The IFC launches long-awaited review of its Sustainability Framework, a “generational opportunity” for more sustainable global finance

The International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, has this week announced plans to update its Sustainability Framework (comprising the IFC’s Performance Standards, Sustainability Policy and Access to Information Policy), which was last updated in 2012. The review, which will include rounds of internal and public consultation, is expected to last up to three years and may not conclude until 2028. 

The IFC’s Performance Standards are a set of hugely important environmental and social safeguards, designed to minimise the risks associated with IFC investments. They not only apply to the tens of billions that the IFC invests annually, and to the billions that IFC’s sister agency MIGA (Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency) invests, but also the investments of over 120 private financial institutions that align with them via the Equator Principles. The IFC estimates that its “performance standards” influenced $4.5 trillion of financial flows in emerging markets in the last decade alone.

“This review of IFC’s Sustainability Framework represents a generational opportunity to make billions, if not trillions, in global financial flows more environmentally and socially responsible. The IFC should use this moment to learn the lessons from its past mistakes, and must seriously take on board the feedback from communities affected by IFC projects, who have suffered human rights abuses or had their livelihoods destroyed when safeguards have failed to protect them.” — Kate Geary, Programme Director for Rights & Accountability, Recourse

One priority for Recourse during the Sustainability Framework review will be to advocate for the IFC to introduce a standalone Performance Standard on financial intermediary lending. Unlike the World Bank, and several other multilateral development banks, the IFC does not have a standalone safeguard on financial intermediary lending, despite these risky investments representing around half of the IFC portfolio. You can read more about what this standalone safeguard might look like in our Devex opinion piece. 

Recourse also helps to convene an informal network of civil society organisations (CSOs) to encourage greater participation in the review. The network has already sent letters to the IFC advising them on the approach for the review, in December 2024 and February 2025. 

If you work with a civil society organisation (CSO) and are interested in being added to a mailing list for this network, please contact dan[at]re-course.org. 

CSOs attending the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings in Washington DC next week, 21-26 April, can also join us at the following events to learn more about the Sustainability Framework review:

• Sunday 20 April: Learning event on how to fight for stronger safeguards (for civil society organisations)
  13:00-16:30, Oxfam offices – Register here
• Wednesday 23 April: IFC information session on Sustainability Framework update.
  10:00-12:00, IFC building. Registration necessary, contact dan[at]re-course.org
• Thursday 24 April: Civil Society Policy Forum panel – IFC Sustainability Framework review: A pivotal opportunity to protect human rights and the environment
  09:00-10:30, World Bank headquarters I Building, Room 2-220
• Friday 25 April: Strategy discussion for civil society organisations
  09:30-11:00, Oxfam offices – Register here

Banner image: Women affected by the IFC FI-funded GMR Kamalanga coal power plant in India, subject of the first ever complaint filed at the CAO. Photo by Joe Athialy, 2010.