Natural Resources and Violent Conflict - WaterWiki.net

who gets the money? 81Whatever approach is taken, consulting and engaging companies arecrucial. Such consultation already is occurring in several forums, notonly in the context of initiatives mentioned here but also within theWorld Bank’s extractive industries review. In addition, industry-internalprocesses on this issue are under way, including in the oil company umbrellaorganization, the International Petroleum Industry EnvironmentalConservation Association. Such initiatives should be encouraged.Issuing Credible and Publicly Available Estimatesof Host-Country RevenuesTo be useful as a deterrent against mismanagement of funds, reportedinformation should be made publicly available. Thus information providedto home governments by international oil companies ultimatelymust be aggregated and made available to host-country citizens. Thiscould be done by a reputable nongovernmental organization or an internationalorganization, perhaps via the Internet. Ideally, this wouldinclude summary tables allowing countries to be compared. Suchinformation should also be made available in languages used by thecitizens of key host countries.While waiting for detailed information to be provided throughcompany or host-country reporting, it may be possible to providesome independent revenue estimates for many host governments, forexample, based on known production, average market prices, andsome simple, conservative assumptions on the percentage of productionthat accrues to the government. In order to ensure credibility, theassumptions behind the calculations should be explained in detail andbacked up by robust research. This does not mean that the method ofcalculation would have to differ by country; in fact, a simple, commonapproach may even be more effective.The approach should be conservative, designed to ensure that, inmost cases, actual revenues likely are higher than the estimates. Thepoint is to show populations in nontransparent host countries theorder of magnitude of their governments’ income from the extractionand export of natural resources.If a host government disagrees with the estimate, it must provide itsown figures. But if a government claims that it did not receive as muchas the estimate, the host-country public can legitimately ask why thegovernment did not obtain at least the “minimum international standardrent” from exploitation of its resources.Further useful information for host-country publics could beprovided by including estimates of government health and educationspending calculated by reputable international organizations such as