Toolbox

The Development Impact Plan (DIP) is part of the UN-Habitat’s Environmental and Social Safeguard System (ESSS), aligned with the safeguard system used by many international organisations, foundations, and donors. The ESSS includes a series of activities to ensure that a robust risk and impact assessment, management and monitoring process is implemented throughout the lifecycle of different projects, including design projects and territorial plans. This safeguard system is aimed at predicting and anticipating any adverse effects that projects could have on the environment and the people both during its development and during its implementation in such a way that measures can be identified to address the effects in a timely and adequate way.

According to the results of the Screening Report, the DIP is recommended for projects of low or no risk - these are non-operational projects such as “urban planning processes”. Typically, the urban planning activities do not entail physical/infrastructure interventions, however the activities as field mission, consultations, and data gathering may lead to environmental and social impacts or risks that need to be considered. Therefore, the preparation of a DIP is prescribed to assess possible future impacts/risks and to lay the groundwork for monitoring. Other specifications for E&S tasks may include E&S monitoring, management plans or the execution of a new screening assessment for the follow-up project.