Monograph Abstracts

The Right Conditions: The World Bank, Structural Adjustment, and Forest Policy Reform.

Abstract

Over the last 15 years, two of the most contentious issues faced by the World Bank have been its involvement in the forest sector and its structural adjustment lending. Both of these issues are high on the policy agenda in the year 2000, as the World Bank concludes a two-year Forest Policy Implementation Review and Strategy process, and considers the implications of unprecedented levels of adjustment lending in the wake of the financial crises of the late 1990s. WRI's new report, The Right Conditions: The World Bank, Structural Adjustment, and Forest Policy Reform, by Frances Seymour, Navroz Dubash, and their colleagues in Papua New Guinea, Cameroon, Indonesia, and Kenya, addresses the intersection of these two controversial arenas by asking the question: 'To what extent, and under what conditions, can the World Bank be an effective proponent of forest policy reform through adjustment lending?' The report focuses on experience in a few exceptional cases where the World Bank has explicitly included forest policy reform conditions in adjustment lending operations: Papua New Guinea, Cameroon, and Indonesia. In addition, the report includes an analysis of what happened in Kenya, where the World Bank proposed, but did not move forward on, an adjustment operation focused on environmental policy reform.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Papua New Guinea (Navroz K. Dubash and Colin Filer)
3. Cameroon (Jake Brunner and François Ekoko)
4. Indonesia (Frances J. Seymour and Hariadi Kartodihardjo)
5. Kenya (Frances J. Seymour and John Mugabe)
6. Conclusion