Polonoroeste Program Analysis

One of the projects that caused unforeseen consequences was the World Bank’s funding in the Polonoroeste Program in the late 1980’s. As outlined by the World Bank Operations Evaluation Department (Uma lele et al, 2000), this program was designed to build highway BR-364 in north western Brazil and incorporate this region into Brazil’s ascending economic machine. This project was partially funded by the World Bank for $434,400,000 USD (Uma lele et al, 2000). The Polonoroeste Program had some foreseeable objectionable outcomes as well as outcomes that were completely unanticipated. Through negative publicity generated by this project, the World Bank was forced to restructure itself to account for environmental concerns.

The initial phase of the
When hundreds of thousands of people migrated to this western region in search of a place to start farms, they found began expanding out of the range of land tested by the World Bank land discovered they were unable to yield crops as noted by Andrew Cohen (1994) and adding insult to injury, when they unearthed the ground they caused an outbreak of malaria. While the transportation infrastructure was well developed, there was little environmental oversight. These new settlers, desperate for some source of income, began to clear cut the rain forest for cattle ranchers, selling the land for very cheap prices, as noted by Andrew Cohen (1994). Andrew Cohen’s article (1994) goes on to mention that the clear cutting of the rain forest was so severe that the new cleared areas can be seen from space. While these outcomes weren’t thought of, they too could have been avoided. Why didn’t the World Bank send agents out to new regions to see if the land could be farmed? It would seem like a fairly lofty assumption to loan hundreds of millions of dollars without doing any types of tests on new unproven tracts of land. What started with the intentions of improving the life of people in Brazil ended up doing quite the opposite. This could have been avoided if the World Bank played a more proactive role, checking in and guiding safeguards to protect the environment and people involved in this
While IFI’s say they want to help countries advance, they were founded for parallel and perhaps not entirely pure intentions of opening up countries to the international market and installing capitalistic mechanisms in every world economy. While the World Bank is a non-profit, they are still installing the framework for private businesses. Other international financial institutions, such as the IMF, are only half non-profit, and the other parts deal solely with the private sector. The private sector has no interest in human rights or improvements in societies, they are solely interested in making money. While there is money at stake, corruption is always lurking around the corner. In this case of Brazil, corruption perhaps came from Brazilian politicians or businesses that put profit from the Polonoroeste program before the expense of people. IFI’s make this kind of action all the more feasible when they negotiate terms behind closed doors. When there’s profit to be made and little oversight, businesses will continue to invest in their own interests that can provide profit for them. In this regard, IFIs cannot be trusted to act on humanitarian or altruistic principles, instead they will by default choose projects that will generate