Copenhagen 5: Supping with the World Bank

by Kennedy Graham

Well I didn’t have dinner but I did have an hour with the World Bank President just before eating.  And an intriguing pre-prandial exchange it was.

Jeanette and I are at the Copenhagen Conference as part of GLOBE – Global Legislators for a Balanced Environment.  Today (Tuesday) I was part of a delegation meeting with IBRD President Robert Zoellick.  If you are unaware of Mr Zoellick’s career, it might be worth looking it up. 

I was in a group of MPs from seven ‘countries’ – UK, Germany, China, Japan, Brazil, New Zealand, and the EU.  Mr Zoellick rolled in with 13 officials in tow. 

We opened in a free and frank manner with all guns blazing.  We wanted to convey the concern felt by MPs in the developing countries over World Bank policies.  Was he aware of that concern and if so, what did he propose in order to redress it?  The president played to his audience.  He had been going to great lengths, he said, to increase the role of national legislators in developing countries – strengthen their institutional capacity to speak for the people.  He hoped that GLOBE could support him in that goal.

On climate change, our Japanese colleague asked him whether he was aware of the extraordinary imbalance in historical emissions between North and South – over the past 250 years the US had emitted 30%, China 7.8%.  Should this be a factor in the Copenhagen negotiations?  No, said the president of the World Bank: “if you assign guilt, you will dangerously narrow the scope for concord and fail to emerge with an agreement on Friday”. 

We were too polite to point out that the LCA draft still before delegations states that the ‘ambitious long-term goal’ for emission reductions should be agreed, “taking into account historical responsibilities and an equitable share in the atmospheric space”.  It’s not even bracketed.

Finally, I asked if we could go back to first principles for a moment.  I said that when I had been at the Earth Summit in Rio in ’92, there had been an almost palpable despair over the lack of scientific capability for understanding the relationship between humans and the planet – the burgeoning population, expanding lifestyles and the global carrying capacity.  Agenda 21 had called for new concepts to measure our impact on the planet.   Since then, there had been much progress over sustainability indicators.

-          The Ecological Footprint, the GPI and other new concepts had been developed

-          The Sarkozy Commission this year had captured much of this within the goal of ‘rethinking our economic models’. 

-          The British Sustainability Commission had commissioned Prof. Tim Jackson who had emerged with his ground-breaking ‘Prosperity without Growth’. 

I asked Mr Zoellick for his personal opinion on whether humanity could prosper without the driver of economic growth. 

 

The World Bank President responded with a succinct comment.  “Tell it to the developing world.”  People on $2 a day still needed economic growth.  Perhaps, I replied, but what about the rich North?  There are poor people in the rich countries, he continued without a misstep. 

So, it’s ‘trickle down’ still at the World Bank.  And we all sloped off separately to dinner.