The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) has yet to live up to its responsibility to provide important information to stakeholders in spite of its professed commitment to do so under its new Environmental Guidelines.
JBIC's new Environmental Guidelines, adopted in April 2002, went into effect in October 2003 (see Catfish Tales #1 and #14 for more information). Though the Guidelines are now in effect, JBIC is not releasing the information it should, and it is not implementing the guidelines appropriately. NGOs that participated in consultations to develop the Guidelines are unhappy that their successful efforts to include progressive provisions in the Guidelines have thus far been negated by JBIC's poor implementation.
Of the various Official Development Assistance (ODA) schemes, JBIC is responsible for Yen Loans, and also provides import and export credits to Japanese corporations (non-ODA international financing). JBIC is the world's largest international finance institution, and its new Guidelines cover both its yen loan and international financing operations. The Guidelines commit JBIC to proactive information disclosure, and a complaints mechanism called the Objection Procedures was also established under the Guidelines. For this, JBIC (as an export credit agency) is being heralded as cutting edge.
Unfortunately, JBIC is already stumbling over its commitments in the Guidelines.
INFORMATION ONLY IN JAPANESE
According to the Guidelines, JBIC welcomes information provided from stakeholders and releases information regarding projects it is considering financing so that stakeholders can contact JBIC with concerns as early as possible. Certain types of information are uploaded on JBIC's website immediately after screening projects it is considering funding and categorizing them according to the degree of anticipated environmental/social impacts.
At present, however, JBIC is providing this information only in Japanese. While English is also a barrier to accessing information for many local NGOs and project affected people, making information available only in Japanese makes it nearly impossible for them to get the information they need-unless they or people they know have Japanese language capacity.
Also according to the Guidelines, after a decision has been made to finance a project, the results of JBIC's environmental review of the project are put on JBIC's website. This information is important in order to ensure the accountability of JBIC's environmental reviews, and is essential information in the event that stakeholders would choose to use the Objection Procedures. However, this information is also being provided only in Japanese.
OTHER CONCERNS
In addition to the above, other concerns regarding JBIC's implementation of the new Guidelines are as follows:
The most progressive provisions in the Guidelines are regarding information disclosure and encouraging stakeholders to provide JBIC with information. These provisions are also essential to prevent damage to environments and livelihoods from JBIC projects. The fact that these
promises are not being kept, now that the Guidelines are actually in effect, is evidence of JBIC's lagging commitment in using the Guidelines to prevent damage from occurring as a result of its projects.
At a regular meeting between JBIC and NGOs on February 26, Mekong Watch and other NGOs pointed out these problems and called for them to be resolved. At this meeting, Mr. Yoshio Wada, the director of a division in JBIC's Development Assistance Strategy Department, made inadequate excuses such as "providing information in English requires too many resources." NGOs can only conclude that JBIC is not interested in resolving the remaining problems-especially considering that much of the information put on JBIC's website in Japanese is originally provided by recipient governments in English.
NGO ACTION-PROVIDING INFORMATION IN ENGLISH
NGOs must continue to push JBIC to be more responsible by raising these issues with the Finance and Foreign Affairs Ministries (which oversee JBIC).
As a result of JBIC's failures in the above-mentioned areas, Japanese NGOs are establishing our own website to provide the information that JBIC should be. Information available in Japanese regarding JBIC projects that are expected to have significant environmental and social impacts will be put up in English on our website at www.jbic-watch.net. This website will be operational at the end of April 2004.