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The Sustainability Program Quality Benchmark Matrix (Benchmark Matrix) provides characteristics of ineffective to best practices for the most common sustainability programs (“the what”) and management processes (“the how”). These programs were selected based on literature review and overview of most common social, economic and environmental programs of leading oil, gas and mining companies. Then, to make the Matrix broadly applicable, we selected issues that would be relevant to many high footprint infrastructure projects. The list of programs in the Matrix will grow over time to include issues relevant to other high impact industries like forestry and agribusiness.

All sustainability investments are not created equal. Some generate positive development outcomes, and others either do not or even decrease trust and intensify tensions with affected communities. Some engage communities in design and implementation, others choose a much more top-down approach. Some mitigate risk, others have little impact on risks or even generate more risk for companies. It is clear that the quality of a sustainability investment determines whether risks and opportunities are maximized or minimized. As such, quality needs to be accurately assessed as an input into financial valuation. As the old saying goes: garbage in, garbage out. Accurate assessment of the quality of programs is critical for pinpointing the range of value generated by ESG investments. In order to remove the subjectivity of rating the effectiveness of sustainability investments, together with the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) and with feedback from its member mining companies, we have developed a stand-alone tool for assessing the quality of a company’s portfolio of sustainability investments: the Sustainability Program Quality Framework (Quality Framework). The framework includes a Self-Assessment Tool, which generates a numerical score ranging from 1 (ineffective) to 4 (excellent), and a Quality Benchmark Matrix, which maps scores to practices characterized at each scoring level. The score can be inputted into the Financial Valuation Tool’s quality ranking sections.

While the promise is still far greater than the reality, strategies and programs built on the positive impact on development from private-sector initiatives in frontier and emerging markets are gaining acceptance and driving change in corporate boardrooms and NGO projects. This report examines why and how the private sector, nongovernmental development actors, and the U.S. government, particularly USAID, can employ policies and practices to expand local content in order to drive economic development and create economic opportunities. The authors highlight the development benefits of a local-content strategy while recognizing the commercial benefits of such a strategy accruing to large participating companies. They use case studies from three very different business sectors—extraction (oil and gas), tourism, and agriculture—to identify existing successes and challenges. And finally they provide recommendations for those businesses and government agencies as well as host governments working on local-content development.

Companies around the world engage in community investment efforts as a way to promote development and benefit local stakeholders in their areas of operation. Done well, community investment can help establish mutually beneficial relationships between a company and its local stakeholders, contribute toward long-term improvements in the quality of life for local communities, and help create an environment conducive to private investment. In response to some of these challenges, IFC has produced the Strategic Community Investment Handbook and a set of tools to help companies implement community investments in a strategic manner. All of the tools here can be found in the Handbook, but they are also made accessible on this web page as separate files for the ease of use and download. Companies are encouraged to use these tools as guidance instruments and where required customize to better suit unique contexts.