Sarah Hildebrand 01 17 2003 04 09 PM To Peter 8 Saba GC EXIMBANK@EXIMBANK cc Subject Meeting with WWF and onservation International I called Mahoney and said I had heard about the meeting on Wed had hoped to attend but couldn't that day Then asked him to let me know how it went This is the response Sarah McCray Hildebrand Senior Vice President Congressional External Affairs The Export-Import Bank of the United States ---- Forwarded by Sarah Hildebrand CEA EXIMBANK on 01 17 2003 04 08 PM---- James Mahoney 01 17 2003 03 57 PM To Sarah HildebrandiCEAfEXIMBANK@EXIMBANK cc William Hellert CEA EXIMBANK@EXIMBANK Karl Kendall STFG EXIMBANK@EXIMBANK Popi Artavanis STFG EXIMBANK@EXIMBANK Subject Meeting with WWF and Conservation International On January 15 2003 Francis Grant-Suttie of World Wildlife Fund WWF with Greg Love and Maria Sanchez of Conservation lntErrnational Cl visited Ex-Im Bank Mahoney Artavanis Kendall Giannopolis Firestone and Cohen to discuss the WWF CI plan to dispatch an environmental consultant Robert Goodland who was also in attendance to the Camisea site to gather data on the project's impact on the environment - focusing on its impact on bio-diversity - in order to formulate a report to WWF and Cl on the extent of the impact and measures including cost that would be needed to mitigate that impact Ex-Im explained that it had already engaged a consultant to gather info for its environmental evaluation of the project and that the scope of work for the Ex-Im consultant URS overlapped to an extent with the scope of WWF's consultant WWF was interested in the financials of the project since according to Mr Grand-Suttie the costs of a WWF recommended mitigation program could conceivably be spread between the sponsors and'WWF with Cl itself Ex-Im stated that step one should focus only on determining what in fact would be the required mitigation and any effort to assign costs or establish a fund should be addressed afterwards Besides Ex-Im would not divulge any financial information on the transaction since that type of information clearly is considered proprietary WWF stated that its consultant will travel immediately to Peru and subsequently prepare a report with recommended mitigation to be submitted to WWF by the end of February WWF also noted that it had become involved in OPIC's decision to finance the Bolivian Cuiaba gas pipeline in much the same manner resulting in its establishment of a WWF-sponsored fund to address the problems associated with the impact of that project They indicated that their involvement with the Bolivian project and the establishment of a preoject-related mitigation Fund contributed to OPIC's decision to authorize support for that pipeline Ex-Im noted that clearly a well researched WWF report with recommendations for mitigation could be of value to Ex-Im Bank as well as the IDB But Ex-Im Bank staff also stressed that it was still in the evaluation process and that the Bank had not made any decision as to whether to support the project There was discussion regarding the scope of the WWF consultant's work as compared with that of Ex-Im Bank's consultant URS The final report to Ex-Im Bank from URS which would be broader in scope than that of WWF's consultant is not expected before April OBSERVATION 3S _ ' L-- Jim Mahoney