UNDP's revised Social and Environmental Standards came into effect on 1 January 2021. This toolkit hosts the latest information on the standards and provides a way for UNDP staff, partners, and stakeholders to navigate through relevant guidance, resources and tools.
UNDP's Social and Environmental Standards (SES) underpin our commitment to mainstream social and environmental sustainability in our Programmes and Projects to support sustainable development. The SES objectives are to:
- Strengthen the quality of programming by ensuring a principled approach
- Maximize social and environmental opportunities and benefits
- Avoid adverse impacts to people and the environment
- Minimize, mitigate, and manage adverse impacts where avoidance is not possible
- Strengthen UNDP and partner capacities for managing social and environmental risks
- Ensure full and effective stakeholder engagement, including through a mechanism to respond to complaints from project-affected people.
The SES are an integral component of UNDP's quality assurance and risk management approach to programming. This includes the project-level Social and Environmental Screening Procedure (SESP).
The standards are underpinned by an Accountability Mechanism with two key components: (i) A Stakeholder Response Mechanism (SRM) that ensures individuals, peoples, and communities affected by UNDP projects have access to appropriate grievance resolution procedures for hearing and jointly addressing project-related disputes; and (ii) A Compliance Review process to investigate and respond to claims that UNDP is not in compliance with the Social and Environmental Standards.
Key Elements of UNDP’s Social and Environmental Standards (SES)