Environmental Update (September 2006)

IFC Guidelines

The International Finance Corporation proposed revisions in early August to some of the environmental guidelines with which it requires borrowers to comply if they want to borrow money from the IFC to finance projects in developing countries. Many private banks use same standards. The IFC is part of the World Bank.

The existing IFC guidelines were drawn initially from a "Pollution and Prevention Abatement Handbook" issued by the World Bank in 1998 and then supplemented through a series of other guidelines published on the IFC website between 1991 and 2003. Seventy three guidelines currently exist, and the IFC committed earlier to updating them.

The IFC issued its first batch of draft guidelines for public comment on August 2.They consist of a set of "General EHS [Environmental, Health and Safety] Guidelines" and 20 industry sector-specific guidelines. The latter include guidelines for wind energy projects.