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Export Credit Agencies Defy World Leaders by Failing
to Adopt Environmental and Human Rights Safeguards
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 09, 2001
CONTACT:
In Paris: Helene Ballande (Friends of the Earth France) +33 01 48 51
73 23
Antonio Tricarico (Eyes on SACE) mobile +39.328.84 85 448
In Germany: Heffa Schücking (Urgewald) +49 25831031
Genoa - A coalition of development watchdog groups today announced that
negotiators for the world's seven largest group of public finance institutions,
export credit agencies, have defied their own Presidents and Prime Ministers
by missing a critical deadline set by their G-8 Leaders for adopting minimal
environmental and human rights policies by 2001. Export credit agencies
(ECAs) have been charged with establishing uniform environmental guidelines
in the year 2001, and are to report to the July 20-22 G-8 Summit in Genoa,
Italy.
“After years of talking, ECAs have achieved virtually nothing. What
they will report to the G-8 does not even include public disclosure of
environmental impact assessment for the harmful projects they back, which
has been an international norm for other institutions for decades. Their
proposal doesn’t pass the laugh test,” said Nick Hilyard, of
the British NGO, Cornerhouse.
Export credit agencies are collectively the largest taxpayer-supported
institutions backing infrastructure projects in the developing world,
now far surpassing the World Bank Group and other multilateral institutions.
Most of these powerful agencies still have no environmental or human rights
safeguards, and operate in near total secrecy. ECAs routinely use public
money to finance fossil fuel power plants, mining, chemical plants, nuclear
power, logging, and arms trade-projects with dubious development benefits
and often devastating environmental and social impacts.
"ECAs have had a destructive impact on developing nations, and are
under increasing public pressure to clean up their acts," said Heffa
Schücking, of the German non-governmental organization, Urgewald.
"They are dragging their feet because the corporations they exist
to serve want to keep doing business as usual."
For several years ECAs have been under clear mandates by the group of
the world's eight wealthiest nations (the “ G-8”) to adopt acceptable
environmental policies. With little progress made to date, the G-8 mandate
effectively expires with its 2001 G-8 Summit in Genoa, Italy.
Examples of some of the most controversial ECA-backed projects include:
· China’s Three Gorges Dam Project, which has caused dislocation
of hundreds of thousands of Chinese and threatens the ecosystem of the
Yangtze River, is supported by German, Swiss and Canadian ECAs;
· The proposed Ilisu Dam in the war-torn Kurdish region of Southeast
Turkey, which if built will flood a 10,000 year-old city of caves, involuntarily
relocate up to 70,000 Kurds, and fuel a brewing regional conflict with
Jordan and Syria over water resources, is potentially supported by ECAs
of the UK, German, Switzerland, Italy and the U.S.;
· Over US$ 4 billion in support by ECAs for massive pulp and paper
manufacturing infrastructure in Indonesia under the Suharto era. This
support contributed to over-capacity and debt-ridden pulp and paper sector,
the consequent ravaging of Indonesia’s native forests, ruination
of rural communities and, in the end, massive potential defaults to international
lenders. ECAs from Japan, US, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Canada and Finland
are implicated.
· ECAs also collectively contribute significantly to global warming
by supporting at least half of all the new greenhouse gas, energy intensive
infrastructure in the developing countries, including more fossil fuel-burning
power plants than any other public finance institutions.
"These impacts are only the tip of a destructive iceberg,"
said Titi Soentoro of the Indonesian group Bioforum. "Many ECA projects
virtually colonize rural communities in order to exploit their natural
resources. In the process, they destroy traditional livelihoods and enflame
conflicts between military forces and communities. You simply cannot separate
the environmental impacts from the other forms of damage these projects
do to our community health and well-being."
The demands of a growing international citizens' campaign for ECA reform
can be found in the NGO "Jakarta Declaration." These include
greater transparency in ECA operations, binding environmental and human
rights guidelines, and a commitment from ECAs that they only support economically
productive projects. The complete text can be seen at http://www.eca-watch.org/documents.html.
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