IFC’s Performance Standards Need Community-Led Accountability

The International Finance Corporation is finally updating its Performance Standards. Not only must the new Performance Standards include better environmental and social protections in line with current needs–as defined by impacted communities, but they also must be implemented well and monitored honestly.

This year, the International Finance Corporation (“IFC”) intends to review and update its Sustainability Framework, which includes the Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability (“Performance Standards”), Sustainability Policy, and Access to Information Policy. IFC’s Performance Standards matter not only because they establish the environmental and social safeguards that govern IFC investments, but also more than 120 financial institutions globally have adopted the IFC’s Performance Standards as their own environmental and social rules, meaning that the Performance Standards govern billions of dollars of global financing.

IFC’s current Performance Standards have been in place since 2012, and therefore the IFC should be able to assess their effectiveness over the past 12 years to inform an updated version. The problem is that IFC does not know whether or how well its rules have worked because the institution has never measured the net impact of its projects– that is unless IFC is keeping the results a secret.

As the IFC updates its Performance Standards, it should: (1) listen to communities impacted by IFC projects to ascertain what aspects of the existing Performance Standards are and are not effective; and (2) launch a new measurement system for the new Performance Standards that accurately assesses whether they are implemented and the impact of doing so.

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