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.

Reports

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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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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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

The World Bank’s Land Conference: Pro-Poor Bluff to Serve Neo-Colonialism

Monday, March 20, 2017 Alice Martin-Prével

This March 20, 2017, the World Bank’s 18th Annual Land and Poverty Conference begins, featuring a session where Bank specialists will deliver their assessment on the “quality” of land regulations globally. In particular, the Bank’s staff will comment on the implementation and findings of the Doing Business (DB) and the Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA), two projects that rank countries’ regulatory...

The Oakland Institute's new report Down On the Seed, the World Bank Enables Corporate Takeover of Seeds, exposes that the World Bank's Enabling the Business of Agriculture index reinforces the stranglehold of agrochemical companies and Western nations.

Banking on Seeds: World Bank Sides with Agribusinesses Against Farmers' Rights to Seeds

Tuesday, January 31, 2017 Alice Martin-Prével

Around the world, farmers’ rights to seeds are imperilled by industry-pushed reforms to curtail the freedom to save, reuse, exchange, and sell seeds. This is because, for the industrial seed market to grow, more farmers must rely on seeds bought from corporations, rather than seeds saved from previous harvests...

World Bank Doing Business 2017 Report Cover

Neoliberalism for All: The World Bank’s Doing Business 2017

Thursday, November 3, 2016 Alice Martin-Prével and Frédéric Mousseau

“Equal Opportunity for All” subtitles the annual Doing Business report released last month by the World Bank. The choice is rather cynical for an instrument that has become a key driver of the neoliberal reforms promoted by the Bank around the world...

Protestors in Delhi ask the World Bank to end Doing Business rankings, 2014. © Our Land Our Business / The Rules

Undemocratic and Unsustainable, the World Bank’s Vision for Agricultural Development Harms the Poorest

Monday, October 3, 2016 Alice Martin-Prével

As the World Bank’s Annual Meetings get underway in Washington, DC, a crucial theme is noticeably missing from its seminar series: agriculture. Does this imply that the Bank has become less involved in agricultural financing? The answer is no. The World Bank is by far the main donor of agriculture, forestry, and fishing sectors in the developing countries, surpassing the United States and other G7 nations. If agriculture is not on the agenda,...

With a Little Help from Bill Gates, the World Bank Creates a New Aid Conditionality

Wednesday, April 20, 2016 Alice Martin-Prével

An alluring cast of speakers including the First Lady Michelle Obama, Queen Rania of Jordan, John Kerry, and Ban Ki-moon, among others, spoke at last week’s World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington DC. Bill Gates was the guest star of the Bank’s final live-cast panel discussion, “A New Vision for Financing Development with Bill Gates.”

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Press Releases and Public Statements

It Is Time to End the Business Rankings of the World Bank

Letter to the World Bank on the Environmental and Social Standards Guidance Notes

World Bank Fuels Land Grabs in Africa Through Shadowy Financial Sector Investments

World Bank Sides with Agribusinesses Against Farmers, Indigenous Communities

Calling on the World Bank to End the Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA)

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Media

UN Expert Urges World Bank to Amend its Constitution to Effectively Advance Human Rights

OHCHR

Sementi Tradizionali Sotto Attacco

Fondazione Nigrizia Onlus

Why do the World Bank's New Indicators, "Enabling the Business of Agriculture" Pose a Threat to African Agriculture?

Community Alliance for Global Justice

Call to the World Bank: Enable Farmers, Not Agribusiness

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

World Bank Aims to Hand Over Seed Industry to Agribusiness

teleSUR

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