Polonoroeste Case Study

In 1981, the world bank provided funding to Brazil in order to assist with the Polonoroeste development program. The Polonoroeste (“Northwest Pole”) project was initiated with the goal upgrading an existing 1500 kilometer dirt road to a paved road that would serve existing settlements, as well as new settlements that were planned for the area. The World Bank funded the project with $475 million, in the form of 5 loans that spanned between 1981 and 1983 1 The World Bank was the only investor outside of Brazil’s borders.2 The project turned out to be an environmental disaster, instigating wide-spread deforestation brought on not only by the construction of the road, but also a mass migration and land rush to the newly developed region.
My feeling is that this could have been entirely avoided, and I support that statement by looking at the policy changes implemented by the World Bank after wide-spread public outrage at the Polonoroeste

However many of the solutions that were presented by opposing parties, as well as the World Bank, seem like common sense. Perhaps it is with the clear vision of hindsight that I say this, having been born years after the Polonoroeste project took place and looking at the incident from a historic interest point of view, but it seems like it would have taken the simplest of investigations or feasibility studies before the project was undertaken to understand that the project posed massive social and environmental risks. The fact that there seemed to be no real environmental or social management plan in place, definitely brings into question the intentions of the World Banks and supports criticism of the World Bank as operating under false