Transcript Contents

Environmental
and Social Assessments
Robert Crooks
ADFD/WB Project Preparation and Appraisal Workshop Abu Dhabi, April 2010
OBJECTIVES
• Introduction to Environmental Assessment
(EA) and Social Assessment (SA) with the
emphasis on EA
• Explain how the WB has incorporated these
ideas into project preparation and
management
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Structure of presentation
Two parts addressed separately:
• Environmental Assessment – main motivation
is to protect the institution and tends to be the
most highly defined and regulated procedure
• Social Assessment – more of an input to
project design, much more flexible, procedures
much less prescribed.
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Environmental Assessment
• What is Environmental Assessment?
• Key elements or concepts of the US EIA system
(the “grandfather” of all EIA systems)
• How and why the WB developed its EIA system
and later expanded it to a wider “environmental
and social safeguards system”
• How EA procedures are fitted into the WB’s project
preparation and review procedures
• The allocation of EA responsibilities between the
WB and the project beneficiary
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Development of the EIA Concept
• Concept of EA developed in the US during the late
1960s in response to rising public pressure
• EIA procedure was institutionalized as part of the
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1970
• EIA required for major federal actions having a
significant potential effect on the environment
• Basic objective of EIA was to “inform decisionmakers”
• NEPA also created a policy framework and
institutional arrangements
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Spread of the EIA Concept
• Surprisingly rapid adoption of EIA concept within
OECD countries (Canada, 1973, Australia, 1974,
NZ 1974, etc.) WHY??
• Some countries were laggards (UK, 1988)
• Most importantly, international agencies (e.g.
WB) were quick to buy into the concept and this
helped its spread into their client countries
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World Bank and EIA
• WB made an early start on environmental
safeguards (1970) but approach limited to
aspirational statements
• First attempt at institutionalizing procedures was
in 1984 (Operational Manual Statement (O
MS) 2.36 Environmental Aspects of the Bank’s
Work)
• Other important donors (US, Canada, Finland,
Germany) were ahead of the WB at this stage
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World Bank and EIA (2)
• Internal procedures were strengthened and made
more explicit in 1989 (OD 4.00)
• Controversial projects in the late 1980s and early
1990s (Brazil: Polonoreste and India: Sardar
Sarova Water Resources) caused a storm of
criticism
• Further strengthening of EIA and other
safeguards procedures in 1991 (OD 4.01 which is
still largely in force today)
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World Bank and EIA (3)
• Late 1990s, WB amalgamates all its safeguards
policies under the umbrella of OD 4.01
• Restructuring of OP system to distinguish
between Policies, Procedures and Best Practices
(OPs, BPs, and GP)
• Development of the concept of a “suite of
safeguards policies”
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The 10 Safeguards Policies
• OP 4.01, Environmental Assessment
• OP 4.04 Natural Habitats
• OP 4.09, Pest Management
• OP 4.12, Involuntary Resettlement
• OD 4.20 Indigenous People
• OP 4.36 Forests
• OP 4.37 Safety of Dams
• OP 7.50 Projects on International Waterways
• OP 7.60 Projects in Disputed Areas,
• OPN 11.03 Cultural Property
[Note there is no policy on Social Assessment]
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Op 4.01 Environmental Assessment
• Objective “….to help ensure that (projects) are
environmentally sound and sustainable, and thus to
improve decision making”.
• Flexibility of process: ….the scope and form of an EA
depends on the nature, scale, and potential environmental
impact of the proposed project.
• Issues to be addressed: EA evaluates a project's potential
environmental risks and impacts in its area of
influence; examines project alternatives; identifies ways of
improving project selection, and implementation by
preventing, minimizing, mitigating, or compensating for
adverse environmental impacts and enhancing positive
impacts.
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Op 4.01 Environmental Assessment
• Responsibility for doing the EA: The borrower is
responsible for carrying out the EA.
