Poor Countries, Rich Resources
Article from: OGEL 3 (2004), in Economic and Commercial Context for Oil, Gas and Energy Law
Introduction
The World Bank has helped finance exploitation of oil, gas, coal and other minerals in the developing world, mainly through its private sector lending arm, even though this has rarely advanced the institution's mission of reducing poverty. Indeed, it often makes poverty worse. Three years ago, the bank's president, James Wolfensohn, commissioned a panel of experts to investigate how the bank should deal with these extractive industries. The panel concluded that the bank should stop financing oil projects completely by 2008 and should immediately begin a policy of supporting ...