Bulgan Batdorj, MASc candidate in Mining Engineering // March 27, 2015
In my other class, the lecturer described the companies CSR activities as a teenage sex. “Everybody says that they are doing, but just a few really are and those who do it, do it rather badly”. The same can be said about the Sub-national reporting of EITI. And the difference between the teenage sex and the CSR or SNR is that there is no-one that can tell us how to do it right, rather we have find the unique ways that works for the countries and communities.
There are 48 countries submit national reports to EITI, all with mandate to report on SNR in a near future. There are obvious demands from the locals of those countries to apply the SNR but the issue is that there is not a single proven mechanism to get there. The differences of political, social, environmental climates are significant at the local levels. But many proclaim that SNR EITI will help them to resolve the conflicts, or bring a development. But these issues could not be resolved without accountability from the government and the local government.
Many countries wants to be part of EITI with the hope that this will help attract the foreign investments to the country which can fuel the country’s development. In addition, transparency’s objective is to trigger an accountability and good governance. But, despite this theory, still some of the EITI countries struggle with domestic politics, resource nationalism, corruption, and poverty. There are many variables that play and without strong (domestic) political will to embrace the accountability the “EITI compliant country status” will not serve you as the ticket out of resource curse.