Friday, March 23, 2001
President James Wolfensohn
The World Bank
1818 H Street
Washington, DC, 20433 USA
RE: Commentary on Consultation on Disclosure Policy
Dear President Wolfensohn:
1. The Bank is to be commended for recognizing
that "the sharing of information is essential for effective and sustainable
development (Foreword, The Disclosure of Information, 1993)." The
economic value of uniform and open disclosure has been evident for some time
from the positive impact of the Bank's encouragement for openness in their
international competitive bidding (ICB) standard. I witnessed first hand
the benefits when I assisted the Inter-American Development Bank and the IBRD
institute these standards in Honduras.
2. I will focus on seven suggestions for
strengthening the Bank's development effectiveness. My knowledge of disclosure
policy comes from my 13 years as a IBRD, IDB, and IFC consultant and 35 years
front-line experience in development in 14 countries. This experience includes
serving as a Bank consultant on safeguard issues, especially involuntary
resettlement and indigenous peoples.
3. Extensive development experience and research
supports the Bank consultation's conclusion that "making draft EA reports
readily accessible to affected people at the time of project design can mitigate
adverse impacts on them and on the environment." The flames of every
major environmental conflict in the Bank's history have been fueled by lack of
full and prompt disclosure, participation, and informed consent. In the
fast-pace of project development, voids are quickly filed with information
-whether the Bank wishes to disclose or not.
Enumeration method for disclosure policy merits rethinking
4. Two distinct approaches to disclosure policy
are emerging amidst strong global demands for accountability, correction of
information-linked market distortions, and political concerns for conflict
resolution. Bank Group Disclosure Policies enumerate a list of documents that
will be disclosed, all other information is not. In contrast, sunshine policy
framework indicates what types of information (as opposed to documents) will NOT
be released. The sunshine policies set forth provisions and avenues for
appealing non-disclosure decisions. These methods are normally independent of
the management and staff- whom may become entangled in a conflict of interest -
since information may disclose their own poor performance or mistakes. And the
sunshine framework provides publicly visible penalties for non-compliance by
staff. The sunshine framework is the predominate approach in the U.S. Freedom of
Information Act and further elaborated in State legal frameworks.
5. The enumeration approach being elaborated in
the Bank policy disclosure consultation is drifting away from global, democratic
trends of its member governments that are proving effective for development.
Moreover, this approach undercuts development effectiveness by limiting Board
and management flexibility by embedding current project cycle documents and
procedures in higher level policy. As procedures and documents evolve, the
enumeration disclosure framework must undergo continuous, cumbersome policy
reviews and revisions. This wastes Board time and entangles the Board
toward micromanagement.
6. Externally, the rigidity of this approach may
also lead to serious misunderstandings. If procedures are revised and critical
information is moved through a new procedure and documents without the documents
being folded into the disclosure policy, the change in direction may be
misinterpreted as a bad-faith attempt to circumvent the disclosure policy.
Unequal access to information
7. The disclosure policy establishes that the most
powerful parties control what is and is not revealed to the weaker parties -
creating dual levels of information citizenship. While it is reasonable
that the Bank and its partner(s) should not disclose trade secrets and pricing
information, it is undermines development effectiveness to restrict
environmental and social impact of information. Unequal access to
information on project safeguard issues stifles competition, increases conflict,
and may harm poor and vulnerable peoples, especially indigenous peoples. Without
clear mechanisms to correct this imbalance, the disclosure policy undermines its
own objective of increasing informed consent and participation of the powerless
affected by such projects.
Presumption of the literacy and supplemental methods for disclosure
8. Information inequality is exacerbated by the
unfortunate assumption in the Bank disclosure policy, that stakeholders are not
only literate, but sufficiently literate to understand Bank development
language.The Bank consultation document tangentially recognizes, but does not
solve the issue. It ventures a prolusion of a possible policy change from
disclosure "to those who seek "information to a more strategic,
outreach approach. This is a valuable direction, but the suggested
solution falls short of the mark. The assumption that the Bank Group can
designate strategic outreach activities to a local NGO's and claim they are
responsible for information flows to affected people is flawed and unacceptable
to many NGOs. To expect an NGO or other third party, which has not been
legally empowered by project affected people, to translate safeguard information
to a third party circumvents, rather than resolves, disclosure.
9. The policy should be revised to provide
safeguards to assure culturally appropriate disclosure. While consulting
for the Bank, I unsuccessfully suggested culturally appropriate non-written
methods for information disclosure to supplement written disclosures. I
recall that the IFC reported that it had disclosed an environmental report to
Pehuenche Indians leaders. In reality, the staff let the leaders look at
an English version. One of the leaders was illiterate and the others did not, of
course, read, let alone speak English. The disclosed document contained
information that might have proven useful in their negotiations with the IFC's
client, a power company who was negotiating resettlement of part of this deeply
impoverished tribe. Management and their client rejected suggestions that would
have equalized information inequalities. For example, the IFC consultant
recommended broadcasts of reports over the local radio station - which most
Pehuenche - literate or not - listened to each day. Tapes of these broadcast
would be distributed (usually tape players can be found) and local leaders could
ask questions of the IFC staff and consultant, on the radio, about items they
did not understand. The rest of the Bank Group faces this problem and should
seek out a policy solution.
