STWR - Share The World's Resources

My former employers, the World Bank, are damaging the planet and punishing the poor

For the first time in a quarter century, the World Bank's flagship annual report - the World Development Report 2008 - on development puts agriculture and the productivity of small farmers at the heart of a global agenda to reduce poverty. Three-quarters of the world’s poor still live in the countryside.

As world financial leaders gather in Washington for the annual joint strategy meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Christian Aid is calling for an urgent rethink of the World Bank's approach to tackling energy poverty.

Finance ministers, bankers and businessmen gathered in Washington last week for the annual fall meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. As is customary, the IMF presented its analysis of the world economy, and this year it released some research that was sure to cause controversy and provide fuel for its critics.

· Internal report says mass logging threatens Pygmies
· Findings are embarrassing for British government

Because it did not come amidst a sex scandal and because the outgoing leader was not one of the architects of the Iraq War, the surprise June resignation of the International Monetary Fund's Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato did not garner the gleeful, gossipy headlines surrounding Paul Wolfowitz's disgraceful exit from the World Bank.

We are living in a world that has entered into a reproductive system of war, militarization, destruction and dehumanization. For different reasons the US has emerged as the centre of this global system.