The World Bank states that "The World Bank's goal is to reduce poverty and improve living standards by promoting sustainable growth and investment in people." Countless studies have found that the World Bank's approach to development, particularly its insistence on privatization, liberalization of markets and financial flows, and export-driven industrialization, has in fact resulted in further impoverishment of the poorest in developing countries, while consolidating wealth and power in the hands of already powerful industries. In many cases, project beneficiaries are multinational corporations doing business in developing companies but based in the richest Group of 7 (G-7) countries, which includes the U.S., Canada, Japan, Italy, France, Germany, and the U.K. In many cases, the environment is destroyed by "development" projects, and the poorest are ousted from productive land to make way for large infrastructure projects like dams.

In addition, SEEN has found that the World Bank has invested heavily in fossil fuel projects, whose eventual carbon dioxide emissions will make a significant contribution to climate change. These projects are also having an immediate effect on the quality of life of the poorest in developing countries by polluting their air and water, and contaminating their food.

As of July 15, 1997, the IBRD had 180 members; IDA had 159; the IFC had 172; MIGA had 141 and ICSID had 128.

Click here for the 1998 SEEN Report "The World Bank and the G-7: Still Changing the Earth's Climate for Business 1997-98," a one year update to "The World Bank and the G-7:
Changing the Earth's Climate for Business, an analysis of World Bank fossil fuel project funding from 1992 to 1997."

• Click here to access our database on, among other things, all World Bank fossil fuel projects financed since 1992

• Visit the World Bank's web site

• Read correspondence between the World Bank and SEEN spurred by the 1997 SEEN report "The World Bank and the G-7, Changing the Earth's Climate for Business"