Extractive Resource Governance Research Articles

The governance costs of legislating under a certificate of urgency in Tanzania's mining sector

Extractive resource governance is a contested terrain all across the world because of the high value ascribed to the extractive resources and the conflicting interests that surround their extraction. Although resource governance is determined by policy, legal, regulatory and fiscal regimes, the process by which the legislative framework is put in place is important. This paper draws on the Tanzania experience to examine the governance implications of fast-tracked extractive legislative processes. The paper shows that a combination of electoral politics, the fear of manipulation by the international capital and the legacy of socialist ideology has consistently pushed Tanzania to make extractive laws certificates of urgency. This has severely impacted on the sector's governance in several ways including exacerbating the sectors unpredictability and instability and costing the country heavily in addressing the outcomes of fast-tracked legislative reforms. This calls for a rethink of Tanzania's government strategy for extractive resources legislative reforms.

Relative Abundance in the Land of Oil: Reorganization of Extractive Resource Governance in Decentralizing Indonesia

This study aims to examine the governance of extractive resources by the state as an axis of development at the national and subnational levels. This study focuses on Indonesia and Bojonegoro Regency as the main unit of analysis. Using the method of historical sociology, this article argues that the institutional capacity of the state in the governance of extractive resources, particularly oil, depends on the extent to which the mechanisms of autonomy and distribution of state power are reorganized to achieve developmental transformation. The combination of historical evidence not only adds to the theoretical understanding of state social power but also contributes to development theory by adding a historical dimension. As a country with abundant natural resources, Indonesia has faced challenges in the governance of extractive resources since colonial times. The abundance of natural resources is not always linear with development outcomes in each period of governance. Indonesia has seventeen oil and gas-producing provinces. However, the resource curse still applies in eight provinces where the number of poor people is higher than the national average. The governance of Indonesia's extractive industries is no longer monopolized by the national government but involves subnational governments. Politically, many local governments have complained that the process of calculating, distributing and reporting oil and gas revenue-sharing funds often creates tensions between central and local governments. Synergies between the state and civil society in the governance of extractive resources are needed to accelerate development transformation. Historical experience shows that the limited distributive power of civil society in extractive resource governance hinders the process of accelerating development transformation in Indonesia.

Local Content Requirements in Nigeria's Extractive Sector and the Implications for Sustainable Development

AbstractThis article examines the framework of Nigeria's local content laws and policy, and the implications for sustainable development. The legislation is geared towards safeguarding local productivity and aiding the progressive aspirations of Nigeria's citizens. While commendable in principle, there have been questions about policy articulation, implementation and enforcement mechanisms, especially with regard to the Sustainable Development Goals. The article examines the local content legislation in Nigeria, and how policies have shaped the community-corporate nexus. This exposes the challenges facing extractive resource governance in a jurisdiction such as Nigeria and the discourses that have permeated legal scholarship on the practical deference to local content by non-state actors. It considers that well designed and implemented local content requirements are catalysts for structural development. To achieve sustainable development of its extractive sector, Nigeria requires state-led determination to stimulate economic growth and development. The article argues for continuous consultation as a bedrock for meaningful engagement.

Resource nationalism and community engagement in extractive resource governance: insights from Tanzania

ABSTRACT Resource nationalism has dominated resource governance politics across Africa. Resource-rich states have sought to both relegitimise extraction and secure more economic benefits. However, there is a paucity of studies on the consequences of resource nationalism for community participation in resource-governance and decision-making processes. Drawing on three cases of community resistance and negotiation in three different eras, this paper compares two waves of resource nationalism, i.e. the second and third waves, to show whether and how resource nationalism promotes community participation. While presenting itself as pro-participatory governance, resource nationalism reproduces structural constraints on meaningful community engagement in extractive resource governance.

Enhancing Extractive Resource Governance in Ghana and Nigeria under Fragmented Policy Landscape and Limited Resource Scenarios: Insight from the Barrow Framework

Policy coherence is key to ensuring that the wellbeing of society is achieved within an environment that guarantees sustainable production and consumption patterns. From a conceptual lens of the Barrow Framework, we examine governance lapses in extractive resource governance and explore mechanisms for integrating policy coherence, environmental sustainability and strengthening governance arrangements in Ghana and Nigeria. The Barrow Framework’s Index Score (BAR-X) employs Multi-Criteria Decision-Making analysis in a focus group discussion and Policy Coherence Analysis to identify policy gaps and prioritize institutions, socioeconomic and environmental themes. Policy coherence analysis of Ghana and Nigeria from the BAR-X showed an overall performance of 34 % and 30 % respectively falling far below the minimum expected score of 80 %. We demonstrate that resource governance policies of Ghana and Nigeria do not adequately address the tripod of institutional efforts, developmental load and the biospherical pivot. Under extremely limited resource conditions, it is recommended that civil society/non-profit organisations, financial institutions and regional institutions are supported with proceeds from extractive resources to particularly promote agroecology, technology and innovation towards maintaining ecological balance through preservation, protection, conservation and the reduction of ecological and carbon footprints.

