World Bank Group

Reports, briefs, and media around the activities of the World Bank. You can also learn more about the Our Land Our Business campaign by clicking here.

Publications

Down on the Seed Cover: Enabling the Business of Agriculture Enables Corporate Takeover

Down on the Seed: The World Bank Enables Corporate Takeover of Seeds

Only six multinationals currently control over two-thirds of the industrial seed sales, and pending agro-industry mergers stand to further consolidate this oligopoly . Further market expansion for these corporations depends on the shrinking of farmer-managed seed systems, which currently provide 80 to 90 percent of the seed supply in developing countries through on-farm seed saving and farmer-to-farmer seed exchange. Enabling the Business of...

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Ruée sur les Semences
The Unholy Alliance Report Cover

The Unholy Alliance, Five Western Donors Shape a Pro-Corporate Agenda for African Agriculture

The Unholy Alliance, Five Western Donors Shape a Pro-Corporate Agenda for African Agriculture, exposes how a coalition of four donor countries and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is shaping a pro-business environment in the agricultural sector of developing countries, especially in Africa.

Moral Bankruptcy: World Bank Reinvents Tainted Aid Program for Ethiopia

Moral Bankruptcy: World Bank Reinvents Tainted Aid Program for Ethiopia

Moral Bankruptcy: World Bank Reinvents Tainted Aid Program for Ethiopia exposes the shameful reinvention of one of the Bank’s most problematic programs in Ethiopia. The report also reveals that the US Treasury violated congressional law when voting in favor of this program.

Peru, The Poster Child For the World Bank in Latin America

Peru has remained in the good grace of the World Bank. In 2015, it ranks 35th in the Bank’s Doing Business survey, with the second highest score in Latin America, indicating that the government has “created a regulatory environment conducive to business.” In 2008, Peru requested help from the Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) advisory services for the design of a new reform agenda launched in 2009. As a result, the World Bank’s...

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Perú: el buen alumno del Banco Mundial en América Latina

New Name, Same Game: World Bank's Enabling the Business of Agriculture

In March 2014, the multicontinental campaign Our Land Our Business was launched to demand the end of the World Bank’s Doing Business project and Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture (BBA) initiative, recently renamed Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA). Bringing together over 260 NGOs, farmer groups, grassroots organizations, and trade unions, Our Land Our Business condemned the World Bank business indicators, which rank countries on...

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Blog

Construction in Pekanbaru, capital of Riau province in Sumatra, Indonesia. Photo: Flore de Preneuf / World Bank (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Collapsed Buildings & Lost Lives in Palu: The Tragic Cost of the World Bank’s #DoingBusiness Rankings

Tuesday, October 2, 2018 Elizabeth Fraser

In reading about the tragedy, one detail in particular has haunted me: reports of thousands of buildings collapsing and trapping those inside. This hard fact has stayed with me not just because the thought of being trapped in a collapsed building is absolutely terrifying, but because it unveils the dire impact of the World Bank's pro-business agenda.

Mariam Sow delivering the Declaration of Small Scale Food Producers' and Civil Society Organizations

A New Milestone Towards a Sustainable Food System – FAO Agroecology Symposium

Tuesday, May 8, 2018 Flora Sonkin

ROME, Italy—April 3-5, 2018, hallways of the FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization) buzzed with over 700 representatives from government, civil society, private sector, and the UN agencies at the second agroecology symposium. Picking up momentum from the first symposium in 2014, and the subsequent regional meetings held in Latin America , Sub-Saharan Africa , Europe, Central Asia and Asia and the Pacific , the three-day Symposium...

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Co-Chair Bill Gates and World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim at the 2016 World Bank / IMF Spring Meetings. Credit: Simone D. McCourtie / World Bank

Two Blows in a Row: The New Alliance for Food Security Loses Ground

Thursday, April 12, 2018 Flora Sonkin

Buzzwords like 'business-enabling environment,' which underlie NAFSN discourse and practice, merely support the expansion of large-scale and export-oriented agribusinesses, at the cost of local farmers and biodiversity.

Tractor in Ethiopia

Development Gone Wrong

Saturday, March 31, 2018 Anuradha Mittal

“I am not afraid of being arrested. I am afraid of being tortured.” These words from Pastor Omot Agwa , an Anuak land rights defender, are a poignant reminder of “development” gone wrong in Ethiopia. The agricultural sector, seen as the driver for development by the Ethiopian government, has been used to lure foreign investments for agribusiness ventures—large industrial plantations as those set up by Saudi Star and...

Un Teatro Caupolican lleno esperó a Michelle Bachelet para la proclamación del Partido Socialista y Partido por la Democracia, como su pre candidata presidencial.

The World Bank's Fetish For Ranking: The Case Of Doing Business Rank For Chile

Wednesday, February 21, 2018 Paola Langer

On January 12, 2018, World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer revealed that the Bank’s Doing Business Ranking may have been deliberately skewed and politically manipulated, disfavoring Chile’s ranking under its outgoing socialist president, Michelle Bachelet. Following these revelations, he resigned on January 24.

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Press Releases and Public Statements

An Open Letter to the World Bank on its 20th Land and Poverty Conference

World Bank's New Scheme to Privatize Land in the Developing World Exposed

Alerte sur le plan de la Banque mondiale de privatisation des terres dans les pays en développement

The Toll of Doing Business on People and the Environment in India

The Toll of Doing Business on People and the Environment in Indonesia

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Media

The World Bank is driving a failed strategy in the DRC

The Africa Report

World Bank Dispossessing Rural Poor

IPS

The highest bidder takes it all: The World Bank’s new scheme to privatise land in the Global South

The Bretton Woods Project

Un Nouvel Indicateur Foncier Au Service De La Logique Néolibérale

SOS FAIM

Diseñar políticas alimentarias que pongan en el centro a los pequeños agricultores, pastores y pueblos indígenas para proteger la tierra y la seguridad alimentaria

Observatorio del Derecho a la Alimentación de España

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