Safeguards for Proposed Producer Companies Project
The overall objective of the World Bank’s safeguard policies is to help ensure the environmental and social soundness of investment projects, including enhancing project outcomes for local communities, comprising the poor, ethnic minorities, women and other vulnerable communities. The Bank’s operational policy OP 4.01 on environmental assessment, which aims to assess the project’s potential environmental risks and impacts in order to enhance positive impacts and to prevent, minimize, mitigate or compensate for adverse environmental impacts is be applied to the project. Two other Bank’s policies could potentially be applied: (i) operational policy OP 4.10 on indigenous peoples (ethnic minorities) which aims to design and implement projects in such a way that ethnic minorities (a) do not suffer adverse effects during the development process and (b) receive culturally compatible social and economic benefits; and (ii) operational policy OP4.12 on resettlement which aims to avoid or minimize the taking of land or assets from the people in the areas. If land acquisition is unavoidable, policies aim to ensure that affected people are able to improve or at least maintain their livelihoods or level of income. In the case of this proposed producer companies project, given the specific land and beneficiaries are unknown at this stage, there might be limited land acquisition as most land areas belongs to the Treasury Department. Farmers will participate in this project on a voluntarily manner. Potential land issues would come from the changing of land use within the participating farm tenants as a result of the project and from the construction of basic infrastructure or preparation of land areas for farm production. Mitigation measures and land use protocol would need to be put in place for the project.
During project preparation the Bank’s task team will assist the Ministry of Finance, in assessing the environmental and social impacts and issues concerning the proposed project. The environmental and social assessments will inform the preparation of appropriate safeguards instruments. These instruments are prepared before project appraisal. They will be made available to the public and consultations will be held with relevant stakeholders including civil society organizations at the local and national levels to seek their feedback and input into the finalization of project design and the safeguard instruments.