Page 107

CGH13_ebook

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 Box 2: Multi-stakeholder • The focus is on EITI reconciliation reports, which have to continue to improve in quality, providing timely, comprehensive and comprehensible data. To date, too much focus has been placed on the validation process, rather than on the EITI reports themselves • The EITI does better at providing incentives to countries to exceed the minimum requirements and recognising those who provide leadership • The EITI is not seen as a stand-alone country exercise but is embedded in governments’ financial and other oversight systems Conclusions The international community has a long way to go in ensuring that natural resources bring benefits to all. We would highlight three important lessons from the EITI experience: • If the collective action is at both the national and international level, a careful balance needs to be struck between country ownership and international standard setting. Strong governance structures are the key to finding this balance • Collective action through a multi-stakeholder effort, such as the EITI, requires patience with incremental progress. This presents challenges of communicating objectives and demonstrating impact, of linking with other efforts in the same field and of keeping momentum for deeper implementation. The consensus amongst the vastly different stakeholders evolves and so too must the goals of the collective action • Collective action is not a panacea for the problem of lack of political will, though it can be the best option available In the authors’ view, there are few areas of development in which the benefits for all stakeholders of slow but assured progress justify the efforts involved in multi-stakeholder governance. Management of the extractive industries is one of the few exceptions. Such ‘beyond governments’ and collective action solutions to governance challenges need to be carefully designed and calibrated to avoid ineffective bureaucracies failing to exceed a lowest common denominator of limited value. But, together with other governance efforts, voluntary as well as mandatory, they can form part of the battery of efforts required to ensure good governance. Endnotes 1 Global Witness (1999), A Crude Awakening: The Role of the Oil and Banking Industries in Angola’s Civil War and the Plunder of State Assets, available at www.global witness.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/A%20Crude%20Awakeni ng.pdf. 2 Global Witness, n. 1, p. 3. 3 John Browne (2010), Beyond Business: An Inspirational Memoir from a Remarkable Leader, London, Orion. 4 Browne, n. 3. 5 EITI, The EITI Principles and Criteria, available at http://eiti.org/eiti/principles. 6 EITI, n. 6, Principle 10. Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2013/14 106 Jonas Moberg (secretariat@eiti.org) is head of the EITI Secretariat. Before joining the EITI, he was a senior advisor to the UN Global Compact. Prior to that, he was director of corporate policy and practice at the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum, London, which he joined 2002. During 1996–2002 Jonas worked for the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, including postings to Mozambique and the UK. Jonas holds master’s degrees in law from the University of Stockholm and the London School of Economics. During 1992–96 he was the vice chairman of the Swedish National Committee for United World Colleges. Eddie Rich (erich@eiti.org) is EITI’s deputy head and regional director for Africa and the Middle East. He has worked in development for almost 20 years, and among other posts has served as DFID representative to Angola (1996–98) and deputy head of DFID Kenya (2004–07). He has been involved with the EITI since its inception, having been head of DFID's Corporate Social Responsibility team when the nascent Publish What You Pay coalition came to DFID with an idea for a transparency initiative in the extractive sector in 2001. Governing a multi-stakeholder initiative like the EITI poses its own challenges. The techniques for governing multi-stakeholder efforts are quite different from those used to govern civil society organisations, multilateral organisations or corporations. Mechanisms, possibly including voting rules, have to be found in order to balance the different stakeholders’ interests and accommodate their different ways of working. The governance arrangements for multi-stakeholder processes have to be able to evolve as the organisation grows. The EITI’s development process has a number of lessons for similar initiatives. The EITI is a non-profit members’ association under Norwegian law. It has a board with representatives from governments, civil society and companies that is answerable to a conference and members’ meeting, which is convened once every two years. It was decided early on that the EITI should not seek to become a multilateral organisation. This was thought to be timeconsuming and a potential risk to the efficiency of the EITI as an organisation.


CGH13_ebook
To see the actual publication please follow the link above