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Mohamed El-Ashry is someone who believes he can transform the much-criticised
World Bank into an organisation which provides ‘intellectual leadership’
in the global fight against environmental degradation. He’s certainly well
placed to do it, having joined the bank as its environment director from
the World Resources Institute in June. He says he hopes to create a dynamic
environment department capable of spreading a new environment-first ethic
throughout the bank’s operations.

The bank, established in 1944, lends $20 billion a year, on average,
for projects in developing countries and also provides technical and policy
advice. In 1987, after growing criticism of the bank’s environmental record,
its senior management committed themselves to incorporating environmental
concerns into all projects.

El-Ashry, who trained as a geologist in Egypt and the US, is well respected
by the worldwide environment movement. Among other things, he is credited
with transforming the dam-building Tennessee Valley Authority into an environmentally
aware organisation from 1979 to 1984. He says he came to the director’s
job on the condition that he had ‘access to top management and the decision-making
process at the highest level’.

Speaking during the joint World Bank/IMF annual meeting in Bangkok last
month, El-Ashry explained that he wants to develop a revamped ‘think-tank’
approach to enable his department to supply the innovative thinking necessary
to help many developing countries counter severe problems of pollution,
industrial waste, deforestation and degradation of natural resources.

El-Ashry admitted, however, that ‘right now the department does not
have the firepower and intellectual capability’ to fulfil his described
role. ‘But that is something I am going to be building over the next few
months,’ he added. But he faces formidable obstacles to incorporating environmental
thinking in all World Bank operations.

In recent years, the bank, which is funded by 155 member countries,
has come under increasing criticism from environmental groups for lending
billions of dollars to support large-scale hydroelectric, forestry and infrastructure
projects in Africa, Asia and South America. They say that many bank-funded
projects are ill-conceived, exacerbate environmental problems, cause unnecessary
social dislocation and create health problems.

A statement released in Bangkok by more than 40 nongovernmental organisations
(NGOs), including Greenpeace International and the World Rainforest Movement,
described the World Bank and the Environment progress report for 1991, launched
in the Thai capital last month, as a ‘whitewash of recent bank-funded environmental
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El-Ashry admits that the bank has made mistakes: ‘The NGO frustration
is based on past experience, but I really think they should come out and
be fair and judge us for the changes that are happening in the bank – they
should give people like me the benefit of the doubt that we really are trying
to change.’

The bank reported spending nearly £1 billion last year on ‘projects
that had primarily environmental objectives’, more than twice as much as
in the previous year. And the report says that four out of every ten projects
approved last year had ‘significant environmental components’.

El-Ashry says his ultimate aim is to ‘fully integrate environment and
economic thinking at the bank so we can get into the whole basic concept
of sustainable development’. He believes this will take time, but identifies
those key factors which he thinks will help the bank make the difficult
transition.

The first measure, he said, was the introduction at the start of October
of ‘tough’ new environmental specialists at the bank. A second important
strand is the support for individual countries developing National Environment
Action Plans. ‘I would prefer to call them national sustainable development
plans, so that we are not talking about environment there and development
there. These plans provide an opportunity for dialogue to take place between
bank people and governments and, hopefully, between governments and those
people affected by projects. This is all part of the long-term strategy,
and I hope the NGOs will come to recognise and support that,’ he added.

The bank’s recently implemented joint venture with the United Nations
to set up a $1.5 million pilot scheme, the Global Environmental Facility,
is another key element of overall strategy. The scheme aims to help developing
countries to contribute to the costs of solving the world’s major environmental
concerns: reduction of global warming; protecting international waters;
preserving biodiversity; and preventing further depletion of stratospheric
ozone.

‘The beauty of this scheme being partially under the World Bank is that
the bank itself will learn from the work the pilot is doing, so it can help
inform and guide in its own borrowing activities,’ he said.

El-Ashry sees the five to ten years following next year’s United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development, to be held in Brazil in June,
as crucial to the long-term environmental health of the Earth.

‘We must not think about UNCED as an end in itself. We must think about
this meeting as the beginning of the process for international cooperation
in addressing global environmental issues.

‘If we can get UNCED to catalyse human thinking then we will find in
the next ten years tremendous change, adjustment and progress – from the
beginning I didn’t like the large agenda idea and the attitude we’ve got
to get everything agreed by UNCED. That’s impossible,’ says El-Ashry. But
he remains optimistic. ‘You can’t help but have hope: I can’t imagine the
human race so unintelligent or foolish that it can’t see all the signs before
it and will continue down the path of environmental degradation.’

Paul Hunt was in Bangkok covering the World Bank/IMF meeting.