Intense scrutiny on AIIB should spur it to fulfil its social and environmental mission
Lowell Chow and Annabel Short consider what the AIIB must do to fulfil its pledge of 'clean and green'
Delegates from the 57 founding member states of the new China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) recently gathered in Beijing for the bank's signing ceremony. The US was not among them.
Earlier, its National Security Council expressed concerns whether the bank "will meet high standards, particularly related to governance, and environmental and social safeguards". Jin Liqun , who has been nominated president of the bank, played down such concerns by pledging that the US$50 billion bank would be "lean, clean and green".
While it may be too early to comment on the bank's actual social and environmental impact, it is important to note that the track record of the US-led World Bank is not perfectly clean, either. Groups such as Human Rights Watch and even UN Human Rights Council experts have criticised the World Bank for its failure to adhere to its own promises to protect the world's most vulnerable people.
In April, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that World Bank-funded projects have evicted an estimated 3.4 million people or damaged their livelihoods over the past decade. Among these projects were some graded the highest risk for "irreversible or unprecedented" social or environmental impacts.
In contrast, the concerns associated with the AIIB, that Chinese investment might be "less ethical" in terms of its impact on the environment and communities, echo oft-heard attitudes towards the operations of Chinese companies overseas. Protests against the operations of Chinese extractive firms have arisen from Myanmar to Zambia. Hundreds of such reports and articles about alleged abuses have been consolidated on the portal of our "Chinese investment overseas" website at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.
A shift is under way, however. Companies and the Chinese government are showing signs of commitment, and civil society groups are identifying new strategies to engage them on those commitments.