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Environment and Safeguards Compliance Policy
IDB APPROVES NEW ENVIRONMENT AND SAFEGUARDS COMPLIANCE POLICY
The Inter-American Development Bank approved on January 19, 2006, a new Environment and Safeguards Compliance Policy, strengthening the Bank's commitment to environmental sustainability. The new policy, approved by the Board of Executive Directors, consolidates environmental safeguards consistent with best practices being carried out among public and private international financial institutions.
This policy brings together a number of directives that will steer the Bank s work toward mainstreaming environmental considerations across sectors, safeguarding the environmental quality of all IDB operations and making the Bank socially and environmentally responsible within its own facilities. "Our contribution to sustainable development in the Region and the environmental footprint of the Bank should be greatly enhanced with this new policy," commented IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno.
The new policy makes current, coherent and systematic a set of environmental practices that the Bank has developed over the past 20 years, such as environmental assessments, consultations with local populations and other stakeholders, safeguards, incorporation of sustainability principles into country strategies and application of best practices and standards of the international community.
The new policy:
- Emphasizes early identification of challenges and opportunities with borrowing countries in the course of establishing country strategies and priorities for Bank support.
- Shifts emphasis from identifying environmental impacts to managing risks in a sustainable way, identifying project risks and opportunities and proactively managing them in partnership with borrowing nations.
- Establishes a robust procedure for effective management of environmental, social and cultural risks.
- Requires early and ongoing engagement with communities affected by a project and seeks community support before financing large projects.
- Quantifies and monitors a project's greenhouse gas emissions.
- Analyzes policy-based loans for sustainability risks and opportunities.
- Supports biodiversity by focusing on transboundary areas, conservation and protection from all significant threats to biodiversity.
- Fosters sustainability initiatives as part of the new emphasis on going beyond impact mitigation to seek opportunities to achieve the maximum value of investments.
This new policy is part of the implementation of the Bank's Environment Strategy, which was approved by the Board in July 2003. The policy is part of a broad external consultation process that has involved governments, nongovernmental organizations, the private sector and multilateral and bilateral development agencies. An important contribution to this policy was provided by a Blue Ribbon Panel, chaired by former U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, that advised Bank management on how to reposition the Bank to achieve greater leadership on behalf of sustainability in the region.
"There is significant work ahead of us. To implement the policy we are proposing an extensive training and capacity building effort, both with the Bank and among our borrowers and executing agencies" says Janine Ferretti, chief of the Bank's Environment Division that was responsible for the development of the policy. Guidelines, toolkits, and other instruments and resources will be made available to facilitate policy implementation. The policy will enter into effect six months after Board approval.
Approved Environment and Safeguards Compliance Policy
The approved new Environment and Safeguards Compliance Policy can be found in: http://http://www.iadb.org/sds/ENV/publication/publication_183_3923_e.htm
Comments received during the Policy Consultations and Response to Comments
The policy benefited from an active participation of all interested parties during the two phases of consultation: (1) electronic consultation on the Advanced Policy Profile; and (2) electronic consultation and regional and extra-regional consultation meetings on the Draft Environment and Safeguards Compliance Policy and the Draft Implementation Guidelines. The regional consultations were held in Rio de Janeiro, Panama, Lima and Barbados, with close to 200 participants representing governments, NGOs, civil society organizations, academia and private sector. The extra-regional consultations were held in Washington D.C. and Brussels, with representatives from non-borrowing member countries, multilateral organizations, international NGOs and civil society groups.
The comments received during the two phases of consultation were carefully revised and taken into consideration during the various revisions of the Policy document before approval by the Bank Executive Board. A summary of such comments and the response to those comments can be found in: http://www.iadb.org/sds/doc/ENV-ConsolidatedCommentsResponse-1-30-E.pdf
