The quest for transparency spans countries, policymakers, NGOs, and industries.1 Transparency can be defined as disclosing to the public, in a timely and reliable manner, information that governments and/or corporations previously considered confidential. Recent examples include the Carbon Disclosure Project, the Aarhus convention on access to environmental information, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and its provisions on global genetically modified organism flows, and a wide array of financial information (e.g., in the G8 declaration of Lough Erne in 2013). Stemming from the “right to know,” advocates from NGOs and development organizations view transparency as a cure for corruption and a benefit for democratic accountability; transparency should lead to stakeholder empowerment and improve legitimacy, learning, investment certainty, and better governance.In this article I look at the efforts to establish financial transparency as a norm for the extractive sector. This sector is important because its activities are accompanied by a high level of corruption, especially in resource-rich developing countries. I show that those efforts are not enough and there is good evidence to demand more. I argue that such transparency norms should be extended to environmental pressures in order to facilitate progress on the circular economy and resource efficiency. My conclusions point at synergies between knowledge generation across financial and environmental information.Milestones toward a politics of transparency have already been reached:• The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)2 is a coalition of governments, companies, civil society groups, investors, and international organizations. Its global standard requires disclosure of corporate payments to governments and related government revenues. Country reports are public and undergo independent verification. As of December 2013, twenty-four countries were EITI-compliant; the reported payments total around US $1 trillion.• The 2010 US Dodd-Frank Act3 aims to regulate the financial markets. Section 1502 contains rules on the use of conflict minerals4 by stock exchange-listed companies, while Section 1504 contains rules on transparency in the extractive industry. Companies must submit annual reports to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, disclosing payments made to governments at both the country (including sub-national) level and the project level. In August 2012, the commission adopted the long-awaited rules for implementation.• In June, 2013, the European Parliament (EP)5 decided on transparency rules for the extractive industries—including the forestry sector—that are quite comparable to those of the SEC. All payments above €100,000 made to federal, national, and regional governments will be published. Small and medium-sized firms are exempted from those new provisions. Though a few parts of the final version were weaker than the draft, the EP removed the “tyrant’s veto;” this clause exempts companies from reporting where a host country’s criminal law bans such disclosure.The nongovernmental organizations Global Witness, Oxfam, and Publish What You Pay are particularly active in pushing the transparency agenda. The International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have long supported transparency and have their own transparency guidelines since the early 2000s. Today, all major mining companies support the EITI, and over eighty institutional investors, who collectively manage assets in excess of US$19 trillion, have declared their support.However, none of the major emerging countries (e.g., Brazil, Russia, India, China) has signed on to the EITI. The attitude toward transparency in these countries makes international analysis of transparency in the extractive industries and due diligence6 in the supply chain far more difficult.7Transparency goes beyond due diligence by enabling access to information that was previously confidential, and thus exposes multinational companies to reputational losses. Experience with implementing the transparency rules reveals a willingness to learn. Initial skepticism about the EITI8 appears unfounded, as the EITI has suspended some countries’ membership for non-compliance. At the other end of the spectrum, Guinea, Ghana, and Liberia have actually outperformed the standards. Over time, the indicators and evaluation criteria have improved. The EITI, in cooperation with its partners, also offers training programs and engages in capacity building. All its reports have been published and were evaluated in early 2012. In May 2013, the EITI agreed on a new and improved set of standards.The backlash against these initiatives, however, should not be underestimated. Some industry players are concerned about competitive disadvantages, mainly with regard to compliance costs and disclosure of sensitive commercial information.9 By participating in the EITI, some firms may also pursue strategic interests. The next years are likely to be challenging10 as state-owned enterprises from emerging economies have competitive advantages, so mining companies are now seeking to secure their positions by developing new business models and establishing reputational advantages.In crisis regions, however, it is unclear whether transparency creates incentives for the establishment of democratic and inclusive institutions and sustainable development, or if fragile states more likely to be in thrall to criminal organizations and authoritarian structures. Much will depend on the mobilization of political will as well as on dissemination of those regulations in more G20 countries and/or at stock exchanges.Longer-term challenges begin with non-compliance and enforcement. Some major emerging economies may continue to evade transparency standards; the market power of China in particular could hamper international coordination.11 Such weak links also impede promotion of resource efficiency along international value chains.Regarding resource use, challenges lie primarily in dealing with the resource nexus,12 i.e., the global interaction between the various resources required to produce fuel and energy feed stocks, industrial inputs, and food. While energy–water–food is a much-discussed nexus, this interaction applies to mineral resources and land use as well, forcing extractive industries to address the resource nexus. Accordingly, as expressed by the 2013 G8 declaration, land transactions should be transparent and respect the rights of local communities; this may include a right to water and food security.Ultimately, the issue is about property rights and benefit sharing. In 2011, the revenue from Nigeria’s oil industry was 60 percent higher than total official development assistance for the sub-Saharan African countries. Ghana, where mining revenues for the state quadrupled from 2010 to 2011, demonstrates potential achievements if all partners agree. In Latin America, extractive industry revenue represents a growing and important share of total government revenue: about one-third in Bolivia and Ecuador; 20 percent in Peru; and 13 percent in Colombia.13 Should such increase in revenues become a worldwide trend, opportunities for public investments spurring a