A/42/427
English
Page 86
The industrialized world's demands for raw materials, higher productivity. and material goods have imposed serious environmental impacts and high economic costs not only in our own countries, but also on the developing world. The existing international patterns of financial, economic trade and investment policies further add to the problems.
We must all be willing to examine our relations in international trade, investments, development assistance. industry. and agriculture in light of the consequences these may have for underdevelopment and environmental destruction in the Third World. We must even be willing to go further and implement the Leans ncessary to alleviate these symptoms.
Rakel Surlien
Former Minister of Environment,
Government of Norway
WCED Opening Ceremony
Oslo June 1985
sometimes served to reduce rather than enhance the possibilities for sustainable development. (See Chapter 5.)
35. The major priority is for sustainability considerations to be diffused throughout the work of international financial institutions. The roles of the World Bank and the IMF are particularly crucial because their lending conditions are being used as benchmarks for parallel lending by other institutions - comercial banks and expot credit agencies. It is important in this contet that sustainability considerations be taken into account by the Bank in the appraisal of structural adjustment lending and other policy-oriented lending directed to resource-based sectors - agriculture. fishing, forestry, and energy in particular – as well as specific projects.
36 A similar shift of emphasis is required in respect of adjustment programmes undertaken by developing countries. To date, 'adjustment' – particularly under IMF auspice – has led more often than not to cutbacks in living standards in the interest of financial stabilization. Implicit in many suggested plans for coping with the debt crisis is he growing recognition that future adjustment should be growth-oriented. Yet it also needs to be environmentally sensitive.
37. The IMF also has a mandate for structural adjustment lending, as in its new Structural Adjustment Facility. There has been a strongly epressed demand from developing-country borrowers for the Fund to take into account wider and longer-term development objectives than financial stabilization: growth, social goals, and environmental impacts.
38. Development agencies, and the World Bank in particular, should develop easily usable methodologies to augment their own appraisal techniques and to assist developing countries to improve their capacity for environmental assessment.
