U.S. Position on the Review and Update of the World Bank’s Safeguard Policies 

August 4, 2016

The United States welcomes the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) presented for 

consideration today. The four-year process leading to this proposal has frequently been 

challenging and the United States appreciates the hard work of World Bank staff. The United 

States also welcomes the extensive consultations that the World Bank has conducted with a wide 

range of external stakeholders during the review process.

This review matters, because the ESF will govern World Bank investment lending for years to 

come and, given the World Bank’s leadership role, it is certain to affect the policies of other 

multilateral development banks, bilateral development agencies and private sector investors. 

The review also matters because the ESF makes a real difference in whether the World Bank 

contributes to countries’ development in a sustainable manner, sustainability being the linchpin 

of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals endorsed last year. 

The United States supported the launch of this review, believing it was important both to 

strengthen the effectiveness of the World Bank’s safeguards regime, and to better address the 

challenges of a changing world. The United States believes that the ESF does both. 

While the ESF does not live up to all U.S. expectations, it lives up to many of them and 

represents notable progress from the current policy. It lays out a new vision for the World Bank, 

which recognizes the importance and relevance of human rights to development and 

acknowledges the Bank’s responsibility to avoid adverse human rights impacts. It provides an

enhanced scope of coverage, strengthened implementation and accountability, increased 

borrower ownership, and the potential for broader positive development impact. 

The proposed ESF, as a whole package, has the potential to strengthen protections overall and 

improve development outcomes. It supports the World Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme 

poverty and promoting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. For these reasons, and despite 

some areas of concern, the United States supports approval of the proposed ESF, as 

recommended by Management. 

The ESF preserves the core principles of good environmental and social risk management that 

underpin the existing safeguards. These include conducting and disclosing assessments of 

potential impacts of World Bank projects on people and the environment, undertaking 

meaningful consultations with project-affected communities about project impacts, developing 

measures to address these impacts, and monitoring impacts during project implementation. 

The ESF also builds upon and improves the existing safeguards in several ways. The United 

States has strongly advocated for many of these changes during the review process. They 

include:

 Non-discrimination and human rights. The ESF requires the World Bank and its borrowers to 

abide by the essential principles of non-discrimination and inclusive development. While the 

ESF should have been bolder in laying out how those principles will be achieved, the United 
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States sees the Presidential Directive on Disadvantaged or Vulnerable Individuals or Groups

and the human rights language in the Vision Statement as important steps forward. The 

United States believes that the emphasis throughout the ESF on ensuring that impacts do not 

fall disproportionately on the most vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, children, 

and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities, is one of the most 

powerful elements of the ESF and is fully in line with the World Bank’s twin goals. The 

United States also appreciates that the ESF’s Vision for Sustainable Development, for the 

first time in a World Bank safeguards document, recognizes the intersection between human 

rights and World Bank projects and acknowledges that the World Bank’s member countries’ 

human rights commitments are relevant to the safeguards. 

 Enhanced scope. The ESF broadens the treatment of social impacts of World Bank-financed 

projects and adds protections in critical areas such as labor rights, climate change, and nondiscrimination against disadvantaged or vulnerable groups or individuals. The ESF also 

grants new protections to Indigenous Peoples and includes the concepts of both tangible and 

intangible heritage.

 Improved accountability. The ESF strengthens requirements for consulting with projectaffected communities, as well as for monitoring and reporting on the environmental and 

social performance of projects. The ESF adds new instruments (a Stakeholder Engagement 

Plan and an Environmental and Social Commitment Plan) that will bolster accountability. 

The ESF also broadens requirements for project-level grievance mechanisms, requiring all 

World Bank investment projects to incorporate grievance mechanisms to respond to 

complaints from project-affected peoples.

 Strengthened implementation throughout the project cycle. The ESF improves 

implementation support for borrowers and establishes a risk-based supervision system that 

will enable the World Bank to focus supervision and implementation support where risks are 

high. To support implementation of the ESF throughout the project cycle, World Bank 

management is substantially increasing the budget for safeguards implementation, including 

through temporary “surge” funding to train staff and borrowers during the rollout of the new 

ESF. World Bank management has also made some important changes to the Bank’s internal 

organization to support ESF implementation and provide environmental and social staff with 

greater autonomy. 

While the United States appreciates the ESF’s strengths, there are also areas where the United 

States disagrees with the proposed approach or would have preferred to see greater clarity and 

strengthening, and will therefore monitor closely going forward. Some of these areas are 

systemic in nature. For instance, the ESF increases the opportunities for borrowing countries to 

use their own environmental and social risk management frameworks (“use of borrower 

frameworks”) for specific World Bank-financed projects, consistent with the United State’s longterm development objective of stronger environmental and social management systems in 

borrowing countries. However, these opportunities also come with risks and, accordingly, the 

United States has been clear that they must be balanced by a careful review process. To this end, 

the World Bank has outlined a three-tier methodology for assessing borrower frameworks, 

including review of the borrowing country’s laws and procedures, the capacity of the 
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implementing agency to implement adequate safeguards, and the implementing agency’s track 

record on environmental and social risk management. Given the risks, the United States

reiterates that the World Bank should be conservative in its use of borrower frameworks, 

applying its methodology carefully, focusing on selected high capacity borrowers, and devoting 

resources to building up the capacity of borrowing countries.

