Wednesday, January 18, 2023

The U.S. International Financial Institutions (IFI) Act 1 directs the U.S. government (USG) to strengthen the environmental and social (E&S) performance of each multilateral development bank (MDB) in which the United States is a shareholder. Pursuant to Title XIII, Section 1303 of the IFI Act, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has led reviews of MDB projects with significant environmental and social risks and reported semi-annually to Congress on such reviews. This report covers the period from May 2022 through October 2022.

As described in USAID’s previous two reports to Congress, USAID is designing and incrementally implementing a field-focused process for USAID reviews of proposed MDB-financed projects with high E&S risks that aims to be more effective and efficient. USAID is coordinating this process with the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury), the U.S. Department of State (State), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Consistent with its mandate, Treasury continues to lead interagency reviews of all proposed MDB-financed projects in the weeks and months prior to the MDB Board vote to evaluate whether the project design appropriately addresses risks, among other issues, and to determine whether the United States will support the project.

The USAID-led process for MDB projects with high E&S risks complements the Treasury-led interagency reviews by prioritizing a subset of all high E&S risk projects (that are of particular interest or concern to USAID, Treasury, State and/or EPA) and then enabling project review and engagement with MDB staff well in advance of an MDB Board vote to improve E&S dimensions of project design. During the reporting period for USAID’s December 2021 MDB report to Congress, USAID implemented this process on high E&S risk projects in preparation by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). During the reporting period for USAID’s June 2022 MDB report to Congress, USAID scaled up to also include high E&S World Bank projects in Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean. In this reporting period, USAID added high E&S risk projects in preparation by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Reports to Congress

Every year Congress asks the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to submit a series of reports on various matters of concern. In an effort to provide a maximum of transparency to the general public, these reports are now being made available at this web site.

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