April 10, 2000 

Web posted at: 1:03 PM EDT (1703 GMT) WASHINGTON (Assoicated Press)

Ratcheting up their protests in advance of the world finance ministers' meetings this weekend, demonstrators Monday briefly blocked a street near the World Bank headquarters.

Police said seven protesters were arrested, including some who chained themselves to a rental truck blocking that thoroughfare _ Pennsylvania Avenue -- and others who tried to hang a banner on the building.

About 20 demonstrators chanted while police cleared the road, which remained blocked for about 45 minutes by the peaceful protest. The demonstrators taken into custody offered no resistance, Police Chief Charles Ramsey said.

A banner on the truck read: "World Bank plunders the planet -- no more $$$ for oil, gas and mining."

"The World Bank is funding oil mining and gas drilling and continues funding projects which increase our dependence on fossil fuels and increasingly destroys indigenous land," said Jillian Frumkin of Ozone Action.

Brent Blackwelder, executive director of Friends of the Earth, and John Passacantando, executive director of Ozone Action, demanded the phase-out of financing for oil, gas and mining projects.

"The World Bank's drilling and mining projects have left a trail of environmental damage, increased poverty and severe social disruption in poor countries," said Blackwelder.

With still-fresh memories of the destruction at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, Washington's police chief said his officers were prepared, but the response would be up to the protesters.

"The demonstrators will determine how we react to this but one thing's for certain, we're not going to allow property damage and fires and those kinds of things," Ramsey said. "However, they have the right to peacefully protest and that they will be allowed to do."

Ramsey said he expected more of the same before and during the upcoming World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings.

"Our job is to see to it that this thing goes off smoothly, their job is to attempt to do whatever they can do to disrupt it. It's not personal, we just all have different roles here," Ramsey said.

On Sunday, a rally to support debt-ridden countries launched a series of events intended to draw attention to the coming meetings.

Thousands of people clasped hands to form a human chain at the Capitol in a show of solidarity with countries they say are trapped in poverty because of the loans they must repay to U.S.-based world lending institutions.

"The countries, they can't spend any money on education and health care because they can't pay off the debt," said Andrew Laurence, a media coordinator at George Washington University, who participated. "The idea is to bury the debt." He walked up and down the gravel paths of the National Mall in a costume that was a cross between the Washington Monument and a tombstone.

The World Bank and the IMF already have a debt-relief program that will forgive about $27 billion owed by poor countries, including Uganda, Bolivia and Mozambique, which recently suffered severe flooding. But the rally's organizers want the program to be expanded.

Jo Marie Griesgraber, head of a coalition of religious, environmental and labor groups called Jubilee2000/USA, said the amount of money the group seeks for debt relief works out to about $8 per American. "Congress is the only body that can pay for it," she said.

President Clinton, in a message read by his economic adviser, Gene Sperling, said that in the poorer countries one in 10 children dies before the first birthday, one in three children is malnourished and the average adult has only three years of schooling.

"This is wrong," said Clinton, who has requested $210 million for debt relief.

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PRESS RELEASE

ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERS BLOCK PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE IN FRONT OF WORLD BANK TO PROTEST DESTRUCTIVE OIL, GAS, AND MINING PROJECTS

(Washington, D.C., April 10) - Blocking Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. in front of the World Bank Group's headquarters, two activists representing an international coalition of environmental, human rights, religious, and social justice organizations have locked themselves to the undercarriage of a 17-foot panel truck, emblazoned with the words, "WORLD BANK PLUNDERS THE PLANET - NO MORE $$$ FOR OIL, GAS AND MINING.

Using the top of the truck as a makeshift stage, Friends of the Earth US Executive Director Brent Blackwelder and Ozone Action Executive Director John Passacantando are introducing a campaign platform demanding that the World Bank phase out its financing of destructive oil, gas, and mining projects. The platform details the ten most harmful impacts of such projects, from environmental destruction to egregious human rights abuses.

