Beyond Remedies: How Accountability Mechanisms Can Protect Communities from Irreversible Harm

In Beyond Remedies: How Accountability Mechanisms Can Protect Communities from Irreversible Harm, Ana Gutiérrez and Gregory Berry examine how Independent Accountability Mechanisms (IAMs) can function not only as tools for remedy after harm occurs, but as critical instruments for preventing environmental and social harm before it becomes irreversible. Building on Jonathan Fox’s call to rethink “what counts” as accountability, the article explores how IAMs, despite limited formal powers, have helped delay, suspend, or terminate projects posing imminent risks to communities. Through case studies spanning climate finance, conservation, extractive industries, and infrastructure development, the authors show how preventive accountability emerges through financial leverage, policy design, political pressure, and transparency, and argue that strengthening IAM independence and early-stage intervention is essential to upholding the “do no harm” principle in development finance.