 days of water usage.

The depletion of water resources is unchecked, as the 2009 UN World Water Development Report points out. It says that the total actual renewable water resources in Pakistan decreased from 2,961 cubic metres per capita in 2000 to 1,420 cubic metres in 2005. A more recent study indicates an available supply of water of little more than 1,000 cubic metres per person. 

Can Indiana Jones help save tigers?

Indiana Jones and the World Bank sound like an odd couple to get anything done (“Quick, shoot that robber!” “Wait, we have to do a two-year feasibility study first!”) but are part of a new alliance trying to save the world’s tigers. (Read my colleague Leslie Wroughton’s fine story here)

Will it work? Tigers are under threat from loss of prey and habitats and a black market in tiger skins and bones.

And tiger numbers have plunged to about 4,000 today from more than 100,000 a century ago, according to the new International Tiger Coalition, led by the World Bank with backing from celebrities such as “Indiana Jones” star Harrison Ford, Bo Derek and Robert Duvall. Ford is a board member of Conservation International. 

A World Bank report warned that “if current trends persist, tigers are likely to be the first species of large predator to vanish in historic times.”

So far the ideas for saving tigers have obviously failed and tigers raised in farms (there are more tigers in captivity around the world, in countries including the United States and China, than in the wild) often get too flabby and lazy to be introduced into the wild.

And conservationists say fast economic growth in China may raise demand for traditional tiger parts, used as cures for everything from colds to rheumatism.

 Trying to make people aware of the threats to wildlife, the Humane Society, for instance, urges you to take a pledge not to buy items made from wild animal parts or to buy them as pets.

Coaly smoke! Green ire over huge India coal plant

Greens are seeing red this week after the World Bank approved partial financing for a $4.2 billion coal-fired power station in India.

   The 4,000 MW plant will provide crucial power for millions of Indians, prove a much-needed boost for industry and use “super-critical” technology that will make it India’s most-efficient coal-fired plant.

   The Bank’s board approved $450 million in loans through its International Finance Corp for the Tata Mundra project and the IFC said it looked at many alternative ideas, including wind and solar, but found the giant coal power station was the best solution.

   The volume of emissions from the plant will be about 40 percent less than existing coal-fired plants in India but it will still produce up to 23 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year.

   And that’s angered environmental groups who say the World Bank is failing to help fight global warming by backing polluting projects. The Bank said using solar or wind for the project instead of coal would have been just too expensive to meet India’s vast appetite for electricity.

  Greens say much more investment and willingness needs to go into clean energy to help poor nations prevent the polluting mistakes of richer nations. Otherwise we’re all doomed to face a warmer world with rising seas and more chaotic weather.

  But who’s going to take that chance and start backing giant renewable projects in poorer states to wean them off coal and oil? Or will the sharp rise in coal and oil prices generate the needed political and financial shift anyway?