Natural resource governance: New frontiers in transparency and accountability

Natural resources – oil, gas, minerals, forests, fish, water and land – present a number of challenges to the transparency and accountability agenda. Much of the focus of donors engaged in transparency and accountability issues in the natural resources sector has been on improving governance systems at a national level. This report recommends that donors need to develop specific programmes focused on the transparency and accountability needs of communities, civil society groups and governments at this very local level – and that those needs should not be defined as being simply a watered-down version of existing national-level transparency programmes. The report recommends that Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) programmes themselves should be strengthened by providing greater resources for audits that would focus not only on reporting what has been paid, but also on what might not have been paid. This recommendation focuses in particular on the role of commodity trading and transfer pricing practices that have the potential to significantly reduce revenues to resource-exporting developing countries.
http://www.transparency-initiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/natural_resources_final1.pdf