Sample letter:
Concerns about the Weakening of World Bank Safeguard Policies

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Executive Director
World Bank
1818H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433
USA

February 2001

Dear Sir,

By means of this letter we, the undersigned NGOs, want to inform you that we are concerned that the Bank’s policy "conversion" programme is weakening its safeguard policies. We present concrete evidence that the safeguard policies are being undermined and explain why any such weakening is entirely unacceptable to civil society. The purpose of this letter is to urge you oppose any weakening of the Bank’s social and environmental policies and request your support for a rights-based approach to development based on strong safeguards that are consistent with international law.

Environmental and human rights groups have campaigned for years for improvements in the social and environmental performance of the World Bank. The Bank is to be congratulated for responding to the concerns of civil society by adopting a set of ten so-called safeguard policies designed to protect the environment and vulnerable social groups from the adverse effects of Bank-financed operations. Since adopting these safeguards, the Bank has come to be seen as a major standard-setting body by the international development community. In fact, the Bank now asserts that it "has blazed the trail of social and environmental standard setting in the multilateral development system".

NGOs like the Forest Peoples Programme have noticed that it is not only donors and development agencies that aspire to the World Bank’s development standards. Crucially, large corporations and other private sector actors also look to the World Bank to take the lead on social and environmental standards for commercial operations and investments in developing countries. It is therefore essential that the World Bank Group maintains its leadership role in setting international standards for sustainable development.

Above all, we want to emphasise that strong, unambiguous and mandatory safeguard policies are important to civil society because they constitute the only mechanism available to citizens and project beneficiaries to hold the World Bank and its clients accountable for their operations. The safeguard policies are also the principal instruments the World Bank has to ensure that its projects and programmes are consistent with international human rights and environmental law.

As you will be aware, all Bank operational policies including its safeguard policies, have been undergoing revision as part of a Bank-wide "conversion" process that intends to standardise and clarify guidelines for staff and borrowers. The revision programme intends to make policies less rigid and more amenable to decentralisation, country "ownership" and the Bank’s new "learning approach" to development. Bank policy makers assert that conversion is based on the premise that clearer and more flexible guidelines will raise the standard of policy implementation and so improve development effectiveness. 

Although we acknowledge and welcome some positive elements in revised policies - especially provisions on participation and local monitoring, we are seriously concerned that overall the Bank’s safeguard mechanisms are being undermined. In short, we have observed that, in the name of "clarity" and "flexibility", the Bank’s policies are, as Bank staff put it, being made "panel-proof". In other words, policies are being made so flexible that staff or borrowers can never be accused of having contravened them and therefore never held to account for problems and failures in implementation.

These concerns are grounded in a scrutiny of policies that have been through the conversion process as well as draft policies that are still undergoing revision (see Annex to this letter). Careful examination of revised safeguard policies reveals that binding language has been removed and replaced by statements of "process" and expectation rather than "requirements" and preconditions for loan approval. In addition, previously mandatory requirements have in some cases been shifted into non-mandatory "Good Practice or "Sourcebook" guidelines. In this way, compliance with once binding social and environmental provisions is now being left to the discretion and willingness of borrowers.

Despite this, the World Bank continues to assure the public that it intends to maintain its safeguard standards and that its social and environmental policies are essential to the quality of its loan operations. We are therefore dismayed to learn that there seems to be a widespread idea in the Bank that the "rigid" and "unrealistic" safeguard policies are discouraging governments from borrowing from the World Bank Group.

It is especially worrying that a task force set up by the Bank to examine these issues recommends that the World Bank Group should "realign" its policies in accordance with the more "flexible" policies of other MDBs and the capacity of its Borrowers. This smacks of lowering standards and going back on agreed commitments to improve the development effectiveness of World Bank operations.

We are also alarmed by signs that the Bank is considering abdicating from its leadership role in setting standards for international development. We base our fears on the draft report of the task force mentioned above that recommends that the Bank should deal with the "compliance dilemma" by shifting: "from policy leadership to increased harmonisation with clients and Regional Development Banks" [page 22, Cost of Doing Business, World Bank, Draft Internal Report, December 2000].

We, the undersigned NGOs, strongly oppose any lowering of Bank standards in order to "harmonise" them with the practices of other MDBs and borrower governments. We reject the argument that current safeguard policies are inflexible and unrealistic. First, the Bank’s safeguard standards emerged from practical lessons in loan operations learnt over several decades. Second, they were established in response to calls from civil society for improved development performance. The current safeguards thus constitute minimum standards that have been developed through actual experience. They are not idealised regulations, but rather essential preconditions for sustainable development. Rather than being over-stringent, the Bank’s policies are in danger of becoming out of step with existing and emerging international standards like those recently developed by the World Comission on Dams.

The assertion that safeguards are too costly to implement and act as a disincentive to potential Borrowers is also questionable. Indeed, Bank staff admit that this assertion is based on "anecdotal evidence". Even if such evidence were forthcoming, the Bank should act on this by establishing adequate concessional funds for safeguard work. It must not use such evidence as an excuse for lowering standards. The reality is that Bank staff and managers require an increased budget and more incentives to properly supervise and implement the World Bank’s safeguard policies. The Bank must confront this fundamental resource challenge and resist any calls to join a "race to the bottom" in international development.

There are four basic reasons why the erosion of standards through the weakening of the safeguard policies is of extreme concern to civil society.

• First, eroded policies will further undermine the already limited accountability of the World Bank Group.
• Second, enfeebled policies will limit the Bank’s capacity to avoid or mitigate adverse development impacts.
• Third, diluted safeguards will widen the growing gap between international social and environmental law and the standards of the World Bank.
• Fourth, any weakening of the Bank’s safeguard policies will send the wrong signal to other development donors, development agencies and the private sector who view the content and application of its operational policies as examples of best practice to be adopted in their own operations.

Rather than reducing its development standards, we believe that timely action must be taken by the World Bank to adopt a rights-based approach to development. This approach would tie general operational and safeguard policies to accepted international human rights standards and ensure that Bank-funded projects are consistent with them.

It is a simple fact that the vast majority of States in the World today have voluntarily ratified the core human rights instruments promulgated by the United Nations. By basing its own policies on these instruments, the Bank would merely be requiring that its borrowers comply with commitments they have already accepted and undertaken to abide by. It is obligatory practice that States may not invoke their sovereignty or domestic law as a means of avoiding human rights obligations and has been so since the inception of the United Nations in 1945; World Bank policies should also be consistent with this principle. In this context, we welcome President’s Wolfensohn’s assurances given in Prague last year that the importance of human rights will be further recognised by the World Bank.

Such a rights-based approach backed by stronger enforcement mechanisms, including clearer and enforceable legal covenants as part of loan conditions, would strengthen the World Bank’s ability to protect the environment and vulnerable social groups from the negative effects of its operations. A focus on human rights would bring the World Bank Group into step with the wider international development community that is increasingly adopting a rights-based approach to development.

In view of the above concerns, we urge you to exercise your influence as Executive Director to ensure that the Bank’s safeguards policies are not weakened under its policy conversion programme, particularly the Involuntary Resettlement, Indigenous Peoples, Forest and Information Disclosure policies that are still undergoing revision. We ask you to lend your support to civil society’s growing calls for the Bank to adopt a human rights-based approach to development.

We shall look forward to your response to the issues raised in this letter.

Yours sincerely,

cc.
- James Wolfensohn, President, World Bank Group
- Claire Short, Minister for International Development, UK

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