The World Bank Group’s environmental and social safeguards are at the center of a heated debate regarding the legitimacy of their insertion in loan agreements. They also face important implementation problems. Nevertheless, environmental and social safeguards are instrumental vectors of sustainable development in Recipient countries through their insertion as conditionality in loan agreements. The question at stake is therefore how to reinforce the safeguards as effective vectors of sustainable development while avoiding sovereignty infringement and solving issues of noncompliance. For this purpose, this book aims at posing a diagnostic of the problems faced by this type of conditionality, through a classification of the conditionality and a systematization of its criticisms. Using three case studies to illustrate the findings, it proposes several avenues for change, such as a Human Rights-based harmonization of safeguards across Multilateral Development Banks, institutional changes in the World Bank Group to strengthen the support for environmental and social protection through the safeguards and, in order to determine the project’s eligibility for funding, a strict assessment of the suitability of the Recipient’s context for the implementation of the safeguards.