sustainable and inclusive growth will be tremendous.Energy and mining companies are traditionally in a strong negotiating position in resource-rich developing countries, as reflected in many of the contracts concluded. However, this is changing. The 2012 nationalization of a subsidiary of Spain’s Repsol in Argentina underlined the shift in power toward the major extractive countries. The International Bar Association drafted a model mining development agreement, which aims to achieve a balance of interests. In Africa, new regional organizations such as the African Minerals Development Centre, the African Legal Support Facility, and the African Tax Administration Forum are emerging to support better natural resource governance with enhanced transparency.In one possible risk scenario the emerging economies won’t be engaged and a transparency divide deepens between supply chains that manage resources sustainably and others that do not. Such divide will weaken implementation and enforcement in the US and the EU considerably. Such a scenario likely increases environmental impacts associated with extractive industries and material-intensive value chains, because failures to implement transparency norms are likely to be accompanied by implementation deficits in environmental norms. The existing links between illegal trade markets of all kinds (drugs, trafficking, resources, etc.), organized crime, terrorism, and poor governance would also become stronger, affecting whole regions that may become ungovernable. The security dimensions of supply chains, international relations, human rights, and the environment are mutually reinforcing a resource curse.14 Needless to say, all efforts to establish a circular economy and improve resource efficiency will face an uphill battle in such a risk scenario.Another scenario may grasp the opportunities of alleviating poverty, achieving sustainable fiscal systems and implementing better governance in resource-rich developing countries. This would encourage better monitoring of environmental pressures and material flows,15 and would establish best practices for extractive industries regarding energy and water use. Establishing green sovereign wealth funds from resource revenues that potentially leverage investments in clean energy and resource efficiency from assets worth approximately US$3 trillion in 201116—estimated to be twice as high as global hedge fund assets—would create a difference for regional development. Such a scenario would include positive side effects for supply chain security, lower price volatility, and stable expectations that favor resource efficiency for manufacturing industries and other eco-innovations.17 With resource revenues dwarfing development aid, it is realistic to assume that a robust extractive industry and investment in sustainable development could offer promising economic prospects for the one hundred or so resource-rich developing countries and their 3.5 billion people.In both scenarios, the future of EITI is decisive. This organization has produced success in recent years. Existing US and EU regulations may replace some of its function; much could be gained, however, if EITI extends its reach to public expenditures and environmental indicators such as the use of energy and water and mining waste, and builds alliances to become accepted in emerging economies. To strengthen policies, EITI may use its national stakeholder groups for deliberation processes on those issues and to develop national action plans for sustainable resource management.The quest for more transparency comes from many actors and receives broad support, but stronger coordination and leadership is required. Transparency’s potential to inform and empower is key, but transparency is just one avenue to better resource governance.18 A driving force to include key environmental indicators could be the vision of increasing revenues and public investments for green economies in resource-rich developing countries, with global prosperity stemming from increasing resource efficiency and lowering environmental risks along international value chains.Given recent successes on the transparency agenda, it is not only essential to ask for more, but also feasible to get more (Figure 1); I propose the following pillars for more transparency and better environmental politics:• All financial transactions in extractive activities should be disclosed, including those related to state-owned companies and sovereign wealth funds. Transparency should be extended to relevant contracts and, indeed, all public expenditures.• Downstream, efforts should include the markets for recycling and disposal, and key value chains for resource-intensive product groups. This would also give incentives to increase resource efficiency.19• Transparency efforts should reach out to emerging economies, while the EITI stakeholder processes could promote national action plans for sustainable resource management.• An international, accessible data hub on resource use should be established, to include core data on geological services and other organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, International Energy Agency, and the Joint Organisations Data Initiative on oil and gas as well as data on environmental pressures from use of energy, resource, and water, and coefficients for resource-intensive areas of production.• Resource-rich developing countries should be encouraged to introduce extraction taxes and support new fiscal systems20 to leverage investments into sustainable consumption and production. UNEP’s International Resource Panel, the Natural Resource Charter, and other tools21 might also be helpful in establishing better governance.Key flanking policy initiatives at the international level could include a multi-stakeholder forum for sustainable resource use,22 an international metal covenant23 to promote recycling and material flow management with industry involvement, and, over the longer term, an international agreement on sustainable resource management with indicators and possibly incentives and targets for lowering environmental pressure from resource use.While the purpose of this forum is to stimulate debate, academics may also be encouraged to carry out more in-depth research. Given the improvements in data availability and the incoming implementation reports, evidence-based research can obviously benefit. Three areas seem especially important: (1) drivers and barriers for companies and other market-based actors in their decision-making about future resource investments and compliance with transparency rules; (2) comparative country analyses on better resource governance and the role of transparency with all potential improvements as discussed in this forum; (3) the new geopolitics of resources, with strong emerging economies and their state-owned enterprises vis-à-vis the transatlantic partnership favoring transparency and better resource governance.All such research will have an impact on how both financial and environmental transparency may unleash its transformative power along with better governance structures and international politics. However, such fascinating complexity should not hinder researchers from pledging that now is the time to ask for more.