Going beyond ‘do no harm’ – the World Bank’s new environmental and social standards

Presented by Ian White, Operations Officer, The Environmental and Social Programme, The World Bank  , Washington D.C. This seminar is part of the Cardiff WISERD Lunchtime Seminar series. If you are an external guest, please contact us (029 2087 9338) to confirm availability of places. For further information please contact WISERD.Events@cardiff.ac.uk 

Each year the World Bank commits nearly $50 billion in development finance to low and middle-income countries, helping fund projects as diverse as sanitation systems, urban transport, education for refugee children and climate-smart agriculture. The World Bank has a set of policies that serve to identify, avoid and minimize potential harm in all these projects, while also improving their development outcomes and effectiveness. In October 2018, the Bank’s old safeguards system, which had been in place over 20 years, was replaced by a new Environmental and Social Framework (ESF). This seminar will look at the expanded set of issues the new ESF covers (such as labour conditions, biodiversity and cultural heritage), how the ESF expands protections for disadvantaged and vulnerable groups and the scale of the challenge ahead with its implementation.