Draft safeguards not 'watered down,' but 'strengthened'

The World Bank is set to begin a second round of global consultations with various development partners — including civil society groups — about its newly proposed, albeit highly scrutinized, environmental and social safeguards. The first draft of the bank’s safeguard document was leaked last week to different development groups, which felt the proposed frameworks are “watered down.” Several aid groups argued the new guidelines “fail to adequately respond to or incorporate years of input from civil society and experts around the world.” Bank officials denied this accusation, explaining that the new standards will improve the institution’s efficiency and effectiveness in implementing development projects in a sustainable manner. “This is a broadening and strengthening of the existing policies and not watering it down,” Kyle Peters, World Bank vice president for operations policy and country services, said during a phone conference attended by Devex. “We’re aiming to get a new and strong set of environmental and social standards that will uplift sustainable development [while] being mindful of economic burdens that development can place on future generations.” The process to update and review the decades-old standards began two years ago. Existing social and environmental safeguards from different multilateral development banks around the world informed the first draft, which was created following consultations with more than 2,000 individuals in at least 40 countries. Peters argued in a bank statement that the decision to push for the revision is to keep up with the changing times, adding that the “policies we have in place now have served us well, but the issues our clients face have changed over the last 20 years.” Environmental and social safeguards have been a source of debate for several years in the international development community — even within the World Bank’s 25-member board. These provisions touch on what arguably are the most sensitive aspects of any development process: people and the environment. Balanced approach The proposed safeguards highlight a new approach to the World Bank’s assessment and operations in its development projects moving forward; an approach that will focus on resource management, risk mitigation and results. “What we’re trying to do is get a better balance between how the resources we spend on preparing on our projects and the resources we spend on our implementation,” Peters said. “We’ll measure and monitor the risks, the actions that are being taken and the countries that will commit to certain standards, which they will implement as it comes necessary as we move through the project cycle.” Better resource management and cost-efficiency in development projects have been key themes in several major aid institutions, particularly in the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, over the past couple of years. These have pushed the banks to carefully tread an increasingly resource-strapped development landscape. Despite the intent to clarify the development process, more questions arise particularly over the bank’s intention to align — and even use — existing national social and environmental policies with bank-funded projects. It pushes the boundary of the dichotomy between national and international standards, as not all national policies may adhere or even satisfy minimal provisions found in international ones. “We’re trying to be clearer in knowing who’s responsible for doing what for our projects. Those were not as clear as we would have liked,” Mark King, the bank’s chief environmental and social standards officer, told Devex in the same phone conference. “We wanted to do, in the way we process projects, to use, as much as possible, countries’ existing systems … that would be consistent with our standards.” But Peters clarified that the adoption of social and environmental standards of borrower countries will “as much as possible” only happen if “it seems that they match our standards” to avoid the duplication of resources. Some of the proposed social and environmental standards in the World Bank draft include labor conditions, resource efficiency and pollution prevention, health and safety, land issues and involuntary resettlement, biodiversity conservation, and indigenous peoples’ protection, among others. On indigenous people One of the most contentious issues that was initially neglected by the bank, as some development groups suggest, include provisions protecting and empowering indigenous people. King explained that the decision to strengthen “the existing operational policy on IPs” within the bank by including it in the draft symbolizes a “major step forward for the institution.” The bank has had to address various challenges in implementing its IP policy. Using the term “indigenous people,” for one, has the potential to create ethnic tensions in certain countries and regions. The proposal is for the bank to “talk with groups in different ways so as to avoid exacerbating existing tensions.” The Washington, D.C.-based institution also plans to introduce the Free, Prior and Informed Consent of IP concept in the proposed policy, according to King. Although FPIC is not new — ADB and countries like the Philippines already incorporate it in policies and legislative and administrative measures affecting IPs — the concept provides an “alternative approach” to protect these minority groups. “To recognize these challenges, we’ve introduced into the standards an alternative approach, which would allow IP to be safeguarded and protected,” the bank official explained, adding that any alternative approach will only be adopted with the approval of the bank’s board. The World Bank Board’s Committee on Development Effectiveness “provided clearance” for the second round of consultations to run from August to December this year. The bank expects stakeholders to provide feedback on the recently published safeguards draft “to help inform the formulation of specific policy revisions.” Read more development aid news online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive top international development headlines from the world’s leading donors, news sources and opinion leaders — emailed to you FREE every business day.