The World Bank unveiled Tuesday a set of new social and environmental rules for its 188 member nations to receive financial assistance.

According to the World Bank, the draft framework, under discussion for several years, represents "a major step forward" for the development lender that strengthens its protection of the environment and the world's poor and vulnerable in its investment projects.

In early March, the World Bank acknowledged that internal reviews had found significant flaws in the way it handles the resettlement of people to make way for development projects.

Under the proposed framework, the World Bank will demand that borrowing countries extend labor rights, including for the first time the rights to collective bargaining and freedom of association.

The institution also amended a previous proposal on environmental standards that had raised ire among nongovernmental organizations and other groups in July 2014.

Now, the Bank will deem that "offsets" -- actions to compensate for "unavoidable biodiversity impacts" linked to economic development -- should be considered "a last resort" and prohibited in certain instances.

Indigenous peoples affected by projects would need to give "free prior and informed consent" before the projects can proceed, and proposes that in some instances offsets would be prohibited altogether.

If prior consent "can't be shown, the World Bank will not proceed with the aspects of the project relevant to indigenous peoples, it said.

In a joint statement, 19 civil society organizations, including Oxfam and Human Rights Watch, denounced the new World Bank framework, calling it a "dangerous rollback in environmental and social protections."

The proposed rules "will vastly weaken protections for affected communities and the environment at the same time as the bank intends to finance more high-risk projects," they said.

US appeals court orders Ecuador to pay $96 mn to Chevron
New York (AFP) Aug 4, 2015 - A US federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a $96 million award that Ecuador must pay oil giant Chevron in an arbitration of their dispute over Chevron's investments in the country.

Judge Robert Wilkins, of the US Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, concluded that by signing the investment treaty with the United States, which took effect in 1997, "Ecuador made a standing offer to American investors to arbitrate disputes involving investments that existed on or after the treaty's effective date."

The court thus upheld the previous decision of the DC federal court and validated the finding of a three-member tribunal based at The Hague.

The arbitration decision against Ecuador also had been ratified in the Netherlands, with the Dutch Supreme Court ruling in September 2014 that Ecuador must pay the award.

Chevron, in a statement in Spanish, said it was "pleased" with the appeals court decision that confirms a "$106 million" award, an amount that includes interest.

In a separate case, brought by the indigenous people of Ecuador's Lago Agrio region to win compensation for the mass dumping of oilfield waste between the 1970s and 1990s, an Ecuadoran court ordered Chevron to pay $9.5 billion in damages.

The environmental destruction allegedly was perpetrated by Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001.

But a US court found last year that the plaintiffs' legal team, led by American lawyer Steven Donziger, conspired to win the case by "egregious fraud," including bribing a judge, writing the court's verdict themselves and secretly paying the authors of an ostensibly independent report.