The accelerating deforestation, desertification, salinization, and other assaults on the environment affecting large areas of the developing world has often been a consequence of large-scale development projects funded by the World Bank and its sister multilateral development banks. For instance, the effect of the Polonoroeste project — a roadbuilding and colonization program in northwestern Brazil financed with World Bank loans — has been to unleash deforestation at a rate unprecedented in Brazil’s history. The Polonoroeste disaster is far from exceptional. The drama has been repeated throughout Africa and Asia. To ease population pressures, the Indonesian government, again with World Bank support, has moved hundreds of thousands of people to rain-forest areas with poor soil, stripping the land of its utility to colonists while displacing indigenous peoples. This transmigration program is the largest resettlement project in history.
