Jon Brasnett, MAAPPS // Jan 19, 2015
The EITI has been officially implemented in Mongolia since 2010 and has the potential to bring enormous structural, developmental and societal changes to the country. Unlike many other countries plagued with an abundance of natural resources, Mongolia is geographically situated between Russia and China, two major economic and political power houses who have the self-entitled capacity to exploit the resources of other nations. While other countries with natural resources have also suffered the “resource curse” and been exploited by powerful and resource-hungry nations, many of them are geographically located far away from any major power so that the terms of extraction might be negotiated more in the favour of the country being exploited. Because of Mongolia’s location, it is our duty as students of public policy, to ensure that the natural resources, all of which belong to the people of Mongolia, are extracted sustainably and without harming any Mongolians, with the added benefit of increased social service provision by the government through proper taxation of the mining industry.
Wealthy countries seem to have this idea that their people have grown accustomed to living with certain luxuries (cars, electricity, clean water, precious gems) and therefore deserve to have continued access to these luxuries. For the governments of these countries, this means that they are willing to cut corners in less developed countries to maximize their extraction of these resources, even if cutting corners means allowing for less development and less access to basic necessities for the people of the countries they exploit. In the case of Mongolia, as we see in the Asia Pacific Memo video on EITI implementation there, many of its citizens have been negatively affected by the mining industry. Some nomadic pastoralists have been forced to relocate their herds and homes, other citizens have gone on without living without access to clean water, electricity, education or health services, and those Mongolians who have been given jobs in mines have been forced to sign wavers which remove any blame from the mining company in the event of their deaths on the job. This treatment is unfair, inhumane, and absolutely unacceptable for developed countries who claim to uphold the UN declaration of human rights.
In this light, I am looking forward to researching the EITI implementation in Mongolia and other countries to see what kind of progress has taken place in recent years. I hope to be able to influence policy in Mongolia, along with my colleagues, to improve the transparency of these companies and the government mining department to ensure that all the money is accounted for. This money can, in turn, go towards funding social services for Mongolian citizens to provide necessities such as clean drinking water, housing, food, as well as important developmental infrastructure such as roads, hospitals, schools and the like. With these improvements to Mongolian society and state, this resource-rich country can make huge strides in their developmental goals and come more in line with other developed countries.