Select Committee on International Development First Report


APPENDIX 2

Memorandum from the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation

  1.  The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation is Sweden's largest NGO with a membership numbering almost 160,000.

  2.  Together with a number of other groups internationally, we have been researching the environmental and developmental impacts of the projects and programmes backed by OECD export credit and investment insurance guarantee agencies (ECAs). We greatly welcome your Committee's invitation to NGOs and others in the development community to submit memoranda on the future role and status of the ECGD in order to feed into the review of the ECGD announced by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in late July.

  3.  The ECGD's lack of mandatory environmental and development standards is of great concern to us. Whilst agencies such as the ECGD continue to operate without such standards, there is strong pressure on other national ECAs to resist taking action to improve their own standards. The result is a race to the bottom that penalises "best practice" and erodes public confidence in the stated commitment of governments to sustainable development. We believe that the problem will remain unaddressed so long as the OECD fails to require its ECAs to adopt shared, common standards and procedures aimed at ensuring rigorous, comprehensive and transparent environmental and development screening and assessment of those projects and products for which ECA support is sought.

  4.  We very much hope that the Committee will support the call for common international standards and press for the ECGD to take a lead in adopting such standards.

Svenska Naturskyddsforeningen
(Swedish Society for Nature Conservation)

2 September 1999


 
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