The ADB’s Safeguard Policy Update Process

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will release a draft of its revised “Safeguard Policies” in late 2007. (For background information on the ADB and its Safeguard Policy Update process, see text and links below.) The IAP is actively working with civil society partners to prevent this policy revision process from weakening protections for local people and the environment. We are providing policy analyses and working in creative solidarity with regional and local partners to strengthen and support advocacy campaigns that are pressuring the Bank to uphold its mandate of promoting sustainable development and poverty alleviation, and not let this be undermined by weakening of the safeguard policies.

The IAP participated in a strategy meeting in Bangkok, Thailand in December 2006 that brought together diverse civil society groups to coordinate and strategize about advocacy efforts around the ADB safeguard policy update. In March the IAP participated in the annual meeting of the NGO Forum on ADB, in Manila, Philippines, and helped lead several days of lobbying meetings, along with partners from Forum, with ADB officials at the Bank’s headquarters in Manila. Most recently, IAP Director of Programs Joanna Levitt spoke on a high-level panel about the Safeguard Policies, at the ADB Annual Meetings in Kyoto, Japan. The Panel was organized by the Bank Information Center and Oxfam Australia. For info and photos on that panel and the activities of IAP and partners at the ADB Annual Meetings, click on the links below:

• Video of Safeguards Panel
• Article and photos about Safeguards Panel from Bank Information Center (BIC)
• Overview of civil society activities at the ADB Annual Meetings:
  • from Bank Information Center
  • from NGO Forum on ADB
• Overview of ADB Safeguard Policy Update from Oxfam Australia
• Slideshow presented by Joanna Levitt and Cambodian colleagues at ADB Safeguards Panel
• IAP article: The Need for New Approaches to Involuntary Resettlement: Lessons from Cambodia’s Highway One case (pdf)

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a multilateral finance institution that funds development projects in the Asia Pacific region.  The institution’s mission is to reduce poverty in Asia, but civil society groups and local affected peoples have long questioned the ADB’s effectiveness in achieving this mission.  These same groups have often expressed concern and outrage for the many destructive and unsustainable projects financed by the ADB.  Furthermore, the ADB has been criticized for its secrecy and limited transparency, and for its failure to provide opportunities for meaningful citizen participation in development planning and decision-making. 

In July 2005, the ADB announced that it would update its three “safeguard” policies (the Environment Policy, the Policy on Involuntary Resettlement, and the Policy on Indigenous Peoples), and merge them into one document. The ADB states that the objective of this Safeguard Policy Update is “to enhance the effectiveness of its safeguard policies, and ensure the relevance to changing client needs and new lending modalities and instruments.”  The ADB seems most concerned with simplifying requirements for borrowers as a means of making the ADB more competitive and attractive as a bank, rather than enhancing ADB’s effectiveness in alleviating poverty in the region. 

Civil society organizations are concerned that the update will weaken the social and environmental safeguards guaranteed to project-affected peoples.  This concern is heightened by the fact that the ADB is following the path forged by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which recently completed an overhaul of their safeguard policy framework that in many ways diluted and undermined established protections for project-affected peoples and their environment.

The IAP is working closely with the NGO Forum on the ADB--an international coalition of civil society organizations that is monitoring the ADB's safeguard policy update and working to ensure that the policies are not weakened. The IAP recently completed an analysis of the ADB's existing safeguard policy on Involuntary Resettlement, comparing the policy's objectives and principles with those of involuntary resettlement policies at other multilateral institutions, as well as with international standards of best practice for development-induced displacement and resettlement. Download the analysis. The IAP also submitted in-depth comments to the ADB’s Operations Evaluation Department (OED) on their recent Special Evaluation Study on involuntary resettlement. Download the comments. To see the Special Evaluation Study on the OED website, click here.