IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/csrchp/978-3-319-10311-2_6.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Translating Standards into Successful Implementation: Sector Policies and Equator Principles

In: Responsible Investment Banking

Author

Listed:
  • Eric Cochard

    (Head of Sustainable Development, Crédit Agricole CIB)

Abstract

The Equator Principles have become a market standard in the area of project finance within the space of a few years and now form the basis of environmental and social risk management systems among financial institutions of all sizes and nationality. This in itself is a great achievement that needs to be preserved. The third version of these principles, launched on their 10th anniversary, broadens the scope of application to certain corporate financing activities directly linked to a project. Even with this development, which concerns financing methods where it seems reasonable to carry out such due diligence procedures, the Equator Principles still only cover a small share of the activity of the commercial banks that have adopted them. Some financial institutions have thus decided to establish broader coverage of their activity using sector CSR policies that specifically set out the environmental and social analysis criteria to be considered when reviewing projects in specific economic sectors. Despite examples of cooperation between banks to establish agreement of the stakes involved and to define best practices, there has not been a coherent response from the financial sector. The implementation of shared policies seems a long way off, and even the definition of guidelines seems complex due to different sensitivities of the financial institutions, which generally reflect the social acceptability of their activities within the societies in which the banks operate. While difficult, cooperation between financial institutions in the area of sector policies is vital if these policies are to truly contribute to more sustainable development of the economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Cochard, 2015. "Translating Standards into Successful Implementation: Sector Policies and Equator Principles," CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance, in: Karen Wendt (ed.), Responsible Investment Banking, edition 127, pages 109-121, Springer.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:csrchp:978-3-319-10311-2_6
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-10311-2_6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:csrchp:978-3-319-10311-2_6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.