The Adaptation Principles offer a guide to effective climate change adaptation, containing hands-on guidance to the design, implementation and monitoring of national adaptation strategies, showing that each country needs to tailor adaptation actions to its specific needs and priorities. To guide this process, the Adaptation Principles offer concrete and practical tools: Screening questions to identify the most urgent and effective actions, toolboxes illustrating common datasets and methodologies to support decisions, indicators to monitor and evaluate progress, and case studies on how the COVID-19 pandemic influences priorities in taking effective adaptation action.

ThinkHazard! is a web-based tool to analyze the risks of natural hazards (floods, wildfires, earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, water scarcity, extreme heat, tsunamis and cyclones) at national, regional and local level for all countries around the world. The tool provides a simple overview of different hazard levels for any given area and delivers recommendations and guidance for adaptation and safety, including for project design and planning. ThinkHazard! also highlights how each hazard may change in the future as a result of climate change.

The International Good Practice Principles for Sustainable Infrastructure provide globally applicable guidance on the integration of sustainability throughout the entire infrastructure lifecycle, focussing on the “upstream” project level. They help high-level policy- and decision-makers in governments create the enabling environment for sustainable infrastructure that is needed to achieve the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement. The ten principles emphasize the importance of infrastructure approaches that respond to service needs and demands, address sustainability the earliest possible in the planning process, integrate all aspects of sustainability as well as relevant governance frameworks and different infrastructure systems and sectors across time and space.

The Toolbox and Guidance for Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIA) aims to guide HRIA – which serve to identify, understand, assess and address the impact of business activities on human rights holders – for large-scale business projects and activities conducted at project or site level. The tool provides individual guidance documents for the different project lifecycle phases from planning and scoping to reporting and evaluation as well as case studies. Thereby, the tool supports human rights practitioners and businesses alike in conducting HRIA.

The Practical Guide describes how human rights aspects can be integrated into the routinely Guide Environmental, Social and Health Impact Assessments (ESHIA) undertaken by the oil and gas industry. In three parts, the Guide (1) defines the industry’s potential human rights impacts, (2) provides practical guidance on applying a human rights lens to the industry’s activities and to the content of each step of the ESHIA process, and (3) looks at the human rights issues that are applicable across the ESHIA process.

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 Infrastructure Transparency Index (ITI) can be used to measures the level of transparency of the infrastructure sector and the quality of related participation and accountability processes at national or sub-national level. Thereby, the tool aims to assess the state of infrastructure transparency and the capacity to improve transparency among procuring agencies, to track process and facilitate peer learning and to raise awareness of transparency. The ITI sets out the methodology for score calculation to evaluate procuring entities. Individual scores are then used to generate an index that allows for performance comparison.

The SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting is a measurement framework for biophysical data, tracking changes and linking them to economic and other human activity from the perspective of entire ecosystems, considering how individual environmental assets interact as part of natural processes within a given spatial area. To do so, the tool applies the accounting concepts and rules to the emerging field of ecosystem assessment and measurement in response to demands for integrated information on environmental sustainability, human wellbeing and economic growth and development. It offers a system of five accounts that together present comprehensive view of ecosystems and their services.

The Cumulative Effects Assessment (CEA) Practitioners’ Guide aims to support practitioners of CEAs in their work and submission processes to regulatory bodies. The tool gives practitioners an overview of current understanding about the CEA practice, suggests practical approaches to complete CEAS based on statutory requirements and best practice and provides case studies. Furthermore, the Guide defines key terms and an exemplary assessment framework and recommends good practices in for data collection and cases of lacking data, among other useful orientations.

The WELL Building Standard assesses and rates the performance of buildings in delivering spaces that enhance human health and wellbeing. Thereby, the tool aims to support buildings and organizations in delivering more thoughtful and intentional spaces by setting performance standards for design interventions, operational protocols and policies and a commitment to fostering a culture of health and wellness. The tool rates buildings’ performance using individualized, point-based scorecards depending on the use and occupational structure of the building (owner-occupied or rented).