Looking ahead - IFC review of its policies

The IFC reviews its Sustainability Policy, Performance Standards and Disclosure Policy after three years of use. Clear problems and weaknesses have been identified which need to be addressed, including the process and success of assessments of so-called 'broad community support' for projects impacting on indigenous peoples' traditional lands.

In February 2006 the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector lending arm of the World Bank Group, approved a suite of documents which together formed its safeguards process. These documents include the over-arching Sustainability Policy (SP), a set of eight Performance Standards (PS) and associated Guidance Notes, a Disclosure Policy (DP) and an Environmental and Social Review Procedure (ESRP). This set of documents contains commitments which bind the clients of the IFC (the PS, SP and DP), non-binding guidance (GN), and IFC-specific requirements (ESRP).

When these documents were passed by the IFC Board they marked a shift in the thinking of the Corporation regarding its social and environmental responsibilities. The Board asked the Corporation to review the Sustainability Policy, Performance Standards and Disclosure Policy after three years of implementation to assess whether this new approach was working and determine where possible weaknesses exist.

What now?

The review has begun and the IFC plans to complete the full review by December 2010. The IFC has proposed the schedule (see box on the right) for the consultations and revision process for the review of the Sustainability Policy, Performance Standards and associated Guidance Notes:

After this consultation process the final new text of the SP, all the PSs and the associated GNs would be presented to the Board of the IFC in December 2010.

All the details of the consultation process can be found in full in the IFC's Approach Paper, posted on their website.

Community consultations?

The schedule released by the IFC is startling in a number of respects. Initially it relies very heavily on the use of the IFC website as a channel for consultations, an effective means of outreach only for a minority of the people affected by IFC projects. There is also a complete lack of reference to the need to consult specifically with indigenous peoples for review of the performance standard and guidance note relevant to projects on indigenous peoples' lands or impacting on indigenous peoples (PS7 and GN7).

Over and above these two problems, there is also the lack of any real detail of planned face-to-face consultations. The IFC states that it is holding a face-to-face consultation with members of civil society during the World Bank Annual Meetings in Istanbul, Turkey, in early October 2009. It also states that it will hold face-to-face meetings with communities that have been affected by some of the projects that the IFC has funded since the introduction of the safeguard process. However there is no detail about which projects will be selected, when the face-to-face meetings will take place, nor whether interested people or experts in those countries will be able to be involved in such meetings.

Consultation SchedulePhase IConsultation for 60 days on identifying the key issues and challenges in the PPS, September 2009 - November 2009Phase IIConsultation for 60 days on version 1 of the draft PPS and the Guidance Notes, May 2010 - July 2010Phase IIIConsultation for 30 days on version 2 of the draft PPS and Guidance Notes in October 2010