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To bankroll the rebirth of Central and Eastern Europe, forty countries and two European Community institutions joined together on May 29, 1990, to create the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the Bank or EBRD). The parties envisioned the Bank as playing a decisive role in solving three major problems that have relegated Central and Eastern European countries to the status of second tier world players: environmental degradation on an order seen nowhere else in the developed world; undemocratic political systems that vested power in elite bureaucracies insulated from the demands of their citizens; and centrally planned economies that could not compete with those of the free market world.
In an effort to formulate a cohesive environmental policy, the Bank produced several draft environmental policies and responded to comments made by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The final environmental policy, however, fails in many respects to meet the mandate its Articles of Agreement imposes on the Bank. The policy’:; more egregious defects arise in its procedures for environmental assessment, public participation and access to information. Specifically, the environmental assessment policies exempt certain categories of activities from preparation of any environmental assessment and allow loan proponents to prepare their own assessments. The public participation procedures fail to provide mechanisms, such as required public hearings, which would insure that citizens and nongovernmental organizations play a significant role in the environmental assessment process. The Bank’s public access to information procedures fail to require that critical information be made available to the public.
This Article analyzes the development of the Bank’s environmental policies, from their genesis in the Bank’s Articles of Agreement up to, and including, the Bank’s actual environmental policy statements. This article also provides suggestions for improving these policies and for actions that can be taken by interested citizens, NGOs, and governments to encourage these improvements.