Environmental Externalities: What the World Bank Can Learn From CPG Companies About the Environment

Academics and non-governmental organization (NGOs) increasingly highlight how foreign development assistance and foreign direct investment may result in environmental harm. Despite being an international development organization with a clear and important altruistic agenda, The World Bank’s aid efforts, at times, seem to have perverse effects. In this thesis, I explore the adverse effects of the World Bank’s commitment to poverty alleviation on the environment. In contrast, big consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies like Unilever and PepsiCo often follow corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives that insure the environment in ways that some international development organizations do not. The purpose of this paper is to analyze various case studies of the environmental interactions of the World Bank and these CPG companies. Through these case studies, this paper will outline the organizational incentives and stakeholders that make the organizations interact with the environment the way they do. Furthermore, this paper will analyze the alignment of environmental protection goals of the private sector with those of the World Bank.