1. The Republic of Ghana (the Recipient) is implementing the West Africa Food System Resilience Program – Phase 2 under the Multiphase Programmatic Approach Project (the Project), with the involvement of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), as set out in the Financing Agreement and the Grant Agreement (the Agreements). The International Development Association (IDA) has agreed to provide the original financing (P178132) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the IDA (IBRD and IDA together, the Bank) acting as the administrator of the Food Systems 2030 Multi-Donor Trust Fund, have agreed to provide additional financing for the Project, as set out in the referred agreements. This ESCP supersedes previous versions of the ESCP for the Project and shall apply both to the original and the additional financing (P181488) for the Project referred to above.
2. The Recipient shall ensure that the Project is carried out in accordance with the Environmental and Social Standards (ESSs) and this Environmental and Social Commitment Plan (ESCP), in a manner acceptable to the Bank. The ESCP is a part of the Agreements. Unless otherwise defined in this ESCP, capitalized terms used in this ESCP have the meanings ascribed to them in the Agreements.
3. Without limitation to the foregoing, this ESCP sets out material measures and actions that the Recipient shall carry out or cause to be carried out, including, as applicable, their respective timeframes; institutional, staffing, training, monitoring and reporting arrangements; and grievance management. The ESCP also sets out the environmental and social (E&S) documents that shall be prepared or updated, consulted, disclosed and implemented under the Project, consistent with the ESSs, in form and substance acceptable to the Bank. Said E&S documents may be revised from time to time with prior written agreement by the Bank. As provided for under the referred Agreements, the Recipient shall ensure that there are sufficient funds available to cover the costs of implementing the ESCP.
4. As agreed by the Bank and the Recipient, this ESCP will be revised from time to time, if necessary, to reflect adaptive management of Project changes or unforeseen circumstances or in response to Project performance. In such circumstances, the Bank and the Recipient agree to update the ESCP to reflect these changes through an exchange of letters signed between the Bank and the Recipient’s Representative specified in the Agreements or the Recipient’s Chief Director of MoFA. The Recipient shall promptly disclose the updated ESCP.
5. The subsection on “Indicators for Implementation Readiness” below identifies the actions and measures to be monitored to assess Project readiness to begin implementation in accordance with this ESCP. Nevertheless, all actions and measures in this ESCP shall be implemented as set out in the “Timeframe” column below irrespective of whether they are listed in the referred subsection.