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From Marcus Colchester, Forest Peoples Programme

The World Bank is indeed in a regressive phase. Not only is it promoting large dams again (22 March, p 11 and p 29), but it is also back into logging primary forests.

Last year the it overturned a 1991 forestry policy that prohibited funding of logging in primary moist tropical forests. Its new policy allows it to finance projects which destroy all but “critical” forests – officially recognised protected areas and sacred sites.

Non-governmental organisations consulted by the World Bank had urged the opposite: that the proscription on funding logging be extended to cover all old-growth forests. This was because the World Bank finances projects in Russia, which boasts 22 per cent of the world’s forests but where old growth is under serious threat.

The World Bank also refused recommendations from its technical advisory group that the policy should require borrowers to comply with the international human rights treaties ratified by borrower countries. This has sent a shiver of fear through the forest peoples who stand in the way of forestry corporations.

Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, UK