Greener IFC Lending Standards

With a lending portfolio of $18 billion in 2010, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) promotes private investment in developing countries. Its lending has been guided since 2006 by a set of Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability which the IFC applies to all investment projects to minimize their impact on the environment and on affected communities. Large-scale infrastructure projects, extractive industries operations, and other projects often pose serious environmental and social risks, including to human rights.

Over the past decade, WRI has been leveraging its expertise on ecosystems and biodiversity, climate change, and governance to help shape the environmental and social policies of international financial institutions like the IFC, and to promote sustainable private investment in client countries.

WRI actively advised IFC on its 2011 revision of the IFC performance standards which strengthened the environmental and social safeguards it applies to projects worldwide. IFC staff making a case for robust requirements to assess risks on ecosystem services, climate change, and indigenous peoples’ rights, also had access to the following WRI body of work:

• Our effort to mainstream ecosystem services in decision-making and the documented use of our ecosystem services review tools within the private sector.
• WRI tools and leadership on greenhouse gas accounting.
• Our work demonstrating that the concept of “Free Prior Informed Consent” makes a good business case for large-scale, high-impact projects to ensure local civil society buy in.

IFC standards are globally influential among international project financiers seeking to manage the environmental and social risks of projects in the developing world. More than 60 leading international institutions have committed to adhere to IFC’s Performance Standards in their project-finance lending under the rubric of the Equator Principles. Banks in emerging economies including China and Brazil often refer to the IFC Performance Standards as they develop national environmental and social guidelines.