Time for a new approach to environmental and social protection at multilateral development banks
Current MDB safeguards do not address the core developmental problem facing environmental and social oversight – weak legal frameworks and implementation capacity. Protecting against negative environmental and social impacts from infrastructure projects has often fallen short in many developing countries. Ignoring these impacts can not only threaten the effectiveness of an investment project itself but more broadly undermine a country’s social fabric and environmental sustainability, with potentially global implications related to climate change, conflict and migration. While many countries increasingly recognise this and are strengthening their oversight frameworks accordingly, others continue to take a more short-term approach of pushing ahead with the project first and worrying about problems later.
[Download paper from ODI website]
Reading Development 