MEXICO CITY, Apr 3 2026 (IPS) - In Asunción, Paraguay last month, finance ministers, central bank presidents, and private sector leaders gathered for the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) Annual Meetings to talk about growth.
In a session titled “Seizing Opportunities, Stimulating Growth” hosted by IDB Invest, the bank’s private sector institution, they discussed how investment and innovation could strengthen agribusiness and food systems across Latin America.
One place to start is clear: the IDB Invest should exclude industrial livestock production from its portfolio. Industrial animal agriculture is a leading driver of deforestation, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions in the region.
It puts profits in the hands of a few, while rural and Indigenous communities are left to deal with dirty water, damaged land, and fewer ways to earn a living. Yet at the very session dedicated to agribusiness, livestock was conspicuously absent from the conversation.
If the IDB Invest won’t even acknowledge the problem, it’s obviously not trying to solve it. Public development money shouldn’t be funding an industry that worsens the climate crisis and harms communities.
Equally troubling is the lack of transparency when projects do move forward. When the IDB Invest supports a project, communities have a right to understand its risks, impacts, and benefits. That did not happen, for example, in the case of Pronaca, an Ecuadorian agribusiness company that received a $50 million loan from IDB Invest.
An independent investigation by the Bank’s own accountability mechanism found seven violations of environmental and social safeguards, including failures to disclose critical information and assess the company’s role in the contamination of a local river that the Indigenous Tsáchila community rely on for food and hygiene, and which holds deep spiritual significance within their cosmology.
But key environmental documents were classified as confidential, and meaningful information was never shared. This isn’t just a problem with the IBD’s internal procedures. It can have real impacts on human rights.
Perhaps most importantly, the IDB Invest must ensure the effective participation of affected communities from the very beginning of any project. In the Pronaca case, the investigation found no evidence that nearby Indigenous communities were consulted at all, even though one community is located just a few hundred meters from a facility.
This absence of consultation wasn’t accidental, but instead part of a deep imbalance of power, where decisions are made in boardrooms and imposed on territories without consent. Communities must have a seat at the table, not as an afterthought, but as decision-makers with the ability to shape, or reject, projects that affect their futures. Anything less is incompatible with the IDB Invest’s stated mission to reduce inequality.
This month’s meeting in Paraguay showed that the IDB Group is quite ambitious when it comes to growth in Latin America. However, it would be a mistake for the IDB to believe that growth is the only measure of progress and should be the priority no matter the cost.
Right now, the IDB has the opportunity and the responsibility to pursue a sustainable growth agenda by excluding harmful industries, committing to full transparency, and including the impacted communities at every step of the process. To do that, the IDB must listen to those who were not in the room, and must recognize that economic growth cannot be built on weakened ecosystems and silenced communities.
Claudia Escorza, the Latin America Regional Coordinator for “Stop Financing Factory Farming (S3F) coalition, is based in Mexico City, and advocates sustainable food systems.
IPS UN Bureau