10. Telecommunication advances open up new
possibilities for disclosure policy, to supplement the written document.
Measured against the operational costs of moving Bank staff back and forth to a
remote site, it is now cost effective to train, provide and maintain Internet
links between project affected peoples and the Bank. My colleagues in Latin
America and I have developed such report linkages and trained indigenous peoples
in remote areas of Latin America for almost a decade.
Full disclosure and access of information to The Bank Executive Board members
11. Under the present rules, critical Bank documents are
withheld from the Board. The disclosure policy should address the unequal
access of member governments to information held by management and staff.
The Executive Board is an accountable party. It should have unobstructed access
to all documents upon demand. Valuable Board and staff time is wasted on an
internal cat and mouse game trying to gain access to information. Widespread
public knowledge of this situation will undermine public support for the Bank,
especially among people in democratic countries who demand accountability from
their national governments. If government representatives do that know
what is going on within an organization that they oversee, this fosters
perception that the Board is not in control.
Insufficient and ambiguous consultation on safeguard issues
12. The most disappointing part of this public
consultation comes from its highly ambiguous suggestions concerning the most
sensitive of all Bank information - that related to the safeguard issues,
especially resettlement and indigenous peoples. The Bank proposal for a
"uniform treatment for each separate document, even if short, submitted to
the Infoshop before project appraisal" is confusing and nebulous.
13. Which of the multiple practices now in effect will
become the "uniform standard?" Will the current Category A treatments,
which permit environmental assessments to be withheld from the public eye if
under "exceptional circumstances" the borrower objects be extended? Is
this consultation proposing to permit borrow objections to be a valid reason for
non-disclosure in Category B projects and resettlement? Equally nebulous is
whether or not the [non-legally binding] "good practices" threshold
for resettlement policy might be extended as the uniform standard for Category
B, and A and resettlement plans?
14. The call for an exception "in special
circumstances" is not workable and will exacerbate mistrust, controversy,
and conflict. Experience with previous Bank project shows that
"special circumstances" will most likely occur in controversial
projects - which are precisely the ones in which open access to information. For
the sake of the Bank and moving projects forward, this "exception"
clause should be removed in favor of a "uniform" and open standard.
Placing "special exception" language in a policy opens the door for
arbitrary extensive redaction (censorship) of sensitive documents by Bank staff
to protect their careers and cover up mistakes (cf. the heavy redaction of
Pangue Project independent evaluations by Hair and Downing).
15. Full disclosure is especially important when
property is being taken and livelihoods destroyed by involuntary resettlement.
In 1984, the Board review of resettlement discovered involuntary displacement
carries high risks of impoverishment - apart from the loss of land. Denial of
full disclosure of information held by the Bank and partners on Bank and partner
produced resettlement information places the Bank and its partners at risk of
violating international human rights standards. A policy solution to avoid
mixing disclosed with non-disclosed information would be to require that
resettlement information be segregated from other project documents.
16. The safeguard component of the disclosure
consultation is so weak and technical flaw that a distinct, extended
consultation on disclosure of safeguard information is need. More productive
alternative to resetting the consultation clock would be to assure in the
disclosure policy that all safeguard information, including underlying technical
reports on all categories of projects be promptly disclosed to the affected
parties and the public.
Human rights violation risks
17. In the area of resettlement and indigenous peoples,
the Disclosure Policy should avoid permitting any exceptions to disclosure -
since it may lead to unacceptable human rights violations and deep damage to the
Bank. In the Pangue project, failure to disclose lead to investigations
and findings that the World Bank's sibling, the International Finance
Corporation and its staff had violated the human rights of the Pehuenche Indians
in Southern Chile (http://linux.soc.uu.se/mapuche/fakta/act031a.html).
Had the Bank secret agreement been made about the future of a Balkan's ethnic
group, instead of a small tribe in Chile, serious damage to the institution
would have resulted and made headlines in the Financial Times.
Resolve management conflicts of interest
18. Finally, the proposed disclosure policy framework
continues to permit management and staff to withhold disclosure of information
based on exceptions such as a "compelling reason", to "protect
the integrity of the deliberative process", to protect "the personal
privacy of the staff", "and the like." By permitting management
to judge what is and is not an exception, the disclosure policy is constructed
on an unresolved conflict of interest. Self-policing has proven
ineffective. Public confidence is undermined by the fact that the Bank staff who
were directly involved in the decision making of some of the largest blunders in
Bank history (Narmada, Pangue, etc.) were not disciplined and subsequently
promoted to leadership positions. I recommend setting up an independent or
external judge or appeal procedure to contain the inherent conflict of interest.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
Theodore E. Downing
- Research Professor of Social Development, University of Arizona
- Chair, the International Standards Committee and Past-President, the Society
for Applied Anthropology
- IBRD/IFC consultant for 13 years, including the Zimapan, Aguamilpas, and
Pangue dams and as an international resettlement panelist on the Yacyreta dam.
- Member, Conseil internacional du droit de l'environnement
- Founder, the Policy Kiosk (www.policykiosk.com)