D e v e l o pme n t : E q u a l i t i e s a n d s u s t a i n a b i l i t y the game’8. Benn also announced the establishment of an international advisory group, which would include representatives of governments, companies and civil society organisations, to take the EITI forward. At this point, it became clear that the EITI was not evolving, as some had anticipated, into a voluntary standard for companies but rather into a disclosure standard implemented by countries. The criteria focused on: Regular publication of all material oil, gas and mining payments by companies to governments (‘payments’) and all material revenues received by governments from oil, gas and mining companies (‘revenues’) to a wide audience in a publicly accessible, comprehensive and comprehensible manner.9 They also recognised that civil society had to be actively engaged in the process to ensure accountability10. By the time of the third EITI Global Conference in Oslo in October 2006, the implementing countries (now joined by Niger and Cameroon) were preparing their first EITI reconciliation reports. Azerbaijan had already produced reports covering revenue from 2003–05 and Nigeria a report covering 1999–2004. The International Advisory Group had provided guidance on how to produce these reports in its 2005 EITI source book. The International Advisory Group had sufficient emerging approaches to introduce the EITI Validation Guide, which set out the indicators that implementing countries had to meet in order to become EITI compliant. The guide was introduced at the Oslo conference, effectively marking the end of the beginning for the EITI. At this time it was also agreed that the EITI should have its own governance structure, board and secretariat. The EITI international secretariat was later established in Oslo. With the principles setting out its aims, the criteria containing its minimum requirements and the guide establishing its indicators, it was thought that the EITI had a structure in place that would clearly frame the expectations of implementing countries. However, it quickly became clear that many issues had been left open, such as how long implementing countries had before they would have to be ‘validated’ and how long they would have to meet the standard. So, in 2009 and 2011, the EITI board issued the EITI rules. These replaced the EITI validation guide and included six ‘policy notes’ that provided further clarification and guidance. The ‘indicators’ became ‘requirements’ and were addressed more as steps to be followed by implementers than as indicators to be assessed by external validators. The EITI had evolved into a global standard. By September 2012, 36 countries were implementing the EITI, with Colombia, Tunisia and the USA, among others, preparing to begin implementation. A total of 95 EITI reconciliation reports had been produced covering more than US$700 billion of revenues paid. Challenges of, and tensions between, being a global standard and a national process At its core, EITI implementation has two components: transparency and accountability. Transparency is achieved through the annual publication of what the companies pay in taxes, royalties and bonuses to a government, and the publication of what the government claims to have received. In an in-country accountability process, a national commission (or multi-stakeholder group, in EITI parlance) oversees the implementation process. The group is crucial to ensuring that the EITI is implemented according to the global standard and, at the same time, that the application of the standard is adapted, as relevant, to the specific needs of the implementing country. This has led to 36 EITI models for 36 implementing countries. Liberia’s EITI reports include the forestry sector; Togo’s includes water; Nigeria’s and Iraq’s include figures on the physical production of oil and gas; Mongolia’s records environmental costs; Peru’s includes payments to subnational levels of government; and Ghana’s includes the spending by these sub-national governments. There are numerous other variations on the core EITI model and such innovations are encouraged. The EITI should be a platform for securing management oversight and data as they are needed in each country. But this course – between a nationally owned process and an internationally owned standard – has been a tough one to steer. Designing the right standard There is no magic bullet for a problem as complex as natural resources management. It would be naïve to think that any single intervention, including the EITI, could solve the violence, mismanagement and environmental disasters of the Niger Delta, for example. The consensus approach of the EITI standard has led to just one aspect – revenue transparency – being tackled first. Revenue transparency might not be the most pressing or important issue in many resource-rich countries, but it has proven to be a sound entry point for bringing all parties to the table. The EITI International Secretariat is often asked why the EITI does not require contract transparency or transparency about how governments spend the money received. It typically answers that a process with big companies and small NGOs on its board should not be issuing requirements on how governments spend their money. It is for the citizens of that country to decide, through democratic processes, how public money should be spent. It is also for them to decide how and if the EITI platform in their country can seek to foster wider change. If it cannot, it will soon become redundant. In country after country, even basic revenue transparency has become the starting point for other discussions, such as Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2013/14 104
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