• WB’s responsibility: WB advises the borrower on the
Bank's EA requirements, reviews the findings and
determines whether they provide an adequate basis for
processing the project for Bank financing.
• Different types of EA for different situations. A range of
instruments can be used to satisfy the Bank's EA
requirement depending on the particulars of the project.
• Environmental Screening process: The policy defines a
screening process.
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Op 4.01 Environmental Assessment
• Public consultation. The policy requires that, for all Category A
and B projects (this used only to be required for Category A
projects), the borrower consults project-affected groups and local
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) about the project's
environmental aspects and takes their views into account.
• Disclosure. The borrower provides relevant material in a timely
manner prior to consultation and in a form and language that are
understandable and accessible to the groups being consulted.
• Implementation. During project implementation, the borrower
reports on (a) compliance with measures agreed with the Bank
on the basis of the findings and results of the EA, including
implementation of any EMP, as set out in the project documents;
(b) the status of mitigatory measures; and (c) the findings of
monitoring programs.
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WB Resources on EA
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EIA & the Project Cycle
•
Considerable similarity between how these procedures are applied between
both multilateral and bilateral assistance agencies (cf. the Bank procedures and
those of the MCC).
•
For the process to have any value or meaning at all, it has to be incorporated
into the project preparation (EA), implementation (Environmental Management)
and completion process.
•
The process should be a shared responsibility between the donor agency and
the beneficiary:
 The donor agency is the one who has to determine whether the environmental
impact is acceptable within the context of its own guidelines
 The beneficiary has the responsibility for carrying out the environmental
assessment
•
The utility of the process is greatly enhanced if the beneficiary’s EA procedures
(if they exist) are followed to the extent possible.
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EA During Project Preparation
Three parts to the process during preparation of the project:
 Part 1: Environmental Screening – preliminary determination of
how environmentally significant a proposed project is likely to be
and what level of environmental assessment should be
undertaken
 Part 2: Environmental Assessment – preparing the
environmental analysis at a level dictated by the screening
decision
 Part 3: Environmental Analysis – evaluating whether the
project is likely to be acceptable in terms of environmental and
social impacts, whether the proposed environmental and social
safeguards are likely to be adequate to avoid or mitigate likely
impacts and articulating the results of that analysis in a form
understandable to “decision-makers”.
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Part 1: Environmental Screening
• Most donors use a simple categorization process which is modeled on
the WB process (indeed, many countries, notably China, have modeled
their own EA procedures on the same scheme):
 Category A: - project is likely to have significant adverse environmental
impacts that are sensitive, diverse, or unprecedented. These impacts may
affect an area broader than the sites or facilities subject to physical works.
 Category B:- potential impacts are less adverse than those of Category A
projects. Impacts are site-specific; few if any of them are irreversible; and in
most cases mitigatory measures can be designed more readily than for
Category A projects. The scope of EA for a Category B project is narrower
than that of Category A EA.
 Category C:- impacts will be minimal or non-existent. No further EA action
is required for a Category C project.
 Category FI : a special category for projects where WB pass through a
financial intermediary before being invested in activities that have
environmental impact potential.
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How is Screening Done?
• Timing: Screening decision is made as soon as possible in the
project processing process which is at or about the time that the
project identification document (PID) is prepared by the task
manager
• Process: The classification is usually done through an interactive
process (i.e. a round table meeting +/- one-on-one meetings with
the person making the screening decision) involving the task
team and the safeguards unit
• Not much participation by beneficiary: Process is internal to
the WB. Beneficiary of the loan gets little say in the screening
decision.
• New OP (OP 4.00 Piloting the Use of Borrower Systems to
Address Environmental and Social Safeguard Issues in BankSupported Projects) provides the promise of a less “imperialistic”
approach to EA.
