The African Development Bank’s Environmental and Social Assessment Procedures (ESAP) support the integration of environmental, climate change and social considerations in projects and programs of the Bank and its borrowers. The ESAP describe the assessment procedure for different project types and across the full lifecycle from country programming to post completion. Thereby, the ESAP support decision-making and improvement of project results, ensuring that Bank-financed operations conform to the requirements laid out in the operational safeguards (OS) and are thus sustainable.

The EU Taxonomy sets out the overarching conditions that an economic activity has to meet to qualify as sustainable. In order to ensure that investments and financial market activities support those sustainable economic activities, financial market participants active in the EU and companies subject to non-financial disclosure requirements must now incorporate disclosures with reference to the Taxonomy. This way, the Taxonomy aims to help channel capital flows toward sustainable investments in a harmonized and consistent manner across the EU single market, thereby supporting the EU Green Deal and the Paris Agreement, and guide the transition of companies toward sustainable economic activities.

LEED for Buildings offers four different rating systems that support building sustainability throughout the life cycle: LEED for Building Design and Construction (LEED BD+C) that can be used for new buildings, LEED for Interior Design and Construction (LEED ID+C) for interior spaces, LEED for Operations, Maintenance (LEED O+M) for existing buildings and LEED Homes for residential buildings of up to six stories. The tools help decision makers and stakeholders to create responsible and sustainable buildings and continuously improve buildings’ performance. Recertification options are available.

The Hydropower Sustainability Guidelines on Good International Industry Practice (HGIIP) point out how sustainability performance for the hydropower sector should be defined and measured across a range of environmental, social, technical and governance topics. The guidelines present definitions of the processes and outcomes relating to good practice in the planning, operation and implementation of hydropower projects. As a compendium, the guidelines are a reference document for meeting the expectations of lenders, regulators, and consumers. The guidelines are complementary with the Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Tool.

The ESG Due DIligence Tool (ESG DD Tool) aims to provide investors with a transparent view of the ESG risks and opportunities of an infrastructure asset at the due diligence phase. The tool offers a structured process to identify and quantify all potential ESG risks and opportunities, which can make or break the business case of assets. This analysis serves as the basis for investment decision making and future mitigation of all potential (material) ESG issues (or factors) during asset management.

TREDIS is a transportation economics suite that helps transportation planners, and decision-makers calculate the economic impact, benefits and costs of proposed projects, programs and policies. The tool supports decision-making through economic impact analysis, cost-benefit analyses, financial analyses as well as freight and trade impact analyses. The software applies to passenger and freight transport via aviation, marine and rail modes, also including truck, car, bus, bicycle, and pedestrian travel, and can be used for deep analysis of a single project or simultaneous comparison of several projects. Impacts may be viewed at local, regional, state or national level.

SOURCE is a multilateral online platform to bring systemic change in the way governments define, develop and manage their sustainable infrastructure projects for both traditional procurement and Public Private Partnerships. It uses sector-specific questions sets covering all the stages of the project lifecycle and allowing for the definition of specific targets to fulfil the SDGs and Paris Agreement. The online tool includes a broad set of functionalities, including project team management, customizable project timeline and task management, document management, portfolio and project monitoring dashboards, consistency checks on project documentation, a Project Preparation Facilities Finder, knowledge management and a public pipeline for project promotion.

SITES is a sustainability-focused framework that ushers landscape architects, engineers and others toward practices that protect ecosystems and enhance the mosaic of benefits they continuously provide to communities, such as climate regulation, carbon storage and flood mitigation. By providing performance measures rather than prescribing practices, SITES supports the unique conditions of each site, encouraging project teams to be flexible and creative as they develop beautiful, functional and regenerative landscapes. SITES is complementary with the LEED system. There is a pre-certification option available.

The Environmental and Social Performance Standards of the International Finance Coalition (IFC) define IFC clients’ responsibilities for managing the environmental and social risks of their projects. The Performance Standards provide guidance on how to identify risks and impacts and are designed to help avoid, mitigate and manage risks and impacts as a way of doing business in a more sustainable way. Since 2012, the Standards apply to all IFC clients whose projects go through IFC’s initial credit review process.

The G7 Ise-Shima Principles for Promoting Quality Infrastructure Investment are a set of five principles covering governance, economic, social and environmental impacts, alignment with economic development and effective resource mobilization. Serving as self-commitment for the G7 and as a guide for further governments, international organizations, MDBs and the private sector, the high-level principles aim to promote strong, sustainable and balanced growth and to address the existing global demand-supply gap of infrastructure investments while enhancing resilience, and contributing to the global efforts for the SDGs.