The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) or The World Bank, as it is best known, is one of the three original pillars of the international political economy created in the aftermath of World War II.

Now in its seventh decade of operation, the bank's role as the primary global, inter-governmental lender for large scale development projects remains intact.

Staffed by economists and financial experts, and driven by political considerations, environmental issues received less than high priority consideration in bank lending policy throughout most of the bank's first forty years of operation.

Bank receptivity to green organizational and economic ideas, formally acknowledged in 1987 with the establishment of an Environment Department, continues today.

Critics of the bank's green agenda tend to focus on the practical impacts associated with bank policies and projects. For example, the bank's promotion of export led economic growth leads many of the single (or few) commodity producing developing states to increase production of that one (or few) commodities, thereby adding more pressure on their already fragile ecosystems.

Warren Evans, current Director of the Environment Department, discusses the Bank's 2010 Environment Strategy in a newly posted video. Acknowledging that changing global economic and environmental priorities necessitate a retooling of bank environmental strategies.

Mr. Evans invites public input on those strategies via the World Bank Environment Dialogue web site. The video is posted on the page.

The video also provides the views of a few governmental and non-governmental spokespeople regarding their general criticisms of past bank environmental policies as well as their general principles for improving future bank environmental policy.

About the only practical thing lacking in the bank's new dialogue initiative is the ability to directly post bank video on an article such as this article. Instead, the bank still requires a link to a bank holding page that posts the video.

More: World Bank Environment Department

© 2009. Patricia A. Michaels.