Greenpeace is set to challenge James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, to establish a new direction for World Bank lending on energy and to immediately increase lending on renewable energy projects to equal lending on fossil fuels. Greenpeace would welcome the opportunity to work with the World Bank to implement clean energy projects in the developing world if such a re-balancing in its energy portfolio took place. It is estimated that 2 billion people in the world currently don't have access to electricity. The World Bank, which was set up with the aim of alleviating poverty and is funded by taxpayers in supporting countries, has over the past decade spent 18 times more on fossil fuels and the conventional energy sector than on renewable energy (2).
Greenpeace UK Executive Director Stephen Tindale said, "By shifting funding to renewable energy the World Bank could dramatically improve the livelihoods and prospects of billions of people in the developed and developing worlds while protecting the climate."
He continued, "Climate change poses the most significant environmental challenge facing the world today and its impact will be felt disproportionately by the billion plus people in the developing world who live on less than a dollar a day. They are the ones who are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events, reductions in rainfall and changes in disease vectors."
He added "There is an environmental, economic and social imperative to help the countries in the South develop without compromising their future or exploiting their resources in an unsustainable way. Renewable energy is one of the key ways to achieve this."
The renewable energy industry needs public support from institutions like the World Bank to ramp up investment significantly and promote its product, especially in the rapidly growing economies of the developing world.
There is a precedent for a shift in the focus of World Bank lending. In the 1990s, projected demand for refrigeration in the rapidly growing economies of the developing world - and especially China - demonstrated that the problem of ozone depletion was set to become much worse.
The World Bank, along with Greenpeace, worked with the Chinese government and one of the biggest manufacturer of refrigerators in the world to produce a refrigerator that met the needs of the increasingly prosperous Chinese population without making a clearly identified environmental problem even worse.
Backing the Greenpeace proposal Wei Lin of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association said, "Renewable energy can play an important role in China's future. Support from the World Bank for China's renewable energy efforts would be a significant boost to the country's plans. With the World Bank's help, China could deliver considerable renewable energy capacity, foster the industry and develop skills to harness renewables. For example, for wind energy alone there is the potential to develop 20GW by 2020, the equivalent of more than 7 nuclear power stations the size of the UK's Sizewell B plant".
The call will be made at the Greenpeace Business lecture (1) in central London on 13th May.
The new initiative from Greenpeace comes as the World Bank considers the results of the Extractive Industries Review (EIR) conducted on behalf of the World Bank by Professor Emil Salim of Indonesia (2). The EIR found that funding extractive industry projects was not a suitable use of public money in the vast majority of cases and does not promote sustainable development. It recommends that the Bank re-allocate funding towards renewable energy.
Greenpeace is one of 300 organisations that have written to Wolfensohn calling on him to radically reform the way the World Bank supports oil and mining industries. Others include Oxfam, Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth as well as investors representing over $400 billion. Six Nobel laureates including Archbishop Desmond Tutu have also urged the Bank to adopt the review's recommendations.
In the letter to Wolfensohn, Tutu and the other Nobel Laureates said, "War, poverty, climate change, greed, corruption, and ongoing violations of human rights - these scourges are linked to the oil and mining industries. Your efforts to create a world without poverty need not exacerbate these problems.
"The Review provides you an extraordinary opportunity to direct the resources of the World Bank Group in a way that is truly oriented towards a better future for all humanity."
For more information contact Greenpeace press office on 020 7865 8255.
Editor's notes:
(1) The Greenpeace Business Lecture is taking place at the Royal Society of Arts, 8 John Adam Street, London WC2 on 13 May 2004. Registration begins at 5.45pm and the lecture starts at 6.30pm prompt. Media spaces are strictly limited and must be organised in advance.
(2) For more information on the EIR, visit www.eireview.org
