Author Archives: Lotus Yang Ruan

U.S. Launches Interactive EITI Portal

Stephanie Zimmerling, MASc Mining Engineering // April 6, 2015

The United Stated has only recently (2014) become a candidate country with the EITI. The Multi-Stakeholder Group is required to produce their first report for 2014 by July 1, 2015 (EITI, n.d.). In anticipation of this report, the U.S.’s Interior Department’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue has launched an open data website, which tracks the revenue received by government for coal, natural gas and oil extracted from public lands. The portal can be found here: https://useiti.doi.gov/. It is an example of easily accessible information distribution for the citizens of the United States. At the launch of the portal US Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewels said (EITI, 2014):

“This interactive data portal offers a wealth of information to the public in a comprehensive and accessible fashion and is another step in our efforts to reform and modernize royalty revenue management by the Department. This new tool provides clarity and transparency on the revenues generated by energy development on public lands and waters – a significant source of financial support for local communities, states, tribes and the nation – and the Department’s implementation of USEITI upholds President Obama’s commitment to the principles of open government.”

The portal will gather information on how revenue is generated from resources on federal lands and show where that revenue is distributed. While the portal provides a high level overview, filters can also be applied to many of the data sets to sort by timeframe, location, commodity, company and revenue type.

The Head of the EITI Secretariat, Jonas Moberg, has expressed he is very impressed by the portal (EITI, 2014):

“The information generated by the EITI is much more useful when it can be easily accessed and understood. A growing number of EITI countries are making their data available in online portals. The US data portal is one of the most impressive examples to date, and we hope it will inspire other countries to follow the US example.”

With many other EITI countries wanting to engage civil society and citizens with EITI and its benefits, the online portal is great idea. If operating in a country where a large part of society has access to the internet, a portal set-up is an effective means of distributing relevant information. The US portal is made available under and ‘open-source license’ as shown here: https://github.com/18F/doi-extractives-data. This allows opportunities to replicate and build on the existing work.

Make sure to check it out!

Sources

EITI. (2014, December 12). US EITI launches natural resource revenues portal. Retrieved from EITI: https://eiti.org/news/us-eiti-launches-natural-resource-revenues-portal

EITI. (n.d.). United States of America. Retrieved from Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative: https://eiti.org/united-states-america

 

The Role of Civil Society Groups in Subnational Reporting

Justin Kwan, MAAPPS // April 2, 2015

The last few weeks have been dedicated towards two different projects our Asia Pacific Policy Project team has been working on. Our team of five students has selected to write a paper, which will address the prospects for sub-national reporting in the 13 countries we have selected as our case studies.

Our entire team has looked at a variety of factors that may influence the prospects of subnational reporting (SNR). Thus, our goal is to determine which political, economic and societal conditions are most conducive to effective sub-national reporting. Our preliminary findings suggest that countries that uphold the rule of law, have stronger democratic institutions, and predominantly operate in mineral-based extractive industries are more likely to produce effective outcomes through sub-national reporting.

To supplement our own research, we look at a variety of indicators to help us draw our conclusions. Some indices include: Global Democracy Ranking, World Justice Project Rule of Law score, BTI Civil Society Participation Score, Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index and GDP per Capita.

In particular however, I would like to focus our analysis on the potential connection between civil society participation and the potential outcomes for subnational reporting. In Indonesia, several civil society groups have expressed interest in subnational reporting and have been a vital part of helping collect data for SNR trial testing. For instance, Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Indonesia has conducted training sessions on EITI reporting and revenue sharing calculations. These civil society groups have also teamed up with EITI during Indonesia’s Anti-Corruption Day. In further personal correspondence, Indonesia’s civil society groups have also indicated that they are helping beta-test subnational reporting in certain areas.

