RAN's Concerns about the IDB:

The IDB is financing the expansion of agrofuels --industrial biofuels-- and dirty energy projects all over Latin America in the name of renewable energy and development. The bank has already approved US$ 45 million in loans and technical cooperation funds to fund agrofuels projects and is now considering another US$ 3 billion in private sector loan projects. Recent studies show that agrofuels production result in more greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels because of land clearing and deforestation; the displacement of millions of small farmers and Indigenous people and increased hunger worldwide. When 1/3 of global greenhouse emissions come from land use changes and industrial agriculture, we cannot afford to let the IDB fund agrofuels expansion.

The IDB is financing the Initiative for the Integration of South American Regional Infrastructure (IIRSA), an industrial infrastructure plan of mega-projects consisting of roads, pipelines, dams and waterways. One of the most controversial IIRSA projects is the Madeira dam complex in Brazil. The $10 billion scheme, involving two dams, is officially predicted to displace 3,000 local people and substantially impact ecosystems. Deforestation is reported to have risen 600 percent in the region since the preliminary license for the two dams was granted in July 2007. The scheme may also involve the construction of an industrial waterway to transport unsustainable products from the threatened rainforest such as soy, timber and minerals

The IDB continues to bankroll Peru's problematic Camisea gas project. Camisea is located in a highly-biodiverse and remote part of the Peruvian Amazon, home to numerous indigenous communities including some of the last still living in isolation anywhere in the world. Impacts have included deforestation, erosion, gas spills and the loss of fish and game populations on which those communities depend. According to a recent economic study by a former Harvard professor, exporting Camisea's gas rather than using it to meet domestic energy needs, actually represents a drag rather than a boon to Peruvian development. Camisea has also helped spark an unsustainable and potentially devastating oil rush in the Peruvian Amazon; roughly 70 percent of the region, about twice the size of California, is now zoned into hydrocarbon concessions. Having agreed in January to a $400 million loan to construct a liquefaction plant on the Peruvian coast to export the Camisea reserves, the IDB continues its involvement in what it regards as a flagship project, but which has now become a model of how not to carry out extractive projects in environmentally sensitive areas and near vulnerable indigenous communities. Camisea is also emblematic of the Bank's continued support for outdated, climate-changing fossil fuels and its insistence on export-led development to the exclusion of more sustainable alternative models that address the needs of citizens rather than the private sector.

Even though the bank has an Indigenous peoples policy, it doesn't implement it. The Camisea gas project is emblematic of the IDB's outdated and dismissive approach towards millions of Latin American citizens and their unique human rights enshrined in international legal documents such as ILO 169 and, from 2007, the UN's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

For further information on the concerns of civil society with the IDB?s funding policies go to:

http://www.amazonwatch.org/documents/IDBWatch_Issue2.pdf