The thin green line: World Bank leverage and forest policy reform in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

This monograph tells the story of the World Bank's efforts to defend or advance the cause of forest policy reform in Papua New Guinea by means of conditions attached to a series of structural adjustment loans which have been advanced or offered to the national government from the beginning of 1995 to the end of 1999. Papua New Guinea is one of the few countires in the world in which the Bank has sought to influence the course of national forest policy in this way, and one of an even smaller number of client countries in which it can claim to have had some success in doing so. This case study therefore throws an important light on current international debates about the Bank's engagment with the exploitation or conservation of natural tropical forests, and about its choice of policy instruments for achieving its environmental goals.