IFAD's Social, Environmental and Climate Assessment Procedures (SECAP) - 2015

As a development institution, IFAD has been involved in addressing environmental and social issues for many years. IFAD’s Environmental and Social Assessment Procedures (ESAP) were reviewed by the Executive Board in April 2009.

The procedures established guiding principles and defined a course of action to assess environmental and social risks in projects. This document sets out revised Social, Environmental and Climate Assessment Procedures (SECAP).

Revised procedures are needed to:

• apply lessons learned over five years’ of implementing ESAP
• align more closely with similar safeguard standards and practices across multilateral financial institutions as the standards of the Global Environment Facility, and
• reflect a range of new policies and initiatives in IFAD since 2009 such as the Environment and Natural Resource Management (NRM) Policy (2011), the Climate Change Strategy (2010), and
• complement other relevant policies – including a new commitment to comprehensive climate risk screening in IFAD’s 10- point plan for climate mainstreaming.

These new procedures set out a minimum risk assessment process that recognizes the necessary heterogeneity of responses given widely different country and community circumstances. Through better risk identification, they aim to avoid environmental or social harm and also create space for doing good.