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Category A Projects: the WB “Indicative List”
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Large scale aquaculture and mariculture (aquaculture in the sea)
Dams and reservoirs
Forestry production projects
Hazardous waste management and disposal
Industrial plants (large-scale) and industrial estates
Irrigation, drainage, and flood control (large-scale)
Land clearance and leveling
Manufacture, transportation, and use of pesticides or other hazardous and/or toxic
materials
• Mineral development (including oil and gas)
• New construction or major upgrading of highways or rural roads
• Port and harbor development
• Reclamation and new land development
• Resettlement
• River basin development, thermal power and hydropower development or expansion
• Water supply and wastewater collection, treatment and disposal projects (largescale)
[NOTE: not all these would be subject to EIA in most developed countries]
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Category B projects: the WB “Indicative List”
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Agro-industries (small-scale)
Electrical transmission
Energy efficiency and energy conservation
Irrigation and drainage (small-scale)
Protected areas and biodiversity conservation
Rehabilitation or maintenance of highways or rural roads
Rehabilitation or modification of existing industrial facilities (small-scale)
Renewable energy (other than hydroelectric dams)
Rural electrification
Rural water supply and sanitation
Tourism
Watershed projects (management or rehabilitation)
[NOTE: some of these would rank as Category A in some countries]
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Contents of EIA for a Category A Project
•
Executive summary.
•
Policy, legal, and administrative framework.
•
Project description. Includes both the project (including necessary off-site
investments required) and its environmental and social context and relevant
maps/plans, as required.
•
Baseline data. Describes relevant physical, biological, and socioeconomic
conditions. Also takes into account current and proposed development activities
within the project area but not directly connected to the project.
•
Environmental impacts. Predicts and assesses the project's likely positive
and negative impacts. Identifies mitigation measures and any residual negative
impacts that cannot be mitigated.
•
Analysis of alternatives. Systematically compares feasible alternatives to the
proposed project site, technology, design, and operation--including the "without
project" situation--in terms of their potential environmental impacts.
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Environmental management plan (EMP). Covers mitigation measures,
monitoring, and institutional strengthening, etc.
•
Appendixes
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Contents of EA for a Category B Project
• Almost anything – it all depends on the particular characteristics
of the project and the environmental issues that it raises
• For a specific project investment, it might be an abbreviated EA
which provides a brief project description, provides some general
background on the local environment, identifies one or two key
issues that need to be addressed and then uses the bulk of the
document to define the environmental management and
monitoring plan
• In the case of programmatic projects the report might focus
mainly on specifying limits on what sorts of activities may or may
not be included in the project (for environmental reasons) and
defining the administrative and technical procedures to be
adopted to environmentally evaluate sub-project proposals as
they arise.
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Environmental Analysis
• The findings and recommendations of the EA report and
other relevant factors are put together into an evaluation
of environmental risk that should be understandable to
the ultimate decision-makers (in the case of the WB, that
is firstly, the senior management and ultimately, the
Board)
• This part of the process tends to be ignored in most
guidelines and procedures
• Preferably, the evaluation of the environmental reports
should be done by an operational unit that is separate
from and essentially has no vested interest in whether or
not the project proceeds
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Environmental Management & Monitoring
•
The EMP/EMMP consists of the set of mitigation, monitoring, and institutional measures to
be taken during project implementation to avoid or minimize adverse environmental
impacts, offset them, or reduce them to acceptable levels and specifies the management
arrangements and other actions that will be taken to implement the plan and monitor its
effectiveness.
The form, length and complexity of the EMP/EMMP is extremely variable and is primarily
influenced by the scale and significance of the expected impacts.
In the WB scheme of policies and procedures, some elements of what might otherwise be
include in an EMP, most notably the procedures to be followed to resettle and/or
compensate adversely affected people is covered in a separate stream of documentation
(the Resettlement Action Plan or RAP);
•
For the lending institution, an important but frequently ignored corollary of the
EMP/EMMP, is that some procedure needs to be adopted by the lender to periodically
evaluate reports arising out of the EMMP. This is generally not done systematically and, if
it is done, it is often sub-contracted to outside consultants – which is a polite way for the
institution to say that it does not actually believe in the procedures that are being followed.
