International development

On 12 June 2007, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) approved the Revised Rec-ommendation on Common Approaches on the Environment and Officially Supported Export Credits.

This agreement replaced the common approaches for export credit agencies on environment that had been negotiated within the OECD and that Finnvera had used since 2004. The current recommendation will be reviewed by the OECD Export Credit Group by the end of 2010.

The common approaches set forth in the recommendation of 2004 were revised as follows

• Reviews of new industrial production plants and of existing operations undergoing material changes will be un-dertaken in depth as has been done also previously. In other cases environmental reviews of existing operations will be lighter.
• The project under review will be benchmarked against the host country’s environmental standards and against a relevant international environmental standard. The project must always meet the environmental standards of the host country. If the international environmental standard used is more stringent than the host country’s legislation, the project must also meet the requirements of the international standard.
• Relevant international environmental standards refer to the IFC/World Bank Group updated environmental standards or, where such institutions are supporting the project, the standards of Regional Development Banks. Higher internationally recognised environmental standards such as those of the European Union can also be used as benchmarks.
• Members of the Export Credit Group strive to ensure that information regarding environmental impacts (e.g. the EIA report) is disclosed 30 calendar days before any final commitment to financing for projects that may have a significant environmental impact (environmental category A). Members make available to the public environmental information on projects classified in environmental categories A and B, for which they have made final commitments with respect to providing official support.

Finnvera plc’s environmental policy for export credit guarantee activities as updated in June 2005 was revised by taking the revised OECD environmental agreement into account.

In the past few years, other financial institutions have also increasingly been taking responsibility for the environmental impacts of the projects they finance. Several international financial institutions and development banks (such as the World Bank, EBRD, NIB) have been pursuing an active environmental policy for many years.