The role of United States environmental NGOs in the World Bank loan for Polonoroeste

In 1981, the Brazilian government implemented a rainforest development project called Polonoroeste, one third of which was funded by the World Bank. The main component of Polonoroeste was the reconstruction and paving of highway BR-364, which opened the Amazon rainforest to unprecedented migration from Brazil's crowded cities. The project was designed to improve infrastructure, improve existing settlements of farmers, and provide for the orderly settlement of new migrants. The outcomes of Polonoroeste were disastrous. It resulted in massive deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, disease and hardship for migrants, and the wiping out of many indigenous cultures.; Concerned about the welfare of the rainforest and its peoples, a group of U.S. environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) launched an international campaign to stop World Bank funding for Polonoroeste. The NGOs claimed that Bank policies were contributing to a development process which was harmful to the environment and the people it was supposed to help.; The main factors constraining the effectiveness of the NGO's campaign were lack of access to the policy process and the opposition of the World Bank. The main factors contributing to the effectiveness of the NGOs were their alliances, the salience and framing of the campaign, their resources, and their success in making linkages between both biophysical/political and local/global facets of the problem. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...