Third World scientists meeting in India early this year concluded that developing countries--highly dependent on natural resources and ill-equipped to adapt to a rapidly changing climate--will experience particular strain from warming driven by the greenhouse effect.
Developing nations currently contribute about one-third of total greenhouse gas emissions. By the middle of the next century they will be releasing the preponderance of these gases, most importantly carbon dioxide (CO2). Ways must be found to help them moderate unnecessary growth in these emissions while simultaneously furthering larger development objectives.
The greenhouse effect also adds considerably greater urgency to policies--energy efficiency, forest conservation and elimination of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)--that make sense for other economic and environmental reasons.
Development assistance from the World Bank could accomplish these goals.
Energy is essential to economic development, and Third World countries must increase power-generating capacity to satisfy their needs. But fossil fuels are the primary source of CO2. There is a way out of this double bind. According to respected Third World energy specialists, by the year 2020 the world can achieve an acceptable standard of living without increasing global energy consumption.
That does not mean limiting access to the energy services necessary for development. Rather, Brazil, India, Costa Rica and other developing countries can cut the need for growth in power-generating capacity by up to 30% or more through investment in state-of-the-art energy-saving industrial equipment, lighting systems, air conditioners and other appliances, realizing considerable monetary savings in the bargain. Regrettably, the bank--the planet's biggest development assistance institution and the Third World's largest single source of foreign exchange for energy investments--has devoted at most 4% of its energy and industrial-sector lending to these "end-use" energy efficiency improvements over the last decade. Economically viable technologies exist, and the World Bank should help deploy them.
Although World Bank President Barber Conable pledged last week at the annual meetings of the bank and the International Monetary Fund to make Third World environmental problems a priority for the 1990s, the director of the bank's Industry and Energy Department has publicly expressed doubt that bank loans to improve end-use energy efficiency are even necessary. Another bank staffer said that he can count the number of staff with experience in end-use efficiency on one hand. "And I still have fingers left over!" he added.
