Natural Resources and Violent Conflict - WaterWiki.net

attracting reputable companies 347Governing the Management of Oil Revenