PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT Public Admin. Dev. 23, 249-257 (2003) Published online 28 May 2003 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.276
MULTILATERAL DEVELOPMENT BANKS, TRANSPARENCY AND CORPORATE CLIENTS: 'PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS' AND PUBLIC ACCESS TO INFORMATION PAUL J. NELSON* Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
SUMMARY The multilateral development banks (MDB) recognise and promote transparency as a principle of good govemance. Public release of infonnation about policies and projects is a central aspect of this transparency, and the five MDBs studied here each adopted new policies during the 1990s to increase the accessibility of such infonnation. The flow of infonnation to local communities is important to the effectiveness of MDBs' social and environmental safeguards and to securing public support. But MDBs also embrace a second strategy, which sometimes conflicts with transparency: each MDB (or an affiliate) lends to private corporations as well as to member states and each bank modifies its infonnation disclosure rules, giving corporate clients greater discretion than member govemments. Environmental and social safeguards apply to corporate borrowers as well as to govemments and there is a relatively high level of controversy over corporate projects' environmental and social impact. When subjected to a qualitative review of their disclosure standards, emphasising fullness of disclosure, accessibility of information, timeliness of information and availability of recourse, the disclosure policies of all five MDBs are clearly found to accommodate corporate confidentiality while compromising public demands for infonnation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Transparency is honoured by each of the multilateral development banks (MDB) as a principle of 'good governance' (World Bank, 1992), or the 'modem state' (IDB, 1997). Public release of information about policy and projects is a central aspect of this transparency and each MDB—Asian Development Bank (ADB), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB)—adopted policies during the 1990s to increase the flow of information about its operations, including about the potentially controversial projects and policies (World Bank, 1993; IDB, 1994a; World Bank, 1995; AfDB, 1997; ADB, 1999; EBRD, 1999). But transparency is revered alongside another principle, that of cooperation with corporations to mobilise private sector investment. Each of the MDBs has the capacity to lend to private corporations as well as to member states, or has an affiliate institution to serve this private sector clientele, and lending to this private sector clientele is a growing part of the MDBs' collective portfolio. Each bank adjusts its rules regarding information disclosure for projects that involve private sector clients. This article focuses on the application and adaptation of information disclosure rules to corporate borrowers. It examines the tension between private capital mobilisation and transparency at the world's largest development finance agencies and finds that transparency and citizens' right to information suffer when public institutions finance private investment. Compromising the right to infonnation, in tum, undermines the effectiveness of social and environmental safeguards implemented in the past 20 years by each bank. Each of the MDBs experienced a rapid growth of social and environmental policy, regulations and safeguards during the late 1980s and 1990s. Environmental impact assessments became standard practice for most projects, as have a variety of social impact assessments. Detailed policies have been put in place to govem projects involving involuntary resettlement, indigenous peoples and other politically and environmentally sensitive issues. *CoiTespondence to: P. J. Nelson, GSPIA, WWPH 3E23, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. E-mail:
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These safeguards apply to private sector loans and investments as well as to public sector loans. The MDBs stress that private sector loans and investments come under the same tests for environmental impact as public sector projects. These safeguards are critical to public confidence in the MDBs in industrial countries and, more important, to the protection of vulnerable groups and communities from potentially negative project impacts (Florini, 2000a). But information disclosure rules, which grew largely out of the reform campaigns focused on environmental and social impact, apply quite differently to private sector borrowers. Transparency and accountability are linked in the contemporary lexicon of development and global govemance. The flow of information about govemment and corporate actions is a necessary condition for accountability to citizens. In particular, information is essential to the implementation and oversight of social and environmental safeguards, when the safeguards entail real financial costs to lenders, govemments and corporations. The link between information disclosure and accountability is not equally strong for all forms of disclosure. It matters to whom information is accessible and useable, and I will argue that timing, location and other factors specified in MDB disclosure policies infiuence whether the disclosure of information translates into effective transparency. Fox's caution on this subject is important: rather than conflating transparency with accountability, development administrators should seek to identify the conditions under which disclosure of information does encourage political accountability (Fox, 2000a). Past evaluations of MDB disclosure policies have not addressed the application of disclosure mles to corporate clients, focusing instead on the extent of demand for documents, or on the MDBs' record in making documents available upon request (Chamberlain, 1998). The experience of the MDBs suggests that the drive for private-public partnerships in financing and implementing development policies and projects puts pressure on values that the MDBs promote under the banner of 'good govemance'. Corporate influence in the MDBs' govemance is multi-faceted and under-researched, and there is now a great deal more opinion and evidence published about NGOs' influence on the MDBs than there is regarding the arguably much greater influence of corporations. The remainder ofthe article is organised in four sections. Section two briefly describes the MDBs' private sector lending capacities and outlines the banks' policies toward information disclosure in projects involving corporate clients. Section three introduces four characteristics by which the effectiveness of a disclosure policy will be assessed: fullness of disclosure, accessibility of information, timeliness of information and availability of recourse. When the MDBs' information disclosure practices are reviewed in these terms (section four), they reveal a pattem of disclosure that protects corporate confidentiality at the expense of timely public access to information. The final section presents conclusions and raises issues for further investigation. THE MDBs AND CORPORATE LENDING The MDBs lend primarily to their member govemments, but each can also finance projects of corporations that are judged to promote the development objectives of those govemments. The EBRD, ADB and AfDB each has authority to provide specified forms of finance to corporate clients. The World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) have affiliated institutions—the Intemational Finance Corporation (IFC) and Inter-American Investment Corporation (IIC) respectively—that lend to the private sector. (The Multilateral Insurance Guarantee Agency (MIGA), another affiliate of the World Bank Group, is not included in this analysis because its insurance services are not strictly comparable with the other private sector finance functions.) Finance for private sector projects may be in .the form of loans to the corporations themselves, loan guarantees, insurance for corporate investments or, in the case ofthe ADB and EBRD, small equity investments by the bank in a corporation. These lenders' basic characteristics are summarised in Table 1. Many of the MDBs' public sector loans are designed to stimulate private sector activity through infrastructure investment or policy conditions to encourage an 'enabling environment'. But direct lending to the private sector is a relatively small, though growing, portion of MDB lending. The ADB's private sector operations, for example, amounted to $152 million in new lending in 2000. The IIC, affiliated with the IDB, finances investment by corporations in projects in the region. Its board approved loans for 19 projects worth $128 million in 11 countries in Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Table 1. Private sector lending at MDBs and their affiliates IFC Affiliation
Worid Bank Group Private sector $3.1 bn lending committed in 2002 Total lending. $22.7 bn for comparison Forms of private Loan, loan guarantee, sector finance equity mvestment
EBRD
ADB
lie
AfDB
EBRD
Private sector group within ADB Private $152 mn in 2000 $5.5 bn
Inter-American Development Bank $3.1 bn in 2002 $7.9 bn
African Development Bank No private lending in 1999 $420 mn
Loan, loan guarantee
Loan, equity
EUR2.8bn in 2001 EUR3.656bn
Loan, guarantee. Loan, equity equity investment investment
investment
Sources: Annual Reports of the World Bank, IFC, EBRD, ADB, IFC, IIC and AfDB.
the fiscal year 2001 (IIC, 2002). The IFC, an affiliate of the World Bank Group, approved 204 projects in the fiscal year 2002, IFC contributions totalling $3.1 billion (IFC, 2002). The EBRD's private sector operations are proportionately more significant, amounting to 70% of the bank's total lending exposure, and mandated by the bank's charter to be at least 60% of total financing (EBRD, 2001). Created in 1991, the EBRD lends to 27 member countries; in the fiscal year 2001, its project approvals totalled EUR3.66 billion for 102 projects (EBRD, 2002, p. 3). The EBRD has three instruments for finance of private sector projects: loans that co-finance corporate projects, insurance for corporate investments and equity investment by which the bank owns a share of a new corporate enterprise. MDBs and the corporate interest in privacy Each MDB balances three claims made on it by different actors: the obligation to regulate the social and environmental impacts of its lending, including to corporate borrowers; the desire of corporate borrowers for confidentiality; and the desire of citizens for information about MDB policies and loans. These three interact: publicly available infonnation about loans is necessary for the full functioning of social and environmental safeguards, which rely on public consultation, oversight and action. The safeguards, in turn, are essential for infonnation disclosure to be meaningful, because, as I argue below, information in the hands of the public is of greatest value when there is a means of recourse, a way to use the information to gain leverage. In principle, the MDBs' social and economic rules and safeguards apply fully to corporate borrowers (IFC, 1999b). But while the safeguards apply fully, there are explicit and important trade-offs made between the information needs of citizens and the corporate desire for confidentiality. The details of these concessions will be examined in section three; the following paragraphs outline the MDBs' justification for treating corporate clients differently. Each of the banks or private sector affiliates provides some explanation for disclosure policies that allow corporate borrowers greater confidentiality than borrowing member govemments. The EBRD discusses the corporate need for privacy most fully, and the following paragraphs outline its explanation (EBRD, 2000). While its statement is more exhaustive than that of any other MDB, all of the themes in the EBRD statement appear in the policies of at least one other MDB. According to the EBRD documents, the bank's 'duty to protect the business interests of its client sponsors' follows from four considerations. First, the 'mere fact that the sponsor is planning to invest in a country' may be strategic information and disclosing the fact that it is negotiating a loan with the EBRD may cause it to 'lose its first-mover advantage' (EBRD, 2000, p. 10). Second, project documents often include commercially sensitive information, relating to market entry and product positioning strategies. Third, public knowledge that the EBRD considered but did not finance a corporation's proposal could be damaging to the corporation's reputation. Finally, all these factors are especially critical to local corporations listed in a local stock market, where controversy surrounding a planned project could affect corporate stock values. The other three private sector MDB affiliates explain their separate standards for corporate disclosure in similar terms. The IIC emphasises a 'proper balance' between disclosure and 'the need to protect the confidentiality of Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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private business initiatives', and notes that confidentiality also encourages 'a free flow of information' to the IIC (IIC, 1999, pp. 1-2). The IFC asserts that '[t]he presumption in favor of disclosure is limited by the need to avoid material harm to the business and competitive interests of IFC's clients.... EFC... has a duty to its clients to respect their confidential business information' (IFC, 1998, p. 8). The MDBs appear to accept two sets of duties or obligations that come into conflict: the duty to protect corporate confidentiality in order to promote private sector investment; and to inform the affected public in order to permit democratic debate. The dimensions of this tension will be explored in section four. First, section three proposes four key features of effective transparency. EFFECTIVE TRANSPARENCY: FOUR FACTORS' Transparency, accountability and participation are often treated as related rights of citizens and civil society organisations. The Aarhus Declaration of the UN Economic Commission on Europe, for example, treats information as a right of citizens, linked to rights to participation and to justice in areas of environmental policy. Access to information, in this view, is a prerequisite for public accountability and access to recourse gives transparency its significance by creating channels through which citizens may seek recourse or appeal against decisions. This view is promoted by the Intemational Right to Know campaign, led by NGOs in human rights, environment and development, which asserts a right to greater infonnation about the international operations of US-based corporations (Intemational Campaign for the Right to Know, 2003). The MDBs, however, avoid the discourse of rights and establish an instmmental basis for disclosure policies. Indeed, the only reference to rights and duties in the disclosure policies are in reference to the EBRD's and IFC's 'duties' to protect corporate borrowers' proprietary information. From the MDBs' perspectives, information disclosure is desirable because markets work better in the presence of full information and because early public knowledge about planned programmes allows for public deliberation, clarification and even modification of project plans. The EBRD's recently updated disclosure policy lays out the 'benefits of public infonnation: greater transparency for purposes of govemance; reaching out to stakeholders; leaming from outside comments; informing the public about the Bank's mission; fostering a positive image of the Bank; promoting the efficiency and stability of markets' (EBRD, 2000, p. 8). This analysis focuses on the link between information disclosure and transparency. Transparency makes an institution's actions and decisions visible and permits people outside the institution to assess those actions and decisions (Florini, 2000b). Information disclosure promotes effective transparency when it makes information available in a way that renders the MDB's operations and decisions more visible and understandable, and enables affected persons to evaluate the likely impact of those operations and decisions. This understanding of transparency suggests four key dimensions of disclosure policy as bases for assessing the policies. They are both an elaboration of the above definition and a set of practical standards derived from the experience of disputed MDB projects (Nelson, 2001). These four dimensions address the fullness of disclosure, the accessibility of documents, the timeliness of information availability and the mechanisms available for recourse and influence. These characteristics will be the basis for identifying variations in the MDBs' treatment of public sector and corporate projects. First, each factor is explained in tum. Fullness of disclosure—the question of what information is available—varies in three important ways. Some categories of documents are not released at all; bonowers are given some discretion over the handling of many documents that are subject to disclosure; and some documents, especially those relating to projects under discussion, are released only in summary form. Accessibility of documents also has three dimensions: the sites at which documents can be obtained (headquarters, regional or national MDB offices; the Intemet); the languages in which they are available; and their cost. If MDBs want to make infonnation accessible to affected citizens and local organisations (as distinct from 'This section draws heavily on Nelson 2001. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons. Ltd.
