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The major environmental and social
management challenges that we face today, climate change,
loss of biodiversity, the decline of ocean fisheries,
limitations on food security, the scarcity of usable
freshwater resources, displacement of communities with
consequent increases in urban poverty, and inviability of
traditional local livelihoods, are all the result of
cumulative impacts from a large number of activities that
are for the most part individually insignificant, but
together have had regional or even global repercussions. The
importance of understanding the cumulative environmental and
social impacts from multiple projects, actions, or
activities, or even from the same actions over an extended
period of time, located in the same geographic region or
affecting the same resource (e.g., watershed, airshed) has
been acknowledged for decades. In some cases, the most
ecologically devastating environmental effects and
subsequent social consequences may result not from the
direct effects of a particular action, project, or activity
but from the combination of existing stresses and the
individually minor effects of multiple actions over time
(Clarke 1994). This good practice handbook is based on
IFC's experience in applying its performance standards
and is non-prescriptive in its approach. It should be used
in conjunction with the Performance Standards, their
guidance notes, and the World Bank Group environmental,
health, and safety guidelines, which contain basic
requirements and good international practices to be followed
when designing, developing, and/or implementing projects.
This document is not intended to duplicate requirements
under the existing IFC sustainability framework. Its purpose
is to provide practical guidance to companies investing in
emerging markets to improve their understanding, assessment,
and management of cumulative environmental and social
impacts associated with their developments.mulative
