February 2001
The World Bank is best known for the projects it funds and the structural adjustment policies it promotes. Its roles as a "knowledge Bank" are less discussed, though perhaps as important. World Bank President Wolfensohn is particularly keen on the Bank's knowledge agenda, seeing it as a means to expand the Bank's influence even in the face of the protests, official commissions and independent research pieces which have contested his institution's legitimacy and effectiveness. A top item on his agenda is an attempt at a major land grab on the internet, seeking to build a new, multi-stakeholder, $70m supersite, the Global Development Gateway.
The Bank's plans to build what they have termed "the premier web entry point for information about poverty and sustainable development" represent an ambitious attempt to gain more control over what analysis and opinions on development topics are deemed policy-relevant and sound. The site aims to provide an overview of key policy issues plus links to sites with good information about them. Many activist or alternative sites are likely to be weeded out on the grounds that they contain unsubstantiated opinions, not validated research. The site will be heavily marketed to officials, journalists, students, NGOs and others. Although tightly controlled by the Bank at this stage, it will be launched this summer as an apparently independent initiative, potentially confusing unwary surfers.
The Bank is trying to impress G8 governments and others by working on a hi-tech, multi-stakeholder project to deliver knowledge and expertise to communities worldwide. The buzzwords associated with it are "transparency", "inclusivity", "interactivity" etc. However, the Bank is alienating many potential partners through its usual top-down approach to project planning and its failure to understand that there are many diverse and conflicting views on development. The Bank fails to understand that the internet encourages horizontal networking, multiple opinions and links, rather than central planning and coordination.
Wolfensohn is of course right that the internet is a confusing, yet very powerful and important medium for people working on international issues. Groups like Indymedia and Peoples' Global Action have demonstrated this, leading WTO officials to say that Seattle was lost not in the negotiating rooms, not in the streets but on the internet. Many others have posted publications which can reach people who perhaps previously relied on information from official sources such as the World Bank. Both campaign- and policy-oriented sites may be marginalised by the Bank's new plans, and some sites which need a certain number of visitors to keep going may even go bust. The many criticisms of the Gateway plans, from a variety of officials, web experts etc can be found on the publicly accessible internet consultations www.bellanet.org/gdgprinciples and www.globalknowledge.org and in the September open letter at www.brettonwoodsproject.org).
The main one is that the Bank is drastically overestimating what can be achieved in one website - "trying to kill five birds with one stone". The Bank wants to create a site which aims to do many things. They include the provision of access to: easy access data about aid agency projects; a database of organisations working on development; an online bookstore; nested country websites; a selection of links to analysis on over 100 policy topics.
The latter section is most problematic. The Bank is recruiting editors (called Topic Guides) who are given the impossible task of trying to examine websites across the world to see what exists on their issues, then post links to whatever reports they feel match their "quality" standard, plus highlight certain reports as priorities. Yet it is very hard to find the boundaries of what constitutes "reasonable opinion" within single organisations, villages or families, let alone when you get to a national or international level. The meaning of 'development' (everything that has to do with everyone in the South?) and many of the Gateway subtopics are themselves strongly contested in all the world's languages. On such a megasite reports from African thinktanks or NGOs are likely to be crowded out by major World Bank publications on the same issues.
Roberto Bissio, Director of Instituto Tercer Mundo, Uruguay has compared the site's editing approach to producing an online development newspaper. "Nobody has argued in favour of the World Bank starting to publish newspapers, even in countries which badly lack them. There would be a public outrage if someone proposed it, as the press is supposed to be free". Anyway no newspaper could possibly be taken seriously if it claimed to be representing opinions of all stakeholders in all countries on all issues relating to development.
Attempting to filter development-related information to produce a global supersite for so many audiences is extremely unrealistic and undesirable. It is clearly not possible for one person or a small team to claim that it has produced links and highlights which represent views of all stakeholders (civil society, governments, official agencies, companies etc) on any development topic. This is obvious to many people, but has been well-expressed by Anriette Esterhuysen, Executive Director of the Association for Progressive Communications: "The Global Gateway will: * de-contextualize the content it disseminates * neutralize and de-politicize information * create an illusory atmosphere of consensus and universality, while proclaiming 'diversity' * draw funding away from local information gateway development initiatives Most significantly, initiatives like the GDG, no matter how inclusive they attempt to be, are mediated by the North."
Many other detailed criticisms have been made against the Bank's planned approach including from officials and web entrepeneurs. There has been minimal serious response. On 7 November Wolfensohn personally posted to the globalknowledge list consultation that he was getting good feedback on the Gateway proposal, that the Bank would continue with it in collaboration with "those leading international NGOs and community-based organizations that wish to experiment with us". This was a frank admission that the consultation exercise has been largely a sham and that the Bank is moving to use diplomatic muscle to marginalise opponents and steam-roll groups into collaborating without questioning the fundamentals of the Bank's plans. Wolfensohn still believes in the 21st century that the Bank can get away with hiring "experts" to select sound and globally relevant analysis on all world issues.
The World Bank already gets over four million page hits per month on its main website, www.worldbank.org. It has recently invested a huge amount of resources into a series of other internet initiatives (i.e. the Global Development Network). Combined with the Gateway, these can be seen as a strategic attempt to capture the commanding heights of information technology for development. As the web is likely to grow ever more important as a publishing and organising medium, activists would be well-advised to prevent the World Bank getting any more powerful in this area. And the Bretton Woods Project, Instituto Tercer Mundo and others have been discussing a number of campaign actions using the internet*. At the same time civil society groups need to take the internet more seriously and consider further ways to use it collaboratively to raise awareness and promote new perspectives on global policy issues. A new attempt to use the net specifically to counter the World Bank as "knowledge Bank" can be seen at: www.realworldbank.org.
* Alex Wilks is a policy analyst with the Bretton Woods Project in the UK.
Campaign actions on the Global Development Gateway will be announced through the Bretton Woods Update (www.brettonwoodsproject.org/update), and various listserves, or register your interest directly by e-mailing: gdg@brettonwoodsproject.org.