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international NGO networks), they could favour local actors through differential fee structures (most do this) or make the full document more readily available locally than elsewhere (the IDB does this) (IDB, 1994a). The fullest form of transparency would make documents available at many sites, free of charge, in local languages, but such a policy would also be administratively difficult and expensive. Timeliness of information is a function of whether and for how long citizens have access to the documents before the MDB board votes on a project or policy. Some categories of documents are released only after the fact, a practice that Wamer (1999) describes as the lowest level of public involvement in major infrastructure projects, informing people of 'what has already been decided'. Although there is no fixed standard for the period of time needed to allow citizens to absorb, discuss and respond to proposed projects. World Bank standards in the public sector call for 120 days of public availability before the Board votes on a project, a standard that was encoded in US law goveming US participation in the World Bank by the 1991 Pelosi Amendment. Recourse refers to the forms of redress open to citizens. The World Bank, IDB, and ADB created investigative mechanisms between 1993 and 1996, and the IFC established the position of Compliance Advisor and Ombudsman (CAO) in 1999 (IDB, 1994b; World Bank, 1994; ADB, 1999; IFC, 1999a). All of these require that requests for investigations originate with people directly affected by a project loan, but each also permits some degree of outside assistance or representation.^ These four categories suggest specific features over which the transparency policies can be assessed and compared: the presumption of disclosure, accessibility of information, languages, availability of project documents, availability of policy documents, timeliness of disclosure, categories of documents specifically not released, the adequacy of document summaries where they alone are released and the degree of discretion allowed to clients over what contents of documents are made public. FINDINGS: TRANSPARENCY AND PRIVATE SECTOR LENDING While private sector lending in each MDB comes under most of the environmental and social safeguards that govern public sector loans, corporate clients are allowed greater discretion, flexibility and a larger measure of privacy in disclosing loan-related documents and information. This section examines the MDBs' disclosure rules for private sector lending in detail, comparing them with public sector loan rules over each of the four features of effective transparency. The five MDBs are reviewed in turn below and key differences between their public and private sector disclosure mles are summarised in Table 2. In general, disclosure mles for corporate clients protect confidentiality and limit disclosure in three ways: by allowing corporate clients discretion over the contents of disclosed documents; by restricting the fullness and timeliness of disclosure; and by limiting the availability of formal recourse. The fullness of disclosure for corporate borrowers varies from govemment borrowers mainly in corporate clients' greater discretion to withhold specific contents of project documents from the public. Many documents for private sector projects are released only in summary form, rather than in full. The IFC releases information about prospective projects only in summary form, as do the EBRD and IIC. But the same is tme of each bank's public sector loans, where information may be withheld for national security or other reasons. But even when policy does call for full documents to be made public, as on most environmental impact assessments and related reports, corporate clients are afforded considerable discretion over the specific information within the documents. This discretion is highest at the IIC, whose borrowers may designate any project-related information as confidential and prevent its release under the IIC's policy (IIC, 1999). The ADB policy offers substantial discretion to both corporate and public borrowers: while other MDBs mandate disclosure by listing categories of documents that must be released, the ADB specifies only categories that may be released (ADB, 1995). Rules goveming the accessibility of documents do not vary between public and private sector loans. The MDBs make the documents available through a variety of media (hard copies, web-based) and in a variety of local and intemational locations. ^Among the growing literature on the investigation and inspection mechanisms in the MDBs, see Tussie, 1996; Shihata, 1997; Udall, 1997; and Fox, 2000b. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Table 2. Information disclosure rules, private and public sector loans
Timeliness of project documents (days before board meets)
Recourse: investigative mechanism
Disclosure policy, date
Private sector lending
Public sector lending
IFC: 30 days SPI, 60 days EA EBRD: 30 days PSD; 60 days EIA ADB: no dates IIC: no dates AfDB: 30 days PPB; 120 days environmental summary IEC: Compliance Advisor/ Ombudsman; no recourse to WB Inspection Panel EBRD: none ADB: excluded from investigation policy IIC: not excluded from investigation, but none in nine years AfDB: none IFC: 1994, broadened 1998 EBRD: 2000 ADB: 1995 IIC: 1999 AfDB: 1997
WB: 120 days EBRD: PSD 60 days; EIA 120 ADB: No dates IDB: no dates AfDB: 6 months PPB; 120 days environmental summary WB: independent inspection Panel; permanent office, some independence EBRD: none ADB: inspection roster; first request received 2001 IDB: inspection roster; one request, no investigations AfDB: none WB 1993, modified in 2001 EBRD: 2000 ADB: 1995 IDB: 1994 AfDB: 1997
Note: Abbreviations in Table 2 refer to the following categories of documents: SPI: Summary of Project Information (IFC), EA: Environmental Assessment, EIA: Environmental Impact Assessment, PSD: Project Summary Document (IDB), PPB: Prospective Project Brief (AfDB).
