While the ADB’s new Environmental and Social Framework introduces updated commitments to safeguards, its effectiveness will ultimately depend on robust and transparent accountability mechanisms. The success of this framework is contingent upon ensuring that these safeguards are not merely aspirational but actively enforced on the ground. A new ADB Accountability Mechanism will aim not only to deliver justice to affected communities but also to address grievances effectively. 

This session spotlighted community-based perspectives on the effectiveness of ADB’s Accountability Mechanism (AM) and the implementation of environmental and social safeguards across its portfolio. The CSO panelists cited their community experiences about gaps in consultation, transparency, accountability or effective grievance mechanism in specific ADB-financed projects. The cases they cited included a forced displacement in an environment project in Kolkata, India; procedural flaws in a floating solar-powered project in the Philippines; marginalization of indigenous communities in a hydropower project in Northeast India, and gaps in safeguards in Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Nepal, and India’s Assam. They also raised issues such as gender exclusion, land rights, and false green labeling of fossil fuel projects. The session emphasized the need for binding, inclusive grievance mechanisms and stronger legal and institutional accountability. Overall, the CSO panelists urgently call for institutional reform and genuinely participatory safeguards implementation.

ADB representatives Alternative Executive Director Llewellyn Roberts, Special Projects Facilitator Imrana Jalal and Compliance Review Panel Chair Ramanie Kunanayagam listened attentively and responded with the following points: extensive consultations have been done so far as part of the ongoing AM review; ADB hears the CSOs’ key messages for greater visibility, access, speed, eligibility and transparency in AM; remedy is not part of the AM – management decides on remedial actions and AM monitors their implementation for five years; AM focuses on outcomes; current intake of eligible cases by AM is low relative to other MDBs and can be improved; and, affected people prefer management-led resolution of concerns  so that the AM can focus on complex cases. The session concluded with a strong demand for justice-centered and enforceable safeguards that go beyond symbolic commitments. 

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