ICT, citizen engagement and the governance of extractive resources in Tanzania: Documenting the practice and challenges

Citizen engagement is one way of improving the governance of extractive resources and overcoming the resource curse. Academic research on Tanzania's extractive resource governance has shown that meaningful offline citizen engagement remains a troubling area mainly because of how it is framed by the government and the measures it takes to suppress organised community initiatives for engagement. Can government use of ICT promote citizen engagement? This paper asks one major question: how do governments deploy ICTs to create and/or constrain opportunities for active citizen engagement in extractives decision-making and governance processes? In answering this question, the paper examines how the Tanzanian government uses ICTs to engage with citizens in extractives decision-making and governance processes and whether this engagement really empowers citizens to influence resource governance decisions. The paper shows that much as the government uses ICT to inform the public about extractives development, it equally takes measures-political and legal- to ensure that meaningful citizen engagement does not evolve. This calls for a nuanced analysis of the potential role of ICT in promoting citizen engagement in governance processes.

Performing accountability in petroleum resource governance in a shrinking democratic space: The case of Tanzania

Accountability is a multifaceted concept fraught with ambiguity. In contributing to the critical literature on transparency and accountability, this paper explores how accountability in extractive resource governance is conceived and re-shaped as a consequence of the changing political context in the host country, using recent experiences in the emerging petroleum industry in Tanzania as the case. Based on a qualitative research design, the paper argues that the presentation of “accountability” is contextual, malleable, and ambiguous because it must satisfy both international standards and local political requirements. In the shrinking democratic space in Tanzania, accountability is defined and anchored in the context of a particularistic and historicised ideology in contrast to the universal principles upon which the international accountability regime is based. Interestingly, the two divergent principles of accountability co-exist and are accommodated in the same discourse on accountability mechanisms in the nascent petroleum industry in Tanzania, which is possible because ambiguity is inherent in the concept of accountability. Thus, resource governance accountability in Tanzania should be viewed and analysed as a dual process and not as mutually understood and accepted institutions and practices.

Elsewhere and otherwise: Indigeneity and the politics of exclusion in Labrador's extractive resource governance

Indigenous peoples have fought for recognition and inclusion in state-driven resource governance in Labrador for generations. At the same time, the settler state has tried to limit their inclusion by restricting the boundaries of indigeneity. By arguing that Indigenous peoples are not present in the project area or are not doing "traditional" activities, it aims to exclude some groups from the decision-making, monitoring, and benefits of extractivist projects. In rendering indigeneity as spatially and economically contained, government and industry pursue settler colonial fantasies of Indigenous erasure and absence.This paper uses a recent public inquiry into the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project as a mechanism to trace how indigeneity has been mobilized in resource conflicts between the state, industry, and numerous Indigenous peoples of the Labrador peninsula since the 18th century. Linking hydroelectric developments with examples of mining, logging, and commercial fishing, the paper explores the dynamic between government efforts to facilitate extractive industry by containing indigeneity and Indigenous assertions of a more flexible and dynamic reality. Instead of abiding to the state's limiting version of indigeneity, the Indigenous peoples of the Labrador peninsula are challenging and reforming environmental governance by demonstrating that they are, in fact, elsewhere and otherwise.

Extractive resource ownership and the subnational resource curse: Insights from Tanzania

The resource curse thesis has dominated much of the recent extractive resource governance literature. Much of the focus on the resource curse has been at the national level around issues of how the curse manifests and what can be done to address it. Recently, a body of literature which scrutinises the resource curse at the subnational level has emerged to address the shortcomings of the mainstream approach to the curse. However, these subnational resource curse studies examine use similar approaches to those of the national resource curse studies—that is, the econometric, political economy and conflict lenses as well as that of decentralisation. This paper draws on insights from Tanzania’s extractive sector to examine how national resource ownership politics influence the occurrence of a resource curse at the subnational level. It argues that national ownership of extractive resources provides the central government with exclusive power to make decisions and shape governance processes which, in turn, trample on subnational community rights over resources and create the conditions for a resource curse at this subnational level. In effect, it shows that weak local governance and national politics combine to make so-called national ownership contribute to the presence of a subnational resource curse.

Transparency initiatives and Tanzania’s extractive industry governance

ABSTRACTThe proper management of natural resources and its proceeds is critical for resource-rich countries. Many resource-rich countries have arguably been plagued by aspects of what scholars call ‘the resource curse’. Overcoming ‘the curse' has thus occupied center stage in studies about extractive resource governance. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has been promoted as having the potential to overcome some aspects of the resource curse especially the ‘rentier politics’. Several countries have adopted and domesticated the initiative. However, studies on transparency present contradictory findings about the usefulness of the initiative. This paper examines Tanzania’s adoption and implementation of transparency in extractive sector governance. The paper examined Tanzania’s EITI implementation process, its reconciliation reports and how these reports are used by the parliament, media and civil society to push for governance improvements in the sector. The review of these key documents found that adoption and implementation of the EITI has improved the extractive sector governance by making it more transparent and accountable.

