In August 2016, the World Bank released a new Environmental and Social Framework, meant to prevent harm to people and the planet and “maximize development gains.” The framework was adopted by the bank following a four-year review of its suite of “safeguard” policies that had been developed over the preceding thirty years.
The new framework comprises a policy that binds bank staff in their appraisal and supervision of projects, along with ten standards covering issues including labor, biodiversity, Indigenous Peoples and resettlement, which the bank’s borrowers must meet when implementing bank-financed projects. The adoption of the framework marked a significant overhaul of the old system of safeguard policies.
Throughout the safeguards review, IDI worked with civil society partners around the world to mobilize a concerted, international effort to strengthen the World Bank’s policies on land rights, displacement and resettlement, and to demand that they uphold the bank’s international obligations to respect, protect and fulfill human rights. Here is a list of our detailed submissions in each phase of the review:
While the framework has serious weaknesses overall, it is a significant advancement of the bank’s standards on resettlement and land tenure—priority issues that IDI campaigned hard on during the four-year review.
The new Environmental and Social Standard on Land Acquisition, Restrictions on Land Use and Involuntary Resettlement (ESS5), contains a prohibition on forced evictions, including of informal settlers, who are accorded important entitlements including arrangements to allow them to obtain adequate housing with security of tenure. Unlike the standards on other issues, ESS5 contains an annex that describes in detail the mandatory elements of a resettlement plan, including baseline socio-economic studies of affected people before they are resettled, which is essential to ensuring that living conditions and livelihoods are restored.
Land rights are better protected in the new framework, with borrowers required to assess and address risks associated with land and natural resource use, including potential impacts on land access, food security and land values, and any risks related to land conflict. Despite earlier attempts by bank management to roll back the coverage of land titling projects, our concerted push during the consultations led to a reversal of this decision, and the new standard explicitly covers displacement of people from areas deemed “state land.” In addition, the borrower must demonstrate that rules are in place to ensure due process and transparency when land claims are being adjudicated.
Furthermore, ESS5 protects people, who may be displaced from land that is sold or otherwise transferred. For example, when a project involves support to commercial investments in agricultural land where the government transfers state land to the investor, other people that use, live on and rely on the land are entitled to protections under ESS5.
These are all key protections and entitlements that, as we have learned through our work with communities affected by development projects, are absolutely essential to preventing impoverishment and respecting human rights.
Unfortunately, the framework also contains significant weaknesses that could reduce the likelihood that these standards are applied in a rigorous and effective manner. Instead of setting out clear joint-responsibilities on the bank and borrowers, most of the responsibility for applying the standards is placed on borrowers, and the World Bank’s responsibilities to conduct due diligence, monitoring and evaluation are considerably more vague than in the old safeguard policies and procedures. There is an over-reliance on the borrower’s word, including assessments of social and environmental risks and commitments for future action, without clear obligations on bank staff to seek independent third party views or verify information themselves. This is despite the obvious incentives on borrowers to downplay risks and undercount affected people to reduce costs and, indeed, the evidence of this malpractice in previous projects.
