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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...
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...
The award of the 2017 Nobel Prize for economics to Richard Thaler highlights the recognition that human behavior is more complex and irrational than the assumptions of conventional...
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...
The paradox is that the natural law rationale, sometimes advanced domestically to justify weakening government regulation, arguably supports with greater cogency stronger environme...
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.
Corrupt businesses, politicians, and cronies are stealing hundreds of billions of dollars from the globe’s poorest people. The World Bank and other multilateral development lending...
China is becoming the biggest international public financial player in poorer countries, dwarfing the largest development agencies such as the World Bank. Unfortunately, the econom...
This article examines the record of the first several years of James Wolfensohn's tenure as president of the World Bank, based mainly on internal Bank evaluation reports. This piec...
This testimony examines the institutional issues concerning massive corruption in World Bank lending over the past thirteen years through 2004, as documented in internal World Bank...
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.
Robert Kuttner's recent book, “Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism,“ warns that “corporate and financial elites have substantially captured the machinery of the state,” as wel...
“Dirty money” flows totalling over $1.1 trillion a year support human trafficking, global drug mafias, terrorist networks, and arms smuggling, as well as fueling international wild...
A book review of William Easterly's The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good (New York: The Penguin Press, 2006).
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...
Rich describes carbon markets as the “financial cargo cult that had driven much of the early enthusiasm for REDD+.” REDD national plans often tended to focus on the technical compl...
Over the last two decades the world’s institutions have largely failed to deal with the ecological crises of climate change, destruction of species, and pollution of fresh water an...
Drawing on in depth institutional knowledge, hundreds of case studies, and scores of internal and external reports and evaluations, Bruce Rich paints a picture of a Bank still infl...
I went on a book tour in Hawaii where To Uphold the World had a surprising resonance--Hawaii has the highest percentage Buddhist population of any American state. This interview is...
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...
World Bank efforts to weaken environmental and social safeguard policies are provoking international concern....The Bank will only remain relevant by refocusing on the environmenta...
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...
An article by four UK researchers...concludes that despite long-standing strategies that purport to achieve biodiversity protection and poverty alleviation, actual empirical eviden...
World Bank President Kim praised the Bank International Finance Corporation, its private sector investment branch, as a model, despite environmental and social conflicts in IFC ext...
The allure of an market that pays developing countries and forest communities to preserve standing forests as offsets for not reducing emissions in the richer industrialized nation...
The Rio Conference agreement, The Future We Want, pledged to “renew our commitment to sustainable development...” Meanwhile, hundreds of Brazilian Amerindians, from several threate...
A report of the World Bank Independent Evaluation Group concludes that efforts of the International Finance Corporation, to green operations of two Brazilian multinational agribus...
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...
Civil society groups and the United Nations argue that access to water is a basic human right, and subjecting access to water for the poor to market forces is ethically objectionab...
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...
Ninety-seven percent of the increase in energy-related CO2 emissions through 2030 will occur in developing nations. Without major changes in international energy investment, the in...
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...
When I first came to Washington in the 1980s I heard references to “leakage” from contacts in the World Bank and U.S. Treasury Department. I wondered how it could be that a well-fu...
The world’s largest new oil and gas project is taking place 120 miles offshore from Guyana. Exxonmobil (45 percent share) together with Hess (30 percent), and the Chinese company...
On March 21, 2022 United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that the world is “sleepwalking to climate catastrophe.” An example is the massive international public fin...
Last November the 27th Conference of the Parties to the Climate Convention agreed to establish a new “Loss and Damage” fund to compensate nations “particularly vulnerable” to the i...
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....
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...
Mortgaging the Earth musical version: My 1994 book Mortgaging t...
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, "...
