ID: 2167
Presenting Author: Mark Stoughton
Session: 709 - USAID’s ESIA Legacy and Looking Forward
Status: pending
Significant risks to life, health & environment are intrinsic to vital development programs—including USAID’s retained portfolio. Lessons from USAID’s ESIA-based safeguards experience are available.
Over its final 20+ years, USAID significantly advanced its ESIA-based safeguards processes. Clear mitigation and monitoring (M&M) requirements were introduced and staff/partner capacity built; M&M and associated reporting became significantly more consistent and robust. Multiple regions/bureaus deployed safeguards compliance and compliance capacity “soft audits” to identify and address consequential gaps in ESIA processes over the program cycle.
Persistent challenges remained, including: limited integration of site-specific information (80%+ of USAID ESIA was at the programmatic level), ambiguous language in the enabling regulation re: social impacts, a pesticide regulation almost unimplementable as-written, no formal guidance for determinations of significance (i.e. level of risk), the intrinsic challenges of being at once both implementer and regulator, and a highly manual safeguards documentation review process.
At the time of the global stop-work order issued in late Jan. 2025 and follow-on termination of 80%+ of the its portfolio, USAID was rolling out first-ever social impacts screening requirements at the project design stage; on the cusp of a major update to its safeguards operational policy intended to address some of these persistent challenges; and scoping the automation of its safeguards documentation system.
The retained portion of the USAID portfolio includes significant intrinsic risks to life, health, and environment. USAID’s experiences provide ample lessons learned regarding effective control of these risks—both practices to adopt and pitfalls to avoid.
Mark Stoughton supported USAID as an ESIA/safeguards expert for over 20 years and led 3 of the Agency’s 4 global safeguards support contracts. He has a PhD in sustainable industrial development.