Community Health and Safety: Recommendations and Tools

To date, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has considered the impact of its projects on community health and safety on an ad hoc basis. Although the IDB's 2006 Environmental and Safeguards Compliance Policy (OP-703) requires that project teams consider health and safety issues in the context of managing project impacts and risks, no specific guidance currently exists on how to do this. This Community Health and Safety Guidance Note is designed to fill that gap by providing project teams and borrowers with advice on how to systematically identify, prevent, and/or mitigate potential impacts and risks related to community health and safety within the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) process. The Note is intended to help Bank staff, consultants, and borrowers determine if key community health and safety issues have been appropriately addressed for each project. It also includes operational tools to help identify and manage some of the common community health and safety concerns that arise in infrastructure projects.