Safeguards

About the Safeguard Policy Update
Updated: 1 July 2008

In 2004, ADB launched a reform agenda focused on managing for development results, which emphasizes the importance of processes to ensure that the results of development are sustainable.

The following year, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness* reaffirmed the importance of fostering a global partnership on managing for development results as well as supporting partner country efforts to strengthen and improve their development performance.

It is in line with these efforts and in response to recent economic advances in its developing member countries that ADB is undertaking a safeguards policy update.

The update will

• articulate ADB's safeguard requirements to improve their clarity, coherence, and consistency
• balance a front-loaded procedural approach with one focused more on results during implementation
• make policy implementation more adaptable in practice to match an evolving range of ADB's lending products and innovative financing schemes
• work toward greater harmonization with safeguard practices across multilateral finance institutions and tailor safeguard approaches to different clients with different capacities
• improve internal processes and resource allocation

For a summary of key issues relevant to the SPU, see the Discussion Note (October 2005).

For the proposed update to ADB's safeguard policies, please see the Consultation Draft of the Safeguard Policy Statement [ PDF: 509kb | 86 pages ] (October 2007). While English remains the official language of ADB, translation is made available in Bahasa Indonesia, Mandarin, Russian, and Vietnamese.

From November 2007 until April 2008, ADB has engaged extensively with interested stakeholders, organizing fourteen workshops to comment on the consultation draft. The purpose of the consultations was to increase ADB’s understanding of stakeholders’ perspectives, establish a shared understanding of key safeguard objectives, principles and requirements, as well as to guide the formulation of the safeguard policy statement. ADB were encouraged by the tremendous amount of constructive feedback and many detailed suggestions they received.

In order for the new safeguard policy to be responsive to a wide range of views, ADB Management has decided to introduce an additional step to prepare a second draft of the safeguard policy statement before beginning the preparation of the W-paper. In addition, ADB will hold another consultation workshop in Manila for stakeholders to have an opportunity to review the revised documents. Refer to the Updated Consultation Plan for the Preparation of Safeguard Policy Statement [ PDF ] for further details.

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