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Social Assessment
Two ways to look at social assessment:
1)
as a component of Environmental Impact Assessment in which
case it is more correctly referred to as Social Impact
Assessment (SIA).
Like EA, this is an essentially backward-looking process – the
project is a given and the SIA purports to predict what the social
impacts will be.
2)
as a component of project conceptualization and design—
essentially a forward-looking process. It seeks to identify the
social context and either uses that as a basis for developing the
project concept or, at the very least, proceeds in parallel with
development of the project concept and significantly influences
the design.
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Social Issues Often Key to Project Success
• As development institutions move more towards small and medium
scale developments and away from very large scale infrastructure
developments, the importance of understanding the social context
increases
• There are some suggestions from reviews by the WB and others that
projects based on explicit attempts to understand the social context in
which the project is to be developed, through techniques such as social
assessment, tend to perform better in terms of outcomes
• A recent (2005) independent review of WB projects suggested that
community-based (CBB) and community-driven (CBD) projects, which
are usually strongly based on social assessments of some kind, perform
better in terms of development outcomes, than non-CBB/CBD projects
• There are certainly plenty of examples of project failures due to a
complete failure to understand the social context (e.g. Kalimantan
Irrigation)
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What does a Social Assessment Look Like
• Unlike EA, the scope, content and format of a
social assessment for the purposes of project
design is not prescribed in WB policies and
procedures
• The scope and form of a social assessment for
the purposes of project conceptualization and
design depends o a wide variety of factors not
least being the nature of the community involved,
the types of interventions being considered, etc.;
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Social Assessment
Most SAs would include some or all of the following:
 Consultations with potential project beneficiaries about the main development issues
they are facing, their attitudes to development, the factors they feel are constraining
their ability to improve their circumstances
 Collection of relevant baseline information (both from relevant government statistics
and site surveys) on the demographic, social, cultural, and political characteristics of
the affected peoples, the land and territories that they have traditionally owned or
customarily used or occupied, and the natural resources on which they depend.
 A stakeholder assessment to identify who are the main potential stakeholders and
what are the main power relations influencing their interactions with each other and
identification of particularly vulnerable groups who may tend to miss out on the
benefits of projects unless specific measures are included to encourage their
participation
 Identification of the main cultural factors governing the way in which the community
functions as these may relate to the implementation of development activities
 These factors are then fed into the project design to ensure that the project is relevant
to local needs and likely to beneficially affect the local community
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Some wins for Social Assessment
 Social assessments done for rural development projects in China
discovered a large disconnect between the views of county officials and
farmers on what would be the best investments to promote local
development
 Kabupaten (County) Development Program in Indonesia provides a much
more central role for project beneficiaries in selecting which development
investments should be made, how they are designed and how they are
implemented. Greater local ownership has generally improved sustainability
of investments
 Effectiveness of programs to reduce use of pesticides and herbicides and
promote Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in Indonesia, Thailand and
China was greatly improved by training farmers to train other farmers and
also by taking account of social factors in designing training and
dissemination plans
 The effectiveness of a food crop development program in Eastern Indonesia
was greatly improved after social assessment showed that it was women
who were primarily responsible for food crop production. Extension program
was reoriented to focus on training women rather than men.
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Lesson Learned (1)
• EA is something that was largely imposed on
governments and development agencies
• Initially some reluctance but the procedure has
been incorporated into the project preparation
process with an acceptable level of efficiency
• Under some circumstances, EA can provide a
development opportunity but it is often still viewed
as an imposition
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Lesson Learned (2)
• Ideally EA should be more than a meaningless
report-writing exercise.
• Best approach is to rely on local procedures as
much as possible.
• Social Assessment (SA) has great potential to
increase the relevance and effectiveness of
project designs
• SA is particularly important on Community Based
and Community Driven Development projects.
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