Timeliness of disclosure is the starkest difference between public and private sector disclosure policies. The EBRD and AfDB require documents for private sector projects to be released 30 days before the Board is to vote on them, compared to longer advance release of documents for public sector loans. The IFC also differs significantly from the World Bank's requirements for govemment borrowers, requiring 30 days rather than 120 days of public availability. The ADB and IIC do not specify the number of days for which documents must be available. Advance disclosure is intended to leave an adequate period for an affected community to respond to a planned project. Nothing in the nature of corporate projects makes community deliberation less important or timeconsuming. In fact, disclosure is arguably more important for corporate projects, which tend to generate substantial controversy. Corporations are heavily represented in MDB-financed projects involving mining and oil extraction, major infrastructure construction and privatisation of public services such as water supply, categories of lending that provoke a high level of dissent, debate and resistance (Fox and Brown, 1998; Tellam, 2000). How this restriction affects public deliberation and action is not thoroughly documented. A collection of reports on IFC 'problem projects,' compiled by NGO activists in six countries, presents anecdotal evidence that each of the controversial projects suffered from some inadequacies in disclosure and in required consultations with affected communities (Center for Intemational Environmental Law, 2000). The short disclosure period would, at best, favour intemational NGOs who might want to initiate some form of central action to delay or revise a project proposal, over locally based organisations that are likely to be less well-prepared to process and interpret MDB project documents and to respond quickly. Access to recourse for private and public sector loans differs most dramatically at the ADB and the World Bank/ IFC. Private sector loans are explicitly excluded from the ADB's investigative mechanism; there is no formal mechanism for recourse in private sector projects (ADB, 2000, section B(5)). The IFC created a Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman's office in 2000, whose powers to investigate complaints are to be agreed on a case-by-case basis with the World Bank Group President. Recourse for individuals or groups with a grievance is through the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman, not the World Bank's Independent Inspection Panel.
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The independence and investigative powers of the IFC Compliance Advisor/Omhudsman are still difficult to assess; it serves as omhudsman and mediator for complaints against the IFC and MIGA, as compliance monitor within the agencies, and in an advisory role to IFC and World Bank Senior Management. These roles are carried out without the formal independence that the World Bank's Independent Inspection Panel enjoys, but with powers that may allow it to operate more flexihly and on a less adversarial hasis (Center for Intemational Environmental Law, 2001; IFC/MIGA, 2002). The mechanisms for recourse at the EBRD and IDB are the same for puhlic and private sector projects. The EBRD has no appeals mechanism for either puhlic or private sector loans. Unlike the ADB, the IDB and IIC do not exclude IIC projects from investigation under the IDB investigative mechanism. However, there has been no such investigation in the 9 years of the mechanism's existence (IDB, 2003). On balance, the MDBs' accountability institutions offer less opportunity for recourse when projects involve private sector borrowers. Disclosure of documents is less complete, with corporate borrowers given greater discretion. Disclosure for corporate loans is less timely, but there is no difference in rules regarding the accessibility of documents. The most marked differences are in timeliness and in borrowers' discretion over documents' release, especially at the IFC and IIC. CONCLUSIONS Private sector lending by the MDBs provides a valuable insight into two contending principles in development finance and administration: private sector mobilisation and transparency with respect to citizens. The disclosure required of corporate borrowers by MDBs is considerably weaker than that required of state agencies, and the greater discretion and confidentiality that MDB rules give to their corporate borrowers (compared to their member govemments) limits the effective transparency—the useful information available to citizens in a timely manner— of MDB private sector lending. Transparency, then, is the loser when it confronts the imperative of privatisation and private capital mobilisation. What are the implications for development finance and administration? First, if the management of the MDBs themselves is to be a guide to govemments in institutionalising pattems of good govemance, then the lesson to be gathered here is problematic. Cooperation among public and private sector agencies is a popular fashion in development practice at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and MDB private sector lending is public-private sector partnership on an intemational scale. How govemments and the MDBs choose to oversee and regulate these partnerships will influence the ability of organised citizens to negotiate acceptable levels of responsiveness and accountability with corporations that invest, provide services on contract or own national public utilities. MDBs contribute to setting the expectations, both of govemments and of firms, and for this reason their disclosure policy and practice is significant beyond the impact of the MDBfinanced projects themselves. Second, the nature of disclosure, especially the timeliness and accessibility of documents to citizens affected by a project, is important. Restricted availability and limited time for public review of documents appear likely to make information effectively available to large, well-staffed organisations with experience interpreting MDB documents. These organisations do often work in networks, sharing information freely with locally based organisations. But MDBs should aim to make information available in a way that enables and encourages locally based organisations to review and respond to the information independently if they choose. If this is to happen, it will require that the MDBs and their goveming member countries rethink the priorities assigned to transparency and corporate confidentiality. New accommodations and means of protecting proprietary information are no doubt feasible, if the commitment to transparency is strong enough. Third, the protection afforded to corporate clients does provide one piece of evidence for those who see the MDBs as agents of corporate globalisation. The disclosure policies examined here can reasonably be interpreted as privileging corporations over member states, which are obliged to disclose information more freely, and over citizen organisations who argue for advance access to information about all MDB-financed projects. Faced with a
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choice between compromising citizens' access to information or corporations' confidentiality, the MDBs protect confidentiality, in order to attract and retain corporate clients. Fourth, the record of highly controversial projects funded by the MDBs suggests that private sector projects, implemented by corporations, have tended to create greatest controversy, both locally and intemationally. NGOs report that problems of infonnation disclosure are often a factor in corporate projects whose environmental or social impact becomes controversial. This greater controversy is no doubt largely a function of resistance to private corporate activity in mining and infrastructure sectors and of the high-profile nature of these projects. But permitting information to be withheld from the public that would be available for an MDB-financed project implemented by a state agency not only increases the likelihood of controversy, it diminishes the ability of citizens and NGOs to assess the potential social and environmental impacts of MDB-financed private sector. Finally, this examination of disclosure policies suggests a pragmatic and potentially revealing approach to studying the acceptance and institutionalisation of norms such as transparency in the management of intemational agencies. It suggests that one vital measure of how firmly an intemational norm has taken hold lies in how well it is observed and implemented when it competes with other widely accepted principles. REFERENCES African Development Bank (AfDB) Group. 1997. Disclosure of Information Policy, at http://www.afdb.org/news/disclosure.html [22 February Amendment to the Intemational Development and Finance Act of 1989, 22 US Code, Chapter 7, Section 262m. 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Nelson P. 2001. Transparency mechanisms at the multilateral development banks. World Development 29(11): 1835-1847. Shihata L 1997. The World Bank Inspection Panel. World Bank: Washington. DC. Tellam L 2000. Fuel for Change: World Bank Energy Policy Rhetoric vs. Reality. Zed: New York. Tussie D (ed.). 1996. El BID, el Banco Mundial y la sociedad civil: nuevas formas de financiamiento intemacional. Universidad de Buenos Aires and FLACSO: Buenos Aires. UN/ECE. 1998. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in DecisionMaking, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (ECECEP/43). UN Publications: Geneva. Udall L. 1997. The World Bank Inspection Panel: A Three Year Review. Bank Information Center: Washington, DC. Warner M. 1999. Which way now? Choices for mainstreaming 'public involvement' in economic infrastructure projects in developing countries. Development Policy Review 17(2): 2115-2139. World Bank. 1992. Govemance and Development. World Bank: Washington. DC. World Bank. 1993. Policy on Information Disclosure. World Bank: Washington, DC. World Bank. 1994. The inspection panel, at http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/ipn/ipnweb.nsfAVOverview/overview7opendocument [24 January 2003]. World Bank. 1995. The World Bank Public Information Center Annual Report FY95. World Bank: Washington, DC. World Bank. 1999. Conclusions of the World Bank's Second Review of the Independent Inspection Panel. World Bank: Washington. DC.
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