REDD: Seeing the forest for the trees http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64056

Goldman Sachs employees, such as Ken Newcombe, were architects of the World Bank's Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF). Meanwhile the bank itself emerged as the most important financial instrument in the carbon market following the Rio Earth Summit, despite it bankrolling more than 130 major fossil fuel projects during the past decade, with a fossil fuel project calculated as being financed every 14 days.

Since Rio, CO2 emissions from World Bank-related projects are estimated at 43 billion tons.The interlocking nature of these relationships is clear. The percentage of officials at the World Bank composed of economists and bankers produced by institutions such as Goldman Sachs is 50 per cent, for example, as compared to development specialists at 8 per cent. And, 75 per cent of financial institutions use standards linked to the World Bank.

The winner of World Bank policies is none other than the US. A US Treasury report unashamedly reveals this cherished synergy: ‘The policies and programmes of the World Bank Group have been consistent with US interests. This is particularly true in terms of country allocation questions and sensitive policy issues. The character of the Bank, its corporate and voting structure, ensures consistency with the economic and political objectives of the US.’ 

Through the instruments of the World Bank, ‘developing’ the economies of heavily indebted regions is now subject to the free market agenda writ large, as forested regions become classified as natural assets that can be exploited through export-oriented activities, which are inevitably dependent on foreign investment.

Needles to say, given that there is a 92 per cent correlation between rising arms sales and oil sales, with 80 per cent of the world's oil reserves controlled by rent-seeking or rentier governments, the roots of climate change and Northern ‘wealth,’ remain intimately interlocked with that of Africa's suffering and poverty, particularly in those regions whose militarised regimes – such as Nigeria, Gabon, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and others – are dependent on oil exploitation for income.