As progress has come to mean growing accumulation and consumption in material terms, this has led to establishment of ever larger production units, energy harnessing facilities, transport, storage and recreational infrastructure. For decades now, people have been fighting to protect their land, forest, ocean, ecology, lives and livelihood from these so-called development projects.  For the most part, the people have and continue to resist the government and the companies despite the police brutalities and threat of false arrests. But many times, the financiers of these projects continue to be in the dark. There have only been a handful of projects in India, where people have raised questions directly to the financiers on the violations and impacts of the projects they are investing on. In addition to international funders like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank or Asian Infrastructure Development Bank, a report by the Bank Information Centre studying thermal power projects over 1000MW found, 90% of the finance for these projects were being funded by domestic sources including, commercial banks which run on public money. What is the responsibility of financiers who fund such projects? Are there procedures in place which allow constant monitoring of impact of such projects and prescribe mitigatory action? Environmental and social safeguards (ESS) address precisely such questions. As large scale ‘development projects’ continue to pose a risk not only to their immediate context but to our future and survival, the ESS makes financiers accountable for the impact on  climate, ecology and population of the projects which they fund. Read More