Given Indonesia’s robust civil society, the country ranked fairly high within our case study countries with a score of 7 on BTI’s civil society participation score. I have advocated for our team to examine each country’s civil society participation with regards subnational reporting. While I find the BTI civil society participation score useful, in some ways, it is also problematic for our research. This is mainly because the score does not reveal the direct linkage between a country’s civil society and its engagement in projects related to subnational reporting. As such, the BTI score can only capture a general relationship between society and how they may initiate or help create the potential for reforms. Since there are different levels of civil society participation based upon different interests, it is rather important to examine the linkages between SNR and civil society groups. Currently, each member of our team will be asked to evaluate the formal conditions for SNR in their researched country, looking for the presence of subnational reporting in the stated EITI working plan, training sessions and/or workshops as well as formal reports issued by the member/candidate countries. After much debate, we will further look at civil society participation as a surrogate indicator for successful subnational reporting. Since civil society groups have played a fairly large role in helping implement subnational reporting in Indonesia, it will be interesting to see what influences civil society has on subnational reporting in other countries and whether or not any general trends can be concluded from the data we collected. Perhaps Indonesia is a unique case study when it comes to the relationship between civil society groups and subnational reporting. However, it is this particular specificity that makes the Indonesian story an important case study for other countries to learn how to engage with resource-revenue transparency issues.

Relevance of Vocational Education as an EITI Communication Venue

Christina Toepell, MAAPPS // April 1, 2015

One of the most effective ways to communicate the work of EITI to civil society on a sub-national level has been through workshops and trainings. In Nevada, two teacher workshops are being held each year to improve classroom knowledge on the role of mining and the mineral industry on a local level. In the Philippines, the NGO Bantay Kita is holding local workshops for all stakeholders – including the general public. What should EITI Mongolia do? Which communication venues are ideal for Mongolian engagement on a sub-national level? As any follower of this blog might notice, we have explored different approaches in the past weeks. Today I would like to make the case why workshops in vocational schooling are both relevant and necessary to boost EITI awareness and promote EITI literacy on a sub-national level.

Vocational education enrolment has been quadrupling in the past ten years, with numbers continuing to increase due to the help of a myriad of development projects. The focus on applied education on a secondary level played a major role during the socialist years of the second half of the 20thcentury but witnessed a harsh decline after the transition to market economy in the 1990s. When the nadir was reached with only 7,555 students remaining in vocational schools, the Mongolian government and outside development agencies started to see the need for skilled blue-collar workers and actively increased the quantity. Today, more than 40,000 students are enrolled in vocational education, but the demand is still not met. The NGO “Vocational Education & Technical Partnership” combines 31 development projects working on a qualitative and quantitative increase in vocational education with a total of USD 90M financial resources. Thus, vocational education is deeply entrenched in the values of the older generation, with a huge potential to grow in the upcoming years.

Approaching vocational students that are involved in the mineral resource sector themselves provides an important link to the issue and guarantees engagement and knowledge of the mining sector. Mining students are potential direct and indirect stakeholders: They will work as skilled labour employees in Mongolia’s mining sites and live in nearby town centers with their families. Thus, they will play an important role linking their mining company’s reports to EITI awareness of the general society in the region. Educating these crucial students on the work of EITI on a subnational level, financial literacy of the subnational reports and mining revenue flows to local projects will provide the students with sufficient knowledge to be more engaged into their work and act as EITI ambassadors in their local Soum.

Thus, the educational approach of EITI Mongolia cannot simply focus on university engineering students as development projects in Mongolia have done until the current day. EITI also needs to include vocational students and acknowledge their role as an increasing base of direct and indirect stakeholders in the country.

Finding effective channels to deliver EITI reports

Lotus Ruan, MAAPPS // March 30, 2015

Having gained sufficient knowledge of EITI national and subnational implementation in different countries, we’ve finally moved to subnational EITI reporting in Mongolia. While my knowledge of Mongolia is limited, a few weeks’ research has led to me to a better understanding of the overall Mongolia’s performance of EITI subnational reporting. I am starting to see the similarities and differences between Mongolia and the countries my team and I studied, which prompts me to come to the conclusion that what Mongolia needs the most for subnational reporting is not government or corporates’ involvement but theirs and the public’s better understandings of subnational EITI reports.

