Source: Global Witness
9 March 2010 - The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a pioneering initiative to bring more openness to the world's oil and mining industries, faces a major credibility test after 20 out of 22 countries failed to meet a key deadline today.
Today (March 9) is the deadline for countries to complete Validation, a third-party assessment which checks that they are implementing the EITI in accordance with its rules. Kazakhstan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo are among the countries which must ask the EITI Board for more time to finish Validation.
"The EITI Board must assess countries' requests for more time in a rigorous and transparent way that fits the EITI rules," said Diarmid O'Sullivan of Global Witness, which is a member of the EITI Board.
"Some countries have made impressive progress but others have clearly been dragging their feet for several years. Any hint of special treatment towards the latter would undermine the credibility of the whole initiative," said O'Sullivan.
The EITI was launched in 2002 to bring more transparency to the flow of payments to governments from oil, gas and mining companies. In many countries, lack of transparency has enabled deep corruption, entrenched poverty and instability.
Global Witness is a co-founder of Publish What You Pay, a global coalition of civil society groups which give the EITI much of its legitimacy. EITI supporters include governments like the United States, European countries and Japan, major oil and mining companies and international bodies like the World Bank and African Union.
So far, only two countries have completed Validation. Azerbaijan and Liberia were both awarded the status of EITI Compliance, the highest status of the initiative, in 2009. This means that citizens are able to access detailed and regular reports about revenue payments to their governments by oil, gas or mining companies.
Of the other 20 countries facing the deadline, Guinea has voluntarily suspended itself from the EITI. The other 19 countries can get more time to complete Validation, provided they can show that the delays were caused by "exceptional and unforeseeable circumstances" beyond the country's control.
"Some of these countries have been involved with the EITI for several years, with very limited results. So the Board must make sure that delays were really unforeseeable and not just caused by lack of political will," said O'Sullivan.
Linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans across the Latin American landmass has often been presented as one of the holy grails of development for the region. While China’s idea of a ‘Nicaraguan Canal’ has made headlines globally, another major infrastructure project is in the works further south: the Bi-Oceanic Railway. The idea has already spurred transboundary environmental cooperation, but the public is still in the dark.
Using a progressive environmental security concept can help to tackle a range of environmental issues related to armed conflict, such as deforestation, loss of biodiversity, tensions over natural resources, conflict pollution, and damage to ecosystems. The environment can actually play a role in peacebuilding. This article briefly outlines why such an inclusive and environmental protection approach is needed and how it could be implemented.
Climate action and free trade have been perceived as contrary agendas for a long time. Despite more and more governments seeing tremendous potential for win-win outcomes, aligning trade and climate has become harder. This is due to changes in our current geopolitical landscape, as Christian Hübner explains in light of the upcoming G20 summit.
Human activity has caused the temperature of the Earth and its atmosphere to rise by about 1°C above pre-industrial levels, triggering fundamental changes to the planet’s physical and social landscapes. On 8 October an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that temperatures were rising faster than expected, and that 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels could occur as early as 2030.