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August 31, 2000
Social Investors Support Boycott of World Bank
An international coalition of social action groups is enlisting the aid of institutional social
investors to push for World Bank reform.
SocialFunds.com --
The World Bank is one of the leading institutions orchestrating the current process of economic
globalization, often to the detriment of the environment and social fabric of developing countries.
The World Bank Bonds Boycott campaign is attempting to rein in Bank policies by cutting off their
purse strings, the bonds posted by their International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to
finance their international lending.
 The World Bank Bonds Boycott (WBBB) is an
international campaign launched by a coalition of social action groups, including the Center for
Economic Justice, United for a Fair Economy, Rainforest Action Network, and others. Together they
plan to pressure the World Bank to stop socially and environmentally destructive lending practices
by using grassroots economic and political tactics, including those employed by social investors.
"No socially-responsible investor would touch World Bank bonds with a ten-foot pole," said
Simon Billenness, Senior Social Research Analyst at Trillium Asset Management, the Boston-based
social investment management firm. Trillium is one of the first institutional investors to endorse
WBBB, the others being Pax World Fund Family, Progressive Asset Management, and Parnassus
Investments.
The World Bank has been widely criticized for its "structural adjustment"
policies, which promote export-led growth that can be destructive to natural resources and a debt
structure that sacrifices the health and welfare of developing countries. Last April, more than
20,000 demonstrators converged on Washington, D.C. to protest such policies of the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The World Bank has amended its policies to
incorporate environmental and social concerns, but its recent record suggests that these changes
are not significant. For instance, despite widespread objections, the Bank approved the
Chad-Cameroon pipeline in June, a costly development project causing irreversible damage to
hundreds of miles of rainforest, indigenous villages, and wildlife reserves.
Last month,
the Bank approved a loan of $40 million to China for a development project that will force the
relocation of 60,000 people in Tibet, in violation of many of the Bank's own guidelines, causing
unimaginable social an economic disruption. The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet, has called
the project "cultural genocide."
Despite the World Bank's admirable goals of development
and growth, WBBB asserts that the Bank's policies of debt repayment are at the cost of the
environment and the living and working conditions of the majority of people in the world. Rather
than bridging the gap between rich and poor, the World Bank has contributed to the widening gap and
corresponding social disintegration.
Many of these social and environmental issues are
close to the concerns of social investors, and WBBB provides a critical link between the socially
responsible investment community and the issue of economic globalization. WBBB is urging social
investors to take a firm stand on World Bank policies and their effects on poverty and the
environment.
"At one point we did have some World Bank debt in our fund," said Jerome
Dodson, President of Parnassus Investments, the San Francisco-based socially responsible investment
manager. "But we sold the securities for social reasons. We still have a policy of not investing in
World Bank debt."
The cities of Oakland and Berkeley have passed resolutions not to
purchase World Bank bonds, and similar resolutions are pending in other cities across the U.S. WBBB
plans to announce new institutions that have passed boycott resolutions on September 26, the first
day of the World Bank annual meeting in Prague, when we will learn which other institutional social
investors take a stand on the Bank's accountability.
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