What appears quite intriguing is the fact that the WB has earlier made it clear that it would not provide fund to any coal-based power plant anywhere and more so when the people of Bangladesh are protesting the Rampal Project located so close to the Sundarbans. Everybody agrees that the Rampal Power Plant is having the potential risk to destroy the forest with air and water pollution, besides destroying the livelihood of several millions of people in the region. Not only the WB, three French banks and some Western pension funds even did not agree to finance the project, because of its potential threat to the world’s largest mangrove forest, now a UNESCO heritage that also deserves highest protection.
We wonder why the WB is funding such a destructive project indirectly through private banks in India on the back of its new policy announcement in 2013 ending all such funding to coal-based plants globally. But IFC is continuing funding such projects in some other countries raising question of double standard and ethical issues. It is unfortunate that our government is also ignoring people’s protest for reasons not clearly known to the nation while India is equally defiant to local public opinion.
What appears more misleading is the fact that the WB’s Country Director in Dhaka on Monday said the multilateral lender is not financing the project. But there is no way out for WB to distance itself from IFC funding of the project located within 14 km periphery of the Sundarbans. We know and the WB also knows that such coal-based plant is illegal so close to reserve forest even by Indian laws and yet the WB Group is involving itself local public opinion and call from local and international environments to protect the forest, not to endanger it.
In our view the WB should follow cohesive policies and must restraint itself from funding such project to save the world’s biggest mangrove forest from facing slow death. We can’t create another Sundarbans again.
