Major world bank projects

In January 1986, on behalf of the International Institute for Environment and Development, I held a number of meetings with World Bank staff in Washington DC with the aim of securing the Bank's co-operation in a series of studies of its lending policies. The idea was that these studies would form the basis of discussion at a conference to be hosted by IIED in June 1986 and attended by Bank experts, representatives of the recipient governments concerned and a number of the Bank's critics. Media representatives were to be present but would not report the seminar. In this endeavour the Bank offered its support and agreed to make available to me relevant internal documents which would enable me to undertake the research. From the outset it was clearly under-stood that I should be free to make use of the material contained in those documents in the papers I was to prepare.

In order to ensure that those of the papers describing the World Bank's approach to the case study projects comprised an agreed body of fact I undertook to give the Bank copies of the various drafts. These were to be subjected at every stage to peer review by Bank experts. I undertook to make any changes required by the Bank if these were corrective of errors of fact. It was agreed that the papers should rigorously avoid all bias, whether it might be supportive or critical of the Bank's policies. These descriptive papers were to be mutually agreed and their accuracy verified.

Accompanying each of the descriptive papers there was to be a companion discussion paper which was equally faithfully, and without introduced bias, to present the arguments put forward by the Bank's critics. These too I undertook to provide to the World Bank in order to ensure that no opinions of my own crept into the text, but rather that they were straightforward presentations of the publicly expressed views of individuals out of sympathy with the Bank's modus operandi. In the course of preparing these companion papers it was recognised that there was one specific question which arose in one case study which had not been addressed by the Bank's critics. This I shall presently identify. It was agreed by the Bank that I should myself attempt to make good this deficiency by including my own assessment of the situation as I saw it.