The World Bank, quite rightly, has devoted a tremendous amount of time and money on water projects in recent years, according to the “NY Times” here. I highlighted World Water Day at the blog a few weeks ago and noted then some of the many critical shortfalls in clean water and proper sanitation that beset billions of our neighbors, near and far.
It can be fairly stipulated that from what we know of the impacts of climate change that water stress is very high on the list. In many places in the world that means drought, and in others it means higher precipitation and floods, and for coastal areas and islands, it means more intense storms, higher sea levels and the infiltration of freshwater supplies by seawater.
Yet the very same World Bank that has devoted so much attention to legitimate concerns about water, has been all along exacerbating the problems by financing coal-fired power plants. Today’s “NYT” looks at the extraordinary fact that the World Bank is poised to loan $3 billion to South Africa for a new coal plant, the seventh largest in the world. The World Bank is not alone in its folly: “International public financial institutions, supported by the world’s richest nations, have invested $37 billion to help finance 88 coal plants over the past 15 years, many in Asia, according to a 2009 report by the Environmental Defense Fund. The plants’ annual carbon dioxide emissions equal three-quarters of those from coal-fired power in the European Union, the report said.”
This ClimateWire article looks at this project too and the culture of the World Bank in which nearly every project that goes before the directors for a vote is waved on through.
My question is “Does anyone over there, or at the other MLDBs, have a clue?” It’s not like the big picture is murky. We know that greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide principally among them, are greatly accelerating climate change and the impacts relative to water are already catastrophic. So why continue to spend billions after billions on more hugely destructive power systems?
Every dime of this money should have been spent on renewables, energy efficiency and conservation, projects to provide clean water and sanitation, and, because we’ve come so far along in our dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, for adaptation to help societies cope with floods, storms, sea-level rise and, in so many other parts of the world, drought and water shortages from glacial melt and other factors.
Maybe the US will vote this week against the project financing by the World Bank. Maybe countries from the EU and others will stand up. When will we come to our senses?
