Confusion - and Perhaps Gross Overstatement - Surrounds World Bank's Environmental Commitments. By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters, July 23, 2008. "The World Bank [has] overstated its commitment to environmental projects since 1990, possibly by billions of dollars, [reported the Bank's internal watchdog group] on Tuesday. The bank's official estimate for [environmental] commitments... is $59 billion from fiscal 1990 to 2007, according to the Independent Evaluation Group... [which] found [that] only $18.2 billion allocated by the [bank actually] went to projects deemed to be at least 80% environmental in nature... The $59 billion figure 'appears to overstate the actual volume of resources going directly for environmental improvement,' the [IEG] report said... 'The priority given to lending for... [such projects] appears to be modest'... Specific investments in environmental quality could be 'substantially lower' than these estimates, [John] Redwood, [one of the report's authors,] said... 'But we're not sure, because it's just the way the commitments are estimated ... This was one of our great frustrations.' Laura Tuck, the bank's director for sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean, took issue with the watchdog report on this point but acknowledged that the coding system [the Bank uses] can under-represent environmental commitments. Korinna Horta of... the Environmental Defense Fund said the... report shows the bank does a poor job of monitoring and evaluating the environmental impact of the programs it supports. 'The bank does not have an appropriate accountability structure in place to ensure that its well-meaning environmental and social policies are actually implemented on the ground,' [she] said."
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