Development Banks and Sustainable Development in the Tropical Andes
Over the past ten years, international development banks--the Development Bank of Latin America, Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, and increasingly Chinese policy banks--have rapidly mobilized to fund new infrastructure projects in the Andean Amazon, a biodiversity hotspot that is home to sensitive watersheds as well as threatened indigenous communities. With over $70 billion committed to projects in the Amazon basin, this infrastructure boom dominated by Chinese investment offers both economic benefits and potential risks to local communities and the environment.
Over the last two years, a team of researchers from Boston University, the University of the Pacific in Peru, FLACSO in Ecuador, and INSEAD in Bolivia has explored whether the social and environmental safeguards put in place by international development banks to guide their lending practices have served to mitigate environmental and social risks, or whether they are triggering a race to the bottom in social and environmental standards.
The Wilson Center's Latin American Program and China Environment Forum hosted a discussion of the results of this two-year study to explore how development banks can ensure that their projects enhance sustainable development, protect the environment, and avoid social conflict in the Andean Amazon.
Image Source: Flickr
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Latin America Program
The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action. Read more
China Environment Forum
Since 1997, the China Environment Forum's mission has been to forge US-China cooperation on energy, environment, and sustainable development challenges. We play a unique nonpartisan role in creating multi-stakeholder dialogues around these issues. Read more