NONGOVERNMENT organizations (NGOs) from different parts of the world have stopped their ongoing consultative talks with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) over the bank’s environment, involuntary resettlement and indigenous peoples policies.

The NGO Forum on ADB has asked the ADB to stop its public consultations and revise the draft document known as the Safeguards Policy Statement (SPS) released in October 2007 because the SPS is an “unacceptable and unsuitable basis for public review and consultation.”

“The coalition of civil-society organizations from Asia, Europe, Australia and the United States urged the ADB to resume public consultations only after it has issued a rewritten SPS that no longer promotes ‘weak protective measures’ for the environment and people affected by its operations,” the NGO Forum on ADB said in a statement.

The move to cease discussions builds on actions taken by South Asian NGOs that boycotted the New Delhi consultation from January 16 to 18. Other NGOs, such as Oxfam Australia, also decided not to participate in the Australia/Pacific consultations on January 30 and  31, stating that the draft SPS was “too compromised” to represent a valid basis for discussions.

In Indonesia the 40,000-strong labor union of State Electicity Co. has also joined the calls of Indonesian NGOs for the ADB to cancel the SPS consultation scheduled on February 12 and 13 in Jakarta.

The NGO Forum said the SPS ignores a broad range of internationally agreed- upon principles and commitments regarding economic and social development and environmental protection.

This includes allowing the ADB to support projects, including those that could adversely impact species identified on  IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species, and does not require project sponsors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or require that they “avoid” emitting pollutants.

The NGO Forum said that the SPS also does not clearly require social impacts be assessed as part of project due diligence and does not sanction borrowers that fail to comply with ADB safeguards.

The SPS, the NGO Forum said, removes the 120-day public consultation period for environmental impact assessment and proposes a flawed involuntary resettlement policy which does not allow for displaced persons to share in project benefits nor does it provide land-based resettlement options for persons whose livelihoods are land-based.

The forum added that the SPS downgrades the principle of “free prior informed consent” of indigenous peoples (IP) to free prior informed consultations with IP communities and introduces the use of country safeguard systems to govern ADB-funded projects in a rushed manner without allowing a thorough debate on the advantages and disadvantages of a governance system.

The NGO Forum reminded the ADB of the promises made by ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda and other senior officials during the 2007 Annual Governors Meeting in Kyoto, Japan, that there would be no weakening of existing safeguard policies.

The NGOs believe that the ongoing review is an outcome of the extreme pressure the ADB faces from its developing member-countries to lower the existing safeguard standards and prepare projects faster without any environmental and social strings attached.

“Its reputation as a premier Asian development financial institution, with a triple-A rating, has been continuously threatened by the strong competition posed by commercial and Exim banks that serve as alternative funding sources for development projects. The latter have less stringent loan requirements and conditionalities,” the NGO Forum said in a statement.

The forum said that safeguard policies were established to ensure that negative impacts of the ADB’s development intervention in its member- countries are mitigated, if not totally avoided.

However, the NGO Forum said that the Manila-based regional bank has broken its promise not only to conduct a participative consultation but to enact a stronger set of policies as well.

NGO Forum on ADB is an Asian-led network of civil-society organizations which has been monitoring the ADB’s projects and policies since 1992.

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