Worldwide Citizens' Groups Condemn Export Credit Agencies and OECD, Demand Halt to Destructive Lending Practices and Opening of Secretive Negotiations
June 21, 2000
(22 June, 2000 ? Washington) On the eve of the Ministerial Meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), over 350 citizen groups from 46 nations today called for reform of export credit agencies (ECAs), the world’s largest taxpayer-funded finance institutions. The Group of Eight (G8) most industrialized governments asked the ECAs at the G8 annual summit in 1999 to negotiate in the OECD common environmental guidelines by 2001. The ECAs, based in the major industrialized nations, provide over $400 billion annually in loans and loan guarantees to subsidize exports and investments, principally in developing nations.
Despite international protests, the negotiations are taking place in closed meetings, and the OECD recently announced it will not publicly release its work plan for the coming year to develop common environmental standards for export finance. “The secrecy of the OECD meetings and the ECAs’ systematic lack of transparency make the negotiation process a travesty,” said Bruce Rich, Environmental Defense International Program Director.
“ECAs have become the planet’s most egregious scofflaws through their reckless lending practices,” said Jon Sohn, International Policy Analyst for Friends of the Earth.
A growing worldwide citizens’ network called for wide-reaching ECA reforms in the Jakarta Declaration, drafted after more than 50 of the groups met last month in Indonesia, where they encountered first-hand evidence of the environmental and social harms caused by ECA-funded projects, including three highly polluting pulp and paper mills in Sumatra, which have sparked mass public protests because of the pollution they have caused downstream. The text of the full declaration can be found at
http://www.environmentaldefense.org on the web.“The social and environmental damage and human rights violations that often result from ECA-funded projects must stop. The ECAs should no longer be able to operate in total secrecy,” said Doug Norlen of the Pacific Environment and Resources Center (PERC).
“In Indonesia and elsewhere, ECA financing for major arms transactions, for obsolete technologies that are rejected or illegal in their home countries, and for economically unproductive investments is a scandal of global proportions,” said Titi Soentoro of the Indonesian environmental coalition Bioforum.
Environmental Defense, a leading national nonprofit organization based in New York, represents more than 300,000 members. Since 1967 we have linked science, economics, and law to create innovative, equitable, and cost-effective solutions to the most urgent environmental problems.
Friends of the Earth is a national, non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the planet from environmental degradation; preserving biological, cultural, and ethnic diversity; and empowering citizens to have an influential voice in decisions affecting the quality of their environment — and their lives.
The Export Credit Agency reforms called for by the international citizens groups include:
1. Transparency: public accesss to information and consultation with civil society and affected people in ongoing or future ECA-funded projects, in developing new procedures and standards, and in the negotiation on common environmental and social standards.
2. Binding common environmental and social guidelines and standards no lower and no less rigorous than existing international procedures and standards for public international finance such as those of the World Bank Group and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee.
3. The adoption of explicit human rights criteria guiding the operation of ECAs.
4. The adoption of binding criteria and guidelines to end the ECA’s abetting of corruption. According to Transparency International, a respected watchdog organization, the continued lack of action by ECAs to address this issue is bringing some ECA practices “close to complicity with a criminal offense.”
5. ECAs must cease financing non-productive investments. The massive ECA support for military purchases and white elephant projects, such as nuclear power plants, that would be rejected by OECD bilateral aid agencies and multilateral development agencies such as the World Bank must end.
6. The cancellation of ECA debt for the poorest countries, most of which has been incurred for economically unproductive purposes.