Environmental and Social Management System

Environmental and Social Management System (ESMS) provides guidelines for establishing the environmental and social management system for a project that is consistent with the safeguard policy principles and requirements of NDRMF, donors and national laws including Pakistan Environmental Protection Act (PEPA) 1997. The objective of the ESMS is to prevent and mitigate undue harm to people and their environment in disaster resilience works. The Safeguard Unit (SGU) is the competent unit to ensure the implementation of ESMS in sub-projects.

Screening & Categorization

All the concepts & proposals will be reviewed for Prohibited Investment Activities List (PIAL), the FIP will be informed that the proposal will not be considered. Otherwise, the SGU will indicate the applicable environmental safeguard requirement for the proposal.

The FIP will make a rapid assessment (Rapid Environmental Assessment Checklist) of likely environmental impacts depending on the nature and scope of the proposal. Screening may require field visits by NDRMF’s environmental safeguard staff. The checklist is used to determine the significance of potential environmental impacts associated with the proposal.

ESMS and PEPA use separate methodologies for environmental categorization. In the case of a project being classified as category ‘B’ by NDRMF and donors, PEPA may categorize it as ‘A’. However, all ESMS environmental category “A” projects will be excluded during the current phase.

Table:  Screen Categories

Figure: Procedure Flow for Screening & Categorization