Jonathan Brasnett, MAAPPS // April 13, 2015
The Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) issued an executive order in 2008 to begin implementing subnational reporting (SNR) in all member states. It seems that some states had pre-existing bureaucratic structures at the regional or subnational level that was more conducive to such a format of reporting than other states. Among these states are Indonesia, Peru, and most importantly for our own research purposes, Mongolia. While Mongolia’s central government in Ulan Bator is responsible for many governance jurisdictions and has done (and continues to do) an excellent job of legislating to promote EITI reporting (at the national level), there are also governments at the Aimag (province) and Sum (district) levels. At these levels, the bureaucratic structure may not compare to that of Canadian municipalities for obvious reasons like sparse population, vast uninhabitable territory, as well as a large percentage of the Mongolian population living a nomadic herder lifestyle, the institutions nevertheless exist that can facilitate SNR. Recent reforms and initiatives indicate the the accuracy of this last statement.
To begin with, a new budget transparency law (Law on Glass Accounts) came into force just this past January, which makes it obligatory for all government and legal agencies with any involvement in state affairs to make their budgetary and financial information accessible to its citizens. There is also a mandate to discuss and likely pass a law regarding the transparency of the extractive industry in Mongolia. These are actions which show that the Mongolian government is much further evolved than governments of many of the other countries we have studied throughout this course, all of which have made reference to the importance of transparency without taking action to mandate increased transparency. Another action which has been taken by the Mongolian EITI office has been to prepare twenty-five trainers, among which only four are government officials, three are industry representative while the remaining eighteen are “local and national level civil society representatives.” (www.eitimongolia.mn/en/node/ 4823)
So despite the fact that Mongolia is a sparsely populated, inhospitably landscaped country with a wealth in resources and a population that largely relies on a nomadic herding lifestyle for subsistence, the literacy rate of nearly 100% and recent democratic transition (1990) has proven conducive to a bureaucratic system capable of implementing the transparency initiative of the EITI, even at the sub-national level. It is impressive to see that understanding that civil society organizations obviously have in Mongolia to understand the need for such laws and training initiatives is indicative of the level of rapid development of democratic norms in Mongolian society. For civil societies to become active and start demanding accountability from government and industrial agencies shows that they understand their rights as citizens in a democratic country and have become determined to enforce these rights. By increasing the level of proliferation of lessons about EITI and sub-national reporting and the importance of demanding transparency from these actors to ensure adequate allocation of extractive industry revenue to the provision of social services, our team might be able to make a difference to the average Mongolian citizens.