IEG Report: Annual Review of Development Effectiveness, Part II

Part II: Achieving Sustainable Development

This is the second part of the IEG: Annual Review of Development Effectiveness for the World Bank. Here are the main points from the report, which is focused on sustainable development in the second half:

- The World Bank ahs a critical role to play in assisting nations in addressing environmental challenges and promoting sustainable practices.

- Sustainable development, poverty reduction, and economic growth are not mutually exclusive.

-The World Bank has evolved over the years with how they handle environmental issues, but need to do more promoting sustainable development for poverty reduction.

- Environmental issues are also quality of life issues

- The process of “mainstreaming” environmental sustainability for development projects and projects in other sectors is not as good as hoped, it is up to The Bank to lead the way and encourage better/smarter practices.

- Most of the funding for sustainable development is going into Africa.

- Bank awareness of biodiversity and other environmental issues is pretty good, and there’s been a large increase in funding for these types of projects in the last decade.

- Global and international environmental policies and sustainable development practices need to be developed.

I see the validity in encouraging sustainable development. On a note outside the report, I do want to point out that building roads isn’t necessarily an unsustainable practice. There has been a large push to mass transit in the west as an effective way of moving people, but in many emerging economies pollution issues have more to do with industry and factories than building roads. Steel for rail has to come from some rendering process, and even solar panels require a lot of chemicals. No one really considers what to do with unused sustainable energy products since that hasn’t become an issue yet, but what’s going to happen when the solar panels in the farms need to be replaced? Can they be reused or are we creating waste that is more difficult to deal with? Roads require maintenance, but so does all types of infrastructure. Traffic impacts and pollution from cars is another regulatory mechanism completely.