By Bharat Bhushan. From the independent "Indian Express" of New Delhi.

It seems strange that anyone should object to additional international funds being made available for environmental protection. Yet, the one-year-old, World Bank-sponsored Global Environment Facility (GEF) is fast becoming a center of controversy. Environmentalists and developing countries are in fact suggesting that it would have been best if the GEF had not been set up in the first place. They are saying this out of the fear that the organization may forestall the setting up of multi-lateral funds linked to specific environmental conventions administered within the United Nations system, on a one-country, one-vote basis.

The GEF has been set up as a funding body within the World Bank-International Monetary Fund system, which is not as democratic as the UN system. It is also biased in favor of the developed countries. The GEF takes up issues of global environmental concern that are on the agenda for the forthcoming UN Conference on Environment and Development. In a sense, then, it pre-empts the agenda for the conference and may end up setting the terms of and context of the discussion. Developing countries can justifiably fear that the environment facility may be presented by the developed countries as the ideal fund for all future environmental conventions and treaties.

The GEF was set up in November, 1990, and is managed by the World Bank, the UN Development Program, and the UN Environment Program. It is meant to be an interest-free fund for environmental protection wholly made up of voluntary contributions. Initially, it was expected that the GEF core fund would be in the range of $1 billion-$1.5 billion. However, up to now, it has been possible to set up a core fund of only $770 million. The World Bank is not merely the banker but also the administrator of the environment facility. The UN agencies have been assigned roles in strategic planning, but environmentalists think that they do not have sufficient clout to influence the working of the fund.

Essentially, GEF funding is to be limited to four areas of environmental concern--global warming, conservation of biodiversity, ozone-layer damage, and the cleaning of international waters. These specific areas are also in the agenda before the forthcoming meeting in Brazil.

It appears, under these circumstances, that the GEF may have been designed to serve several politically important functions for the World Bank and the developed countries. It may help provide a "green" image for the World Bank, which funds projects that have led to environmental degradation. Thus, the bank can continue to fund billion-dollar forestry projects, which partly support commercial logging concessions. Then, through the environment facility, it can throw in a few million dollars to protect biodiversity, because that would help blunt the criticism of the bank's funding of environmentally questionable projects.

The GEF is also based on the premise that global environmental problems have been caused largely by the developed countries, and if the developing countries are to cooperate in redressing them, additional funding from the former would be essential and justified. Joining the GEF by making voluntary contributions may also help salve the conscience of some developed countries, while they avoid fully accepting the charge that global environmental destruction has largely been caused by their lifestyles. Thus, for example, if the use of chlorofluorocarbons has led to a hole in the ozone layer, it is because the developed countries have produced and consumed these chemicals without regard for the consequences. Indeed, they continue to do so.

Additionally, if such a fund were in place before the Rio conference takes place, so much the better for the developed countries. The funding of treaty-linked or convention-linked environmental projects is going to be a major issue in Brazil. The existence of the GEF could well be used to undermine the legitimate demand of the Third World multi-lateral funds earmarked for environmental issues by created under the UN system. The developed countries could forestall the creation of such funds by arguing that the GEF already meets those needs.

In June, 1990, the major chlorofluorocarbon-producing and chlorofluorocarbon-consuming nations agreed to phase out the chemicals under the Montreal Protocol by the year 2000 and contributed $240 million to assist the developing nations in meeting this goal. Now this fund has been passed on to the GEF. This funding is in addition to the environment facility's own core fund. The GEF is now expected to disburse funds under the Montreal Protocol, too.

This can only help present the GEF as the ideally suited environmental fund for all new treaties and conventions. If this is accepted, then all control over priorities for funding, the criteria for funding, and the selection of projects will pass out of the hands of the UN and other international conferences. A democratic mandate will then have been handed over to an undemocratically controlled body. Sovereign nations will have given up their decision-making role on crucial environmental treaties on climate change and biodiversity are in the offing, and the GEF is already being presented as the preferred funding option for them by the developed countries.