The Equator Principles

I was happy to see this article in the New York Times:

href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/06/business/worldbusiness/06equator.html?ex=1309838400&en=372128defc2d33d5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">More
Lenders Join in Pledge to Safeguard Environment

By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH

Published: July 6, 2006



Three years ago, 10 financial institutions — with Citigroup
the only United States company on the list — announced that
they would abide by the Equator Principles, a set of standards intended
to ensure that the large projects they financed did not have a harmful
impact on the environment or local population.



Since then, the Equator Principles Financial Institutions, as the group
calls itself, has swelled to 41 members across the globe, including
three more American companies: Wells Fargo, J. P. Morgan Chase and Bank
of America. And today the group is expected to announce an expanded
version of its guidelines as well...

They are referring to requirements that are placed upon the recipients
of financing for large construction projects.  The recipients
have to demonstrate that the construction will meet certain
environmental standards, as well as standards for labor practices.
 

I doubt that the standards are very high, but hopefully they preclude
such things as href="http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2004/01/i-was-poking-around-web-looking-for.html">slavery,
murder, and rape.  But because the process lacks
transparency, we will never really know how much of an impact it has.
 The banks are not planning on disclosing what standards they
are imposing, or how compliance will be assessed.  Clearly,
the initiative would be more effective, and more consonant with
humanistic values (and probably religious values) if there were strict
environmental and labor guidelines, etc, and the compliance methods and
outcomes were publicly available.