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Meaningful consultation and information disclosure are widely recognized as essential safeguards for responsible development finance. But what happens when those safeguards fail? Drawing on Accountability Counsel's database of 2,427 complaints submitted to Independent Accountability Mechanisms (IAMs), this article examines whether complaints alleging inadequate consultation and disclosure are more likely to also report broader environmental, social, and human rights harms. The findings reveal strong associations between consultation and disclosure failures and displacement, livelihood impacts, environmental degradation, community health and safety risks, and harms affecting Indigenous Peoples and cultural heritage. The article argues that meaningful consultation should be understood not only as a procedural requirement, but also as an early warning sign of broader project risk with important implications for development finance institutions, project success, and accountability.

The IFC is in the middle of reforming Performance Standard 5, the standard governing how its financed projects handle land acquisition and displacement. Civil society groups say the standard has structural gaps that fail to prevent significant harm even when it is followed to the letter. This piece summarizes the structural problems of PS5 pointed out by civil society and looks at two cases, Tata Mundra and the CBG bauxite mine in Guinea, to illustrate how those structural problems fail to prevent community harm. With reference to these cases, PS5 reform recommendations are made as well.

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.