Gambling with People’s Lives

The report critiques the World Bank's renewed focus on high-risk/high-reward projects in extractive industries, forestry, and large dams. It argues that the Bank's history is marked by 'institutional amnesia,' where past failures—such as mass displacement and environmental devastation—are ignored in favor of an 'approval culture' that overstates benefits and understates costs. The authors highlight specific cases like the Sardar Sarovar Dam in India and the Chad-Cameroon pipeline to demonstrate how the poor and the environment bear the risks while private investors reap the rewards. The report recommends a shift toward low-risk, community-driven development and the establishment of reparations for past damages.

• The World Bank suffers from 'institutional amnesia,' where lessons from past failures are ignored during the design of new operations due to a pervasive 'pressure to lend' and an 'approval culture' that treats appraisals as marketing devices.
• The Bank's 'high-risk/high-reward' strategy in the extractive industries often leads to the 'resource curse,' where resource-rich countries experience slower GDP growth and worse human development indicators, including higher child mortality and poverty.
• In the forestry sector, the World Bank's 2002 policy shift removed the ban on financing commercial logging in primary tropical moist forests, despite evidence that such investments often fuel illegal logging and benefit only government elites and foreign corporations.
• Large dam projects funded by the Bank have historically caused massive involuntary displacement and environmental ruin, with the World Commission on Dams estimating that 40-80 million people have been displaced globally by large dams.
• The World Bank's internal safeguard policies are often weakened or ignored during implementation; for example, only 41% of reviewed extractive industry projects had adequate supervision and oversight.
• The report identifies a systemic imbalance where the World Bank, private investors, and contractors are insured against risk, while the poor and indigenous communities bear the involuntary risks without guarantees for livelihood restoration.
• Low-risk, community-driven development (CDD) alternatives, such as traditional rainwater harvesting in Rajasthan, India, provide more sustainable and cost-effective results than large-scale infrastructure.
• The report argues for the principle of reparations to address the 'ecological debt' owed by the World Bank to borrowing countries, citing the Chixoy Dam in Guatemala as a case where the Bank ignored massacres of Mayan communities.

APA

Bosshard, P., Bruil, J., Horta, K., Lawrence, S., & Welch, C. (2003). Gambling with People’s Lives. Friends of the Earth International. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/gambling.pdf

Chicago

Bosshard, Peter, Janneke Bruil, Korinna Horta, Shannon Lawrence, and Carol Welch. Gambling with People’s Lives. Friends of the Earth International, 2003. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/gambling.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Bosshard |first1=Peter |last2=Bruil |first2=Janneke |last3=Horta |first3=Korinna |last4=Lawrence |first4=Shannon |last5=Welch |first5=Carol |title=Gambling with People’s Lives |publisher=Friends of the Earth International |date=September 2003 |url=https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/gambling.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{bosshard2003gambling, author = {Bosshard, Peter and Bruil, Janneke and Horta, Korinna and Lawrence, Shannon and Welch, Carol}, title = {{Gambling with People’s Lives}}, institution = {Friends of the Earth International}, year = {2003}, month = sep, url = {https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/gambling.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }