I fully agree that generally small dams are better than big dams. There was a very widespread favoritism for big dams that included many (brown) socialists. We have all come a long way from that. The WB is certainly behind the curve on this. Actually, the most telling critiques I have seen of the WB have come from Patrick Bond, although much of the material I have seen he has sent me offlist. It may well be that we would all be better off without the WB, but I still see the IMF as the worse of the two. However, this may simply come of being too close to Washington and knowing too many people there, :-).
I find the claim that we could "eliminate poverty" in six months questionable. This depends on what we mean by poverty, of course, but the last I checked no country on earth has succeeded in completely eliminating poverty, most definitely including Cuba, although it has come much closer than other Latin American nations. The lowest poverty rates ever observed have been in some of those Scandinavian social democracies, but even in those countries it has never gotten quite down to zero. Barkley Rosser http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb -----Original Message----- From: Barbara Laurence <cns at cats.ucsc.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Sunday, May 28, 2000 9:14 PM Subject: WB/IMF (Jim O'Connor)
>World Bank and IMF
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>J. Barkley sez that "it's hard to get things going and succeeding in very
>poor countries." Over the years I've been told by top engineers,
>hydrologists, administrators, et al., in the South that if the WB wanted
>to, the right effort could abolish poverty in six months, at the latest.
>The labor is there, the technology is there, the ecological resources are
>there...but the money isn't because of the existence of capitalist
>relations of production, capitalist property, and a state peopled by
>thieves and murderers, and U.S. et al., imperialism. There is no poverty in
>Cuba, despite the fact that Cuba faces all kinds of external barriers to
>development, despite the fact that Cuba has socialism in one industry
>(sugar). Similarly, our City Council and County Board of Supervisors in
>Santa Cruz could abolish local poverty in a month, if they want to, and
>were willing to risk the disapproval of the Chamber of Commerce, et al.
>It's functional for the system. Check out my forthcoming House Organ in the
>June issue of CNS. That's why the WB/IMF/ADB, et al., speak of "poverty
>reduction" not "poverty abolition."
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>J. Barkley also sez that "the locals" often want "big dam projects." Here
>again the problem is a lack of specificity. Typically, big dams flood the
>lands of farmers who are doing ok, despite the poor soil they have to work
>with. Those in favor of big dams farm at lower levels subject to
>flood-drought cycles, due to deforestation. These farmers typically have
>much more land than their highlands brethren, and better land. The
>solution: not one big dam but a series of smaller dams plus a runoff system
>to prevent flooding at lower lying levels and also to store water. But this
>system yields less prestige to government agencies and politicians.
>
>Jim O'Connor
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