7172. Appreciation of Draft Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)

The Dutch Sustainability Unit (DSU) received a request from the Inclusive Green Growth (IGG) Department of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) to do an appreciation on the headlines of the draft Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Advisory reports and other documents

22 Sep 2015: Advisory review
Appreciation Draft ESF AIIB

Significant details

The DSU will investigate how this ESF compares to the old (2014) and new draft version (July 2015) of the World Bank (WB) ESF and the one of the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) with regard to:

  • The broader framework and the level of ambition;

  • The scope of the ESF (investment lending versus policy lending and Programs for Results-lending [P4R]);

  • The integration of the “emerging issues” (an issue in the new WB ESF);

  • The balance between ex ante/during and post intervention;

  • The relation with country systems / ownership of the ESF process;

  • Operationalisation of the ESF (capacity [development] within the AIIB and in the client countries and the resources necessary to build this capacity).

This is the second request on reviewing an ESF of a development bank (see the advisory report concerning the Analysis of Proposed Changes to the World Bank's Safeguard Policies: Briefing Paper).

This advisory report was recently made available in Chinese - by Green Watershed China - and is downloadable here.

Parties involved

Members of the working group

David Annandale

Technical secretary: Reinoud Post

Further details

Last modified: 12 Apr 2019