The actions come as a week of protest against the world's largest development institutions gains momentum in Washington, D.C. They also coincide with the opening day of the World Bank's annual "Energy Week" conference, in which Bank officials and industry representatives will discuss future energy investments.

"The World Bank's drilling and mining projects have left a trail of environmental damage, increased poverty and severe social disruption in poor countries," said Brent Blackwelder of Friends of the Earth. "The record shows these projects help no one but powerful multinational corporations."

Signed by 200 groups from 41 nations, including Friends of the Earth International, OilWatch Africa, Greenpeace USA, Ozone Action, and Oxfam Canada, the platform notes that:

* The poor are the most likely to be forced off their land by oil, gas, and mining projects, and the most likely to live in contaminated surroundings as a result of oil spills, gas flaring and improper waste disposal. They are the least empowered to demand compensation.

* Drilling and mining projects have devastated dozens of indigenous groups around the world, resulting in loss of their numbers, livelihoods, and cultural identity. These projects have also accelerated deforestation around the world.

Noting that flooding and heat waves linked to global warming are already overwhelming developing nations, Ozone Action's John Passacantando said, "The World Bank likes to talk about its new concern for stopping catastrophic global climate change. Yet it is still spending 25 times more on the very fossil fuel projects that cause global warming, than on clean, renewable energy projects. Is this what the Bank calls improving lives?"

The platform, a list of signatories, and case studies of some of the World Bank's worst oil, gas and mining projects are available on www.foe.org.

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Press Conference Advisory

Charles Lynch Press Gallery

11 a.m. Monday, April 10, 2000

NGOs call on the World Bank to stop financing Oil, Gas and Mining!

(Ottawa) The Sierra Club of Canada is joining 200 organizations around the world to call on the World Bank Group to stop investing in the extractive industries of oil, gas and mining. The coalition released a detailed statement at a press conference on Parliament Hill today. These investments fuel global climate change, pollute the environment and lead to deforestation. Even worse  these investments  entrench corrupt and dictatorial governments and exacerbate human rights abuses around the world.

"The World Bank Group is supposed to use public money including Canadian tax dollars to alleviate poverty. It's doing the opposite," said John Bennett, Director, Atmosphere and Energy, Sierra Club of Canada.

The environmental destruction and social upheaval that accompany oil, gas and mining projects often harm the poor the most. As the likelihood of living in polluted surroundings increases, the poor become the least empowered to demand fair compensation or a share of the revenue from oil, gas and mining development. 

"Recent events in Mozambique clearly illustrate who suffers from climate change," said Mr. Bennett.

Investing in fossil fuels contributes directly to an increase in global climate change which is already wreaking havoc on the poorest in developing countries, and threatens to only worsen their situation.  Today the World Bank lends 25 times more on fossil fuel projects than on renewables.

The groups cited ten reason why the World Bank should stop financing oil, gas and mining projects in poor nations and "Ten Better Examples of Good Development".

"There are thousands of small scale renewable energy projects the World Bank should be developing that would provide the world's poor with affordable appropriate energy sources that will enable them to escape poverty and live healthier lives," said Mr. Bennett.

ECONOMY: NGOs PREPARE FOR PROTESTS AT IMF, WORLD ...

MEXICO CITY, (Apr. 6) IPS - One of the messages of protest the Bretton Woods institutions can expect at their spring meeting later this month is a call by a non-governmental lobby to stop funding oil, mining and gas operations. A statement being circulated for endorsement by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) says oil, gas, and mining embody an unsustainable model of economic development that has failed the world's poor in the 20th century, and there is therefore no reason for the World Bank Group to continue financing them in the 21st.

Officials at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will meet in Washington, DC from April 12 to 17, and international NGOs and grassroots groups are gearing up to protest the event. Some observers predict the protests may match the scale of the anti-globalization turmoil at the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle last year.

The non-governmental Friends of the Earth-U.S. is leading the call for the World Bank Group, which includes the International Finance Corporation (IFC), to get out of the extractive sector. In 1999, some 40 percent of the Group's portfolio went to oil, gas and mining.

