Transcript of Oral History Interview with Maritta Koch-Weser held on May 25, 2011

THE WORLD BANK GROUP ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH MARITTA KOCH-WESER Interview by: Marie Zenni May 25, 2011 Washington, D.C. (Transcribed from a digital sound recording)  1 INTERVIEW ZENNI: Good morning. I'm Marie Zenni, senior interviewer for the World Bank Oral History program. KOCH-WESER: Yes, I'm Maritta Koch-Weser. ZENNI: Okay. Today is Wednesday, May 25, 2011, and I'm here at World Bank Headquarters in Washington, D.C. preparing to interview, via telephone, Maritta Koch-Weser, who is in London. Koch-Weser retired from the World Bank back in early `99 as director for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development for the Latin America and Caribbean Region. Today's oral history interview covers Koch-Weser's retrospective on her almost 20-year career at the World Bank Group, beginning in 1980. After retiring from the Bank, Koch-Weser served as director general of IUCN, which stands for International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, and she is founder and president of Earth 3000, a global NGO [Non-Governmental Organization]. Welcome, Koch-Weser. KOCH-WESER: Hello. ZENNI: I would like to begin by discussing your background in general, including your educational background, pre-Bank work experience, and your development as an anthropologist. KOCH-WESER: I grew up in Germany. My parents were refugees from the eastern part of Germany. I grew up in post-war Germany. I attended university at Bonn and Cologne Universities from the end of 1966 onwards. I specialized on Latin America in a number of disciplines. Maritta Koch-Weser May 25, 2011 Edited  2 At a very early age, I managed to get a Ph.D. scholarship to go to Brazil for two years, where I studied, between 1970 -72, remnants of Yoruba religion among the Afro-Brazilian religions in Brazil. This work motivated my interest in development. I worked in urban slums, in favelas. I also had my first visit to Amazonia and two drought-stricken areas in northeast Brazil. Continuing my record of pre-World Bank studies: I then finished my Ph.D. in 1975, and because I was already in Washington with my husband, who was then a YP [Young Professional] at the World Bank, I became assistant professorial lecturer at the anthropology department of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. I taught Latin American anthropology and applied anthropology. I worked my way into this new field. I also taught some courses at American University and Georgetown at the same time, and I did a few development-related consultancies for AAAS [American Association for the Advancement of Science] and OAS [Organization of American States] at the time. So that's how I started. ZENNI: Okay. Thank you. You officially joined the Bank towards the end of the [Robert S.] McNamara era in late 1980 as one of the Bank's very first anthropologists, having previously worked as Bank consultant from late `76 through mid`80. Please discuss how your decision to join the Bank actually came about. KOCH-WESER: Well, in my days, it was more a question of the decision of the Bank to ever contact an anthropologist, which had hardly happened before. How did my first consultancy come about? I got a call at the anthropology department at George Washington University one day from a rather distraught Bolivia country economist who was in charge of one of the first poverty-oriented rural development projects in Bolivia. They had “trouble