The Prevention Principle and Multilateral Development Banks: The World Bank’s Environmental and Social Risk Management Framework

This article examines how the World Bank's Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) operationalises the prevention principle in development finance. It argues that, notwithstanding significant institutional and doctrinal differences from inter-State environmental law, the ESF embodies a functional analogue to the prevention principle, translating due diligence and harm-avoidance principles into binding, project-specific commitments for borrowers, underpinned by the Bank's own due diligence and supervision obligations. The analysis situates the ESF within the Bank's constitutive instruments, internal policy framework, financing agreements, borrowers' national frameworks, and accountability architecture. It identifies risk assessment, the mitigation hierarchy, Environmental and Social Commitment Plans, supervision and adaptive management, and grievance and independent accountability mechanisms as mutually reinforcing means of anticipating, avoiding, minimising, mitigating, and redressing environmental and social harm throughout the project life cycle.