Untying the Gordian Knot: Re-Assessing the Impact of Business and Human Rights Principles on Extractive Resource Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa

Extractive resource governance has been a challenging task for countries in the Global South. Whereas products of these resources have enhanced the economic development of advanced countries, it has only exacerbated conflicts, fueled ethnic clashes, and further impoverished the citizens in the Global South. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights sought to address these human rights concerns. The Guiding Principles laid the foundation for States duty to protect human rights, businesses’ responsibility to respect human rights and access to remedies for victims of human rights violations. This article argues that while African leaders have consistently found themselves as mendicants at the mercy of the Global North community in solving their problems, they should look inwards by implementing laws and policies aimed at addressing Africa’s weak extractive resource governance. The article considers various approaches in ensuring that local communities actively participate in resource management. It will further describe the human rights questions and challenges facing current international business and human rights regimes and thereafter show how these approaches could create an avenue for seeking a heterodox solution that takes into consideration the cross cutting synergies among business, human rights, and effective implementation of policy measures aimed at positive extractive resource governance.

A Re-Assessment of the Impact and Potency of Traditional Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Post-Conflict Africa

Traditional means of settling conflicts were widely accepted and preferred before the advent of colonial rule. During that period, it was a common tradition that no appeal could come out from disputes resolved. This is partly due to the fact that those judgments were given by elders, and in African tradition, people feared and believed in the repertoire of wisdom and knowledge coming from the elders. Thus, their decision would never be questioned. With the advent of colonial administration, the socio-cultural, political and economic life of most African communities were greatly impacted. African values and beliefs which provided the foundational basis for conflict resolution eroded and became weakened. Though, in today’s Africa, the African systems still retains legitimacy and occupy a prime place in justice administration, there is a growing conflict between Africa’s legal traditions, elders impact on dispute resolution and western styled imposed judicial systems. This paper is a re-assessment of the different approaches to conflict resolution in contemporary African societies. It argues for the recognition of these traditional approaches in laws and policies and the impact of oath-taking in administration of justice. It considers that traditional dispute resolution could be the lens for resolving the too many conflicts arising from extractive resource governance in Africa. A return to the age long tradition of settling disputes is recommended.

The feasibility of implementing the United Nations guiding principles on business and human rights in the extractive industry in Nigeria

Extractive resource governance has been a challenging task for resource-rich countries in Africa. It has fuelled civil wars, ethnic clashes and underdevelopment in this region. This has turned the so-called resource wealth into resource curse. To address this particularly nauseating challenge, the international community came together to adopt the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (GPs). Polarised debate on whether the GPs should be binding or voluntary has slowed down the effective implementation of the Principles. This article argues that while the GPs have been the latest attempt at regulating multinational companies (MNCs), greater emphasis should be placed on the readiness of states to domesticate the Principles. To achieve this, the paper explores various approaches through which the GPs can be crafted into national legislation. It also investigates the different methods through which states can ensure that corporations systemically respect human rights obligations in their areas of operation. In order to restore faith in the whole process, it is necessary to examine how human rights principles can be mainstreamed into corporate practice locally. No doubt, rights-based frameworks, such as the GPs, are needed to ensure that human rights are streamlined in business’ projects, policies, and agreements throughout the various stages, including preparation, funding, implementation and monitoring. The issue of corporate liability under international law has had its troubled history, thus, this article argues that MNCs have a heightened responsibility to respect the human rights of the local communities in resourcerich, war-torn zones, particularly in sub-Saharan African, using Nigeria as focal point.Keywords: Guiding principles, business, human rights, multinational companies (MNCs)

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Transparency in Extractive Resource Governance: A Nigerian Case Study

Nigeria has been acclaimed as a model for the implementation of the principles established under the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). The goal of the principles is to promote accountability and effective management of resource revenues, which in turn would result in improvements in public welfare and better developmental outcomes, such as a more equitable distribution of wealth, improved socio-economic conditions, and poverty alleviation. However, a look at the socioeconomic condition in Nigeria raises questions regarding the impact of the achievements of NEITI on public welfare. Corruption remains endemic in the oil and gas industry, the sector on which the implementation of the EITI principles has been almost entirely focused. This article analyzes Nigeria’s experience with the implementation of NEITI with a view to theorizing about the reasons behind the lack of, or minimal, improvements in the lives of ordinary Nigerians as well as the persistence of corruption despite Nigeria’s acclaimed achievements in EITI implementation. The article argues that while EITI is an important driver of economic progress in Nigeria, it should not be viewed as enough to overcome the broader problems hindering improvements in public welfare. Other factors are necessary to translate the gains of EITI into visible public welfare improvements. The article identifies those factors and analyzes how they hold back the gains of EITI in Nigeria as well as its implications for emerging extractive countries signing or considering signing up with EITI.