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A deeply researched and widely acclaimed account of the World Bank and its destructive impact on the environment and social equity, as well as a questioning of the history, underly...
In this powerful critique of the current wave of globalization, Rich urgently calls for a new global ethic, distilling the messages of Ashoka and Kautilya while reflecting on think...
This section has material on four chapters I authored in four different books, plus a preface and essay I authored for a book on Ashoka published in Bengali in Bangladesh in 2016.
Drawing on in depth institutional knowledge, hundreds of case studies, and scores of internal and external reports and evaluations, Foreclosing the Future: The World Bank and the P...
Specialized environmental courts have proliferated around the world, growing from 350 in 2009 to over 1,200 in 44 countries by 2017. India’s National Green Tribunal is an innovati...
A look back at the Clean Development Mechanism and at future reduction efforts.....The study [on behalf of the European Commission] identifies inherently contradictory incentives i...
On a crowded planet, environmental protection and social equity are inextricably interrelated. Attempting to achieve either alone will ultimately fail without simultaneously pursui...
This article appeared in late 2013, and the World Bank Group has made progress in adopting some of the article's recommendations, namely commitments to end financing of coal power...
This was the lead article in the "Special Issue: Environmental Law and Policy in Developing Countries" of the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall Law School Ecology Law...
The World Bank is doing its best to present itself as a born-again friend of the earth. Bruce Rich separates fact from fancy.
My testimony concerned the Asian Development Bank, subsequently the discussion with Senator Lugar also dealt with the World Bank and other multilateral development banks, especiall...
In 1987 the World Bank made sweeping commitments to environmental reform, but deep seated institutional problems made real progress difficult.
A description and analysis of the strategy of civil society organizations to promote environmental reforms in World Bank in the 1980s.
First of two essays summarizing my analysis of the World Bank's record in addressing climate change, including managing global carbon trading funds, in the web blog and discussion...
In the words of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the 2011 Davos World Economic Forum, the global economy has become a “global suicide pact.” How can we imagine alternatives? Are...
The Catholic theologian Hans Küng observed that “a global market economy requires a global ethic.” Yet at the very moment when the need for just such an ethic is more urgent than e...
Question: What’s the most important take-home message for readers?"I examine the lives and writings of Ashoka and Kautilya as archetypes, metaphors and sources of inspiration for a...
Question: What do you like to take back from India? Visiting India is a great personal and intellectual adventure, with her almost limitless treasure chest of history, culture and...
This full feature length article was featured in the leading German weekly Die Zeit at the time of the October 1993 Annual World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington. It gives an i...
Turkey, the world’s 17th largest economy, plans to as much as quadruple coal-fired electric capacity, building as many as 80 new plants by 2030. It could become the world’s third-l...
The United Nations Green Climate Fund is the principal international mechanism to channel finance from richer nations to developing countries for climate change mitigation and adap...
A recent review of the economic costs and benefits of 245 large dams by four Oxford professors....found “overwhelming evidence” that the real costs of large dam projects, are for t...
The tragedy is that there already lies a clear path to achieve two thirds of the needed CO2 emission reductions, while supporting poverty-reducing clean energy investments in devel...
The World Bank has become the main financial administrator of “climate investment funds as well as for 12 different "carbon funds." A growing literature has documented the lack of...
The Barefoot College has trained hundreds of poor villagers as grassroots solar power installation workers and engineers. Founder Bunker Roy writes that “any goal that is driven fr...
Carbon capture and storgage would greatly increase the capital and operating costs of new plants. The cost of CCS is such that rapidly maturing technologies such as wind and solar...
The scope of the Indian RTI (Right to Information) law exceeds that of similar laws in most industrial countries, applying to states, municipalities and other local bodies, as well...
The world’s richest nations are preparing to deliver as much as $12 billion in extra funds to the World Bank to fight global warming. At the same time, the bank is accelerating len...
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation as well as other international organizations are not totally immune from lawsuits in the US. Af...
Last February 13th the Indian government arrested in the south Indian city of Bengalaru (Bangalore) an apparently highly dangerous young woman. Security forces extradited her immed...
Greta Thunberg said the 26th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Climate Convention, like the past quarter century of COPs, amounted to “blah blah blah.” Queen Elizabeth II obser...
In 2023 average global temperatures reached the highest level ever measured. Saudi Aramco, Qatar Energy, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Total announced major production expansion plans....
Last year the International Monetary Fund reported that the world’s nations in 2022 had nearly doubled since 2020 their subsidization of oil, gas, and yes, still coal, to an all-ti...
Universal Healthcare in Ancient India: In To Uphold the World: A Call for a New Global Ethic from Ancient India, author Bruce Rich contemplates the rule of the Indian emper...
Legacy of Ashoka and Kautilya: From Subhash Chandra Bose, Sardar Patel, Sarojini Naidu, B R Ambedkar, and even before them, Raja Ram Mohan Roy—the Indian independence...
Lessons from Ashoka & Kautilya: In conversation with Bruce Rich, Attorney, Environmental Law Institute, USA at the Eastern Himalayan Naturenomics Forum 2017, Guhawati,...
Jury Findings World Bank TribunaI: The four day Independent Peoples Tribunal (IPT) on the World Bank in India concluded after hearing numerous depositions indicting th...
Sustainability, Finance and Environment: Bruce Rich, attorney and author, speaks about his journey into the field of conservation. He discusses the role of World Bank in fi...
"Foreclosing the Future," Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy: I discuss the findings of my then recently published new book on the World Bank, "...