"An environmentally and socially sustainable approach would include investing in new industries, clean technologies, environmental protection, job creation and education," notes the draft NGO World Bank Platform.

"The World Bank Group should establish an immediate ban on new exploration in pristine, frontier ecosystems (a ban more than 200 organizations from 52 countries called for at the Kyoto Climate Change Conference)."

The NGOs say they are opposed to the extractive industry because it often harms poor indigenous communities and women. They say such projects destroy forests and erode biodiversity, accelerate global climate change, and primarily benefit corrupt governments and corporations.

From Siberia's temperate forests and the mangroves of Central Africa to the rainforests of the Amazon basin, oil, gas and mining projects threaten precious forests and cause irreversible damage to ecosystems and biodiversity.

Mineral exploration currently threatens more than half of both South America's and Russia's frontier forests, according to the World Resources Institute, while coal mining in eastern India threatens the last remaining habitat of the endangered tiger.

While the extractive sector carries significant risks for ecological disasters in industrialized countries, in poorer countries with weaker environmental standards, the likelihood of oil spills, toxic emissions and contamination is greatly increased and governments and communities are less equipped to limit the damage.

Between 1982 and 1992, Shell's subsidiary in Nigeria spilled about 1.6 million gallons of oil in the Niger Delta, most from leaking pipelines, notes the NGO platform.

The huge earning power of mining often sees forced relocation and brutal, sometimes deadly suppression of those who demand fair compensation or respect for local ecosystems.

"All too often, these projects are associated with human rights abuses and the companies build alliances with authoritarian governments to protect their corporate interests," noted Andrea Durbin of Friends of the Earth-U.S.

"The statement also calls on public funds to be used for public good, while recognizing that it may not be appropriate for the World Bank to be involved in financing these projects either," she said. "What is important is that civil society sets the development priorities for their country, not by bankers in Washington."

The continuing struggle of the Ogoni people living in the oil fields of Nigeria is one of the most celebrated battles of a people demanding compensation and clean-up of their environment.

The Amungme people in Irian Jaya, Indonesia have also been calling for fair treatment and compensation from one of the largest gold and copper mines in the world, Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold Mine.

Last month, the IFC announced that thousands of jobs would be saved and a key industry in Zambia revitalized following its injection of $30 million into the Konkola Copper Mines Limited.

According to James Bond, director of IFC's Mining Department, the investment is the first by a newly-formed mining group of the World Bank and IFC and represents the kind of project "where IFC truly adds value, by resuscitating an ailing industry, providing work for the people and income for Zambia, and by ensuring high standards of environmental protection that can serve as a benchmark for the Zambian mining sector."

The World Bank has not responded to calls in the NGO platform to quit the extractive sector.

Its sister organization, the IMF, has not been spared either.

"Environmentalists around the world have long been concerned about the impact of International Monetary Fund structural adjustment policies on the global environment," said Friends of the Earth.

"Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) treat natural resources as commodities, exported as cheap products to over-consuming markets in the Northern rich countries. Exports of natural resources have increased at astonishing rates in many IMF adjusting countries, with no consideration of the sustainability of this approach."

Under SAP since the mid 1980s, Guyana has implemented policies to increase large-scale, foreign-owned mining ventures. Critics claim this has led to river pollution, the decline of fish populations and deforestation. There are now 32 foreign mining companies active in Guyana and large-scale mining permits cover an estimated 10 percent of the country. The IMF is encouraging Guyana's government to transform mining and petroleum into one of the country's critical economic sectors.

On the other hand, influential voices such as Harvard professor Jeffrey Sachs are joining in the outcry against the extractive industry.

Sachs recently told the Nigeria Economic Summit group in Lagos that Nigeria should stop its reliance on oil for economic development and invest in health care, education, agricultural production and manufacturing to diversify its export base.

Sachs calls oil, "a distraction which can never be relied upon for economic development because if you divide the number of barrels Nigeria produces daily with the population of about 120 million, you will discover that the country is very poor."

Copyright (c) IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved. Copyright 2000

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