{"id":987,"date":"2015-01-26T10:01:27","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T18:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maapps\/?p=987"},"modified":"2015-02-20T11:09:12","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T19:09:12","slug":"extracting-transparency-in-mongolia-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maapps\/2015\/extracting-transparency-in-mongolia-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Extracting Transparency in Mongolia and Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justin Kwan, MAAPPS \/\/ Jan 26, 2015<\/h3>\n

Asia\u2019s rise in the 21st century has been commonly characterized by the dominance of the region\u2019s major powers such as China, Japan, South Korea and India. Far too often overlooked however is the important presence of Mongolia. Situated between both Russia to the north and China to the south, Mongolia has been overshadowed by two of its neighbouring superpowers. While Mongolia may go unnoticed to many countries across the world, China recognizes Mongolia\u2019s strategic importance for its natural resources, primarily copper, coal, gold and uranium.<\/p>\n

As an aspiring China scholar, the Middle Kingdom\u2019s interest in Mongolian natural resources also sparked my curiosity for the country, its growing importance to the Asia Pacific Region and my participation here in this year\u2019s policy project. \u00a0Roland Nash of Renaissance Capital described Mongolia as \u201ca blue-sky opportunity\u201d and as \u201ca country on the point of transformation\u201d (Business New Europe<\/a>, 2009). His assertion six years ago has been extremely forth telling of the economic development that has been occurring.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s policy project continues with the work produced by last year\u2019s cohort who examined the policy mechanisms for discouraging corruption and improving human development in Mongolia. As part of our investigation, our research this year will look at EITI\u2019s important move to push transparency reporting down from the national to the local level. My initial thoughts immediately gravitate towards a series of questions: Who within EITI is encouraging the reporting to be pushed down to the local level? What are the motivations behind this? In what ways will this benefit and\/or complicate the way reporting is completed?<\/p>\n

To answer these questions, one important aspect that must be investigated is how actors both at the domestic and national levels impact the policy making process. EITI is a coalition of governments, companies and civil society groups \u2013 all who play important roles in shaping the organization. As our research continues, I am particularly interested in investigating how these actors engage with each other to formulate policy as well as the regional variations between how EITI member countries implement them.<\/p>\n

I hope from this experience to future my knowledge not only in the field of policy work and transparency initiatives but also to expand my knowledge of the Asia Pacific Region. My current research looks at EITI Compliant Country Indonesia in order to create a comparative framework which will allow us to assess how different member countries are adapting to local level reporting. While much work lies ahead of us, I am most definitely excited for the journey to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin Kwan, MAAPPS \/\/ Jan 26, 2015 Asia\u2019s rise in the 21st century has been commonly characterized by the dominance of the region\u2019s major powers such as China, Japan, South Korea and India. Far too often overlooked however is the important presence of Mongolia. Situated between both Russia to the north and China to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29441,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[322977,2247],"tags":[1024,1201598,9020,1201593],"class_list":["post-987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-reflections","category-weekly-reflections","tag-indonesia","tag-justin-kwan","tag-mongolia","tag-subnational-reporting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maapps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maapps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maapps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maapps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29441"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maapps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maapps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":988,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maapps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions\/988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maapps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maapps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maapps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}