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In this short, polemical article, the author argues that NGO advocacy groups are acting against the interests of the poor and of international development through unreasonable criticism of the World Bank and similar agencies. The author argues that, in a typical situation, the Bank designs a reasonable project, which inevitably has flaws. NGOs seize on these flaws and add a large sprinkling of inflammatory rhetoric. The World Bank pulls out, but the project goes ahead anyway, without the Bank's social and environmental safeguards.The author illustrates this with three case studies: Bujagali Dam, Uganda: the World Bank was promoting a dam. The International Rivers Network (based in the USA), campaigned internationally against the programme on the grounds that the Ugandan environmental movement was severely critical of the project. However, the author's own investigation suggested that the Ugandan NGO group was very small and that the villagers affected by the dam were happy to accept compensation and relocate, and a valuable projects was held up for fear of activist resistanceQinghai relocation programme, China/Tibet: this project was designed to move 58,000 water-poor farmers to an area irrigated by a small dam. Qinghai borders on the Chinese administrative division known as the Tibet Autonomous Region, which covers part of historical Tibet and 1 million of Qinghai's 5 million inhabitants are Tibetan. Although no Tibetans currently lived in the immediate settlement area, Bank officials argued that the project would help the 3,500 Tibetans who would move to newly irrigated land, and that Tibetans who stayed behind would benefit from reduced population pressure in their own area. The Tibet Information Network formed an international coalition of NGOs opposing the programme, resulting in a range of protests based, the author claims, on inaccurate and increasingly simplified information. The resulting pressure on the US government forced the Bank to re-assess the project through its Inspection Panel, a panel which (the author argues) was under similar pressure to find technical infringements of the Bank's safeguard policies than in asking the big questions of "Would the Qinghai project reduce poverty?". This lead to China informed the bank that it would withdraw its request for financing. However, the Chinese government pressed ahead with the resettlement project by itself, ignoring the Bank's environmental conditions and disclosure requirements and moved more people to the new area. Camisea gas pipeline, Peru: a project of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), where most of the IDB board of directors concluded that, on balance, IDB involvement would decrease the project's environmental and social impact. The US board member however blocked the programme due to NGO campaigning suggesting that two firms linked to US President George W. Bush's administration would profit from the project, and that environmental concerns were being ignored in order to reward cronies. The effect of this was that of the 46 governments on the IDB's board, the only one not to vote for the project was the one with links to these companiesThe author concludes that:campaigning NGOs (as distinct from those with real development programs in the field) are not open to compromise. They have to be radical: if they stop denouncing big organizations, nobody will send them cash or quote them in the newspapers. NGOs claim to hold the World Bank accountable, yet the bank is answerable to the governments who are its shareholders. It is the NGOs' accountability that is murky.on finance, some level of conditionality is essential, but under pressure from NGOs, the World Bank is insisting upon perfectionist safeguards. Because of the high cost and delays of doing business with the bank, countries with the option of borrowing on private capital markets increasingly do so, without the environmental and other safeguards that the Bank would have imposed on them.projects in dozens of countries are similarly held up for fear of activist resistance. Feisty internet-enabled groups make scary claims about the iniquities of development projects. Time after time, Western publics raised on stories of World Bank white elephants believe them. Lawmakers in European parliaments and the U.S. Congress accept NGO arguments at face value, and the government officials who sit on the World Bank's board respond by blocking funding for deserving projects the Bank is taking a stronger, counter-attacking line with NGOs, on the basis that it can not win over every critic. Examples of this are seen in the recent rejection of recommendations from joint Bank/NGO advisory bodies, such as the Commission on Dams and Commission on Extractive Industries which, it argued, set unfeasibly demanding targetsconstant campaigning threatens to disable not just the World Bank but regional development banks and governmental aid organizations. If this takes place, the world may lose the potential for good that big organizations offer: to rise above the single-issue advocacy and address larger scale, complex problems[adapted from author] Access to this article is available:on the Foreign Policy website at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/files/story2672.php (payment may be required)on the KeepMedia website as part of a free, trial membership offer for new users (registration required), at http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/ForeignPolicy/2004/09/01/564802
