The direct and indirect efforts of the World Bank and its off-spring, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), to become leading international agents of global environmental ‘governance’ and ‘sustainable development’ are described and analysed politically with reference to the development of an implementation regime of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). The Bank/GEF are seen as engaging in a potentially dangerous experiment of ‘global ecological modernisation’, or industrial transformation, in ‘emerging economies’, an experiment legitimised by reference to the catastrophic threat of man-made ‘global warming’. This threat is already being translated into political, commercial and bureaucratic benefits accruing to a small global elite. How was this achieved and what are the likely political implications?
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