The status quo is that Mongolia is a leading EITI implementer. According to the EITI report in 2013, the number of companies participating in EITI in Mongolia is more than any other country in the world. However, Mongolia’s full potential as a supplier of relevant and useable extractives information is yet to be realized.

All Mongolians are affected directly directly and indirectly by the extractive sector, both positively and negatively. So citizens and corporates have a vested interest in knowing what taxes and royalties companies are paying to national, provincial and local government, who the beneficial owners are, what they are licensed to mine for. However,  a weakness in subnational EITI in Mongolia is that concerned individuals and companies, especially in the rural area, lack sufficient knowledge to understand key terms and budgetary charts in these reports, not to mention to realize how such reports could affect social and economic benefits. To me, transparency in itself is not enough; publishing data, however transparent or large amount it is (the EITI Mongolia report in 2012 is over 1,000 pages), is not enough. If the public, especially the extractive communities, does not know how to read the report and what those financial sheets mean, then these EITI reports will be much less effective in stirring a public conversation and engaging local communicates in holding the country’s government and corporates accountable.

In other words, transparency lies in the understanding of the data. While EITI reporting assists and has been proven quite successful in strengthening accountability and good governance, helping individuals and corporates in local communities understand EITI reports can lead to public supervision and contribute to the prevention of corruption or conflicts based around the extractive sectors. Considering the fact Mongolia is playing a relatively leading role in both national and subnational reporting, what our team should focus on is not merely raising public awareness but utilizing existing local expertise to walk the public through these information-loaded EITI reports.

Engaging Mongolia’s Civil Society on EITI Subnational Reporting

Jonathan Brasnett, MAAPPS // March 29, 2015

Over the past several weeks, our team has tried to come up with different way of engaging Mongolia’s local civil society organizations with regards to the newly-mandated subnational reporting of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). It has become obvious to me that, although Mongolia may have a political climate that is conducive to transparency and civil society participation, many geographical characteristics of Mongolia make it a problematic place to mobilize such activism. Owing to the fact that Mongolia is so sparsely populated (1.92/squared km), as well as the fact that many Mongolians still live a nomadic lifestyle and are constantly moving about the plains with their herds, it is difficult to reach a large percentage of the population. Even those Mongolians who live sedentary lifestyles in cities may feel so separated from the regions of the country where mining is taking place that they feel unengaged in matters of mining revenue transparency. Thus it is our goal to increase awareness of the relevance of such matters to the improvement of all Mongolian citizens’ quality of life.
Our team explored many different avenues for engaging civil society but the three that came out as being potentially the most effective were through the Khan Bank chain, educational programs for vocational, secondary and post-secondary schools, as well as through making pamphlets and EITI resources/literature available at public libraries. The first policy is to reach out to the Khan Bank’s CEO, Kato Norihiko, and explain to him the possible benefits of offering financial education programs that can be briefly explained to the bank’s clients. This program would explain the relevance of subnational EITI reporting to Mongolia’s financial investment and social service sectors, making these clients more financially savvy which will benefit Khan Bank. Next, by developing a basic and more in depth educational curriculum that explains the EITI initiative, subnational reporting and its significance for civil society to students throughout their educations, we can prepare them to engage in civil society activities when they are older. By catering these educational programs to specific audiences of students (whether at vocational schools for mining engineers, policy-makers, etc., or simply basic programs for secondary school students), we can ensure that the students leave with the knowledge that is most relevant to their own future interactions with EITI and resource revenue. Finally, a supplementary policy of making EITI literature/resources and educational materials available at public libraries will offer any Mongolian of any age to access the information necessary to take action or form civil societies that might be able to ensure the accountability of resource extraction companies and the government who receives tax revenue from them. These programs will all play an important role in improving the quality of life for Mongolians as a result of increased transparency and responsibility of the government in providing social services with the revenue from natural resources. With these programs, there is hope for a better and brighter future for average Mongolians.