Boulevard to broken dreams, Part 2: implementation of the Polonoroeste road project in the Brazilian Amazon, and the World Bank’s response to the gathering storm

Vol. 36 No. 3 (2016)

Jul-Sep / 2016
Published March 1, 2020
PDF-English
PDF-English

How to Cite

H. Wade, Robert. 2016. “Boulevard to Broken Dreams, Part 2: Implementation of the Polonoroeste Road Project in the Brazilian Amazon, and the World Bank’s Response to the Gathering Storm”. Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 36 (3):646-63. https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-31572016v36n03a10.

Boulevard to broken dreams, Part 2: implementation of the Polonoroeste road project in the Brazilian Amazon, and the World Bank’s response to the gathering storm

Robert H. Wade
Robert H. Wade is professor of political economy at the London School of Economics.
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 36 No. 3 (2016), Jul-Sep / 2016, Pages 646-663

Abstract

This is the second part of the essay on the circumstances that led the World Bank to embrace norms and operational policies for environmental and indigenous people’s protection in the late 1980s, as traced through the turbulent history of the Polonoroeste road project in the Brazilian Amazon. Polonoroeste became the spearhead with which environmental NGOs made their first attack on the Bank for participating in large-scale environmental and indigenous peoples’ destruction. 

JEL Classification: Q5; O13; I3.


Keywords: policy norms rainforests indigenous peoples World Bank environmental NGOs government of Brazil US Congress Indonesian Transmigration Project