The ESF should more clearly define the circumstances under which the World Bank would agree 

to a “common approach” on safeguards with other multilateral or bilateral funding agencies, in

line with the approach outlined for use of borrower frameworks. The ESF would benefit from 

greater clarity around disclosure of specific risk mitigation documents, particularly resettlement 

and Indigenous Peoples plans, framework plans, and monitoring reports. The United States

strongly encourages Management to continue to disclose these plans prior to project appraisal, 

consistent with the existing safeguards. 

The United States believes that without a broader definition of associated facilities and the 

inclusion of induced impacts, the scope of environmental and social assessment could be

restricted compared to international standards. As an example, excluding induced impacts from 

an assessment could have the unintended effect of preventing assessment of any unplanned 

developments induced by the project, such as spontaneous settlements, logging, and 

deforestation along new or improved roads. It is good international practice to assess induced 

impacts, and not doing so risks ignoring the lessons that the World Bank has learned about the 

importance of assessing all relevant impacts of a project. In a similar vein, the requirement to 

address residual impacts “where technically and financially feasible” needs to be carefully 

applied, with appropriate consideration of environmental and social factors, so it does not leave 

significant residual impacts unmitigated. 

Other areas where the United States would have liked to go further are more thematic, specific to 

individual ESSs. For example, the United States welcomes the new Environmental and Social 

Standard (ESS2) on labor, but, at the same time, is disappointed that support for the principles of 

freedom of association and collective bargaining is, unlike the rest of the ESF, conceived to be 

“in a manner consistent with national law.” The United States also notes that the “workers’ 

organizations” section in ESS2 is weaker than its parallel in the IFC’s Performance Standard 2, 

which grants more explicit protections in the area of freedom of association and collective 

bargaining. Additionally, the United States is concerned that ESS2 appears to allow primary 

suppliers to self-identify child labor and forced labor risks to their own workers, and urges the 

World Bank to hold borrowers accountable for monitoring and remedying these risks in their 

primary suppliers.

Involuntary resettlement, and its life-changing impacts on affected people, is of central concern 

to this chair and the World Bank must improve its performance given its mixed track record. In 

that context, the United States welcomes the consideration of both physical and economic 

displacement in the new standard on involuntary resettlement, ESS5, but believes that ESS5 

should have maintained the existing definition of “involuntary.” In all cases covered by ESS5, 

the United States urges the World Bank and its clients to improve, not merely restore, 

livelihoods. More broadly, the United States urges that livelihood protection be a clear goal 

when livelihoods and living standards are impacted, regardless of whether those impacts are 
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addressed in ESS1, which focuses on the assessment and management of environmental and 

social risks and impacts, or ESS5. The United States strongly encourages the use of more robust 

socio-economic analysis to inform design of projects that involve involuntary resettlement and 

their resettlement action plans. 

In ESS6, habitat, biodiversity and sustainable management of living natural resources are 

addressed in a more integrated manner than previously, but the United States remains concerned 

about the use of biodiversity offsets. Critical habitats occur over a small portion of the planet, 

but their global benefits far outweigh their size. Many critical habitats are complex ecosystems 

that are not fully understood from an ecological perspective, and the science behind offsets is 

still evolving. Biodiversity offsets are challenging to design, implement, monitor, and sustain 

over the long-term, even under the best of circumstances. For all these reasons, biodiversity 

offsets should be used to compensate for adverse impacts on critical habitats in rare cases and 

only as a last resort when: (i) all other technically feasible avoidance, minimization and 

restoration measures have been considered; (ii) they are supported by rigorous, sound science; 

and (iii) long-term management and funding is secure.

The United States is pleased with much in the new standard on Indigenous Peoples, ESS7, which 

now explicitly covers pastoralists and peoples in voluntary isolation. In light of the distinct 

circumstances that Indigenous Peoples face, the United States believes that ESS7 should be 

clearer about the protections provided to Indigenous Peoples in community development plans. 

When projects require establishing legally recognized land rights, the United States underscores

the importance of converting Indigenous Peoples’ customary usage rights to communal 

ownership rights (not individual rights). 

In closing, the United States recognizes that the hard work of implementing the new ESF is just 

beginning. Only through careful implementation can the new ESF’s promise be fulfilled. The 

United States will continue to engage on this process as it moves forward. The United States

urges Management to move forward purposefully with preparations for the roll-out of the new 

ESF, including developing supplementary materials, training staff, and building borrower 

capacity. The United States supports a joint Committee on Development Effectiveness/Budget 

ad hoc subcommittee, which is needed to support and assess ESF implementation and 

resourcing. The United States looks forward to the development of a robust Monitoring and 

Evaluation framework to provide Management, the Board, and the public a better understanding 

of the effectiveness of the new ESF. The United States also strongly encourages Management to 

further develop and appropriately resource the capacity-building program and tailor it to 

individual country circumstances, with a focus on low-income and low capacity countries and 

ensuring sustainability of that effort. Finally, in looking beyond this review, the United States

encourages Management to move forward with a broader discussion on the coherence of the 

World Bank’s approaches to environmental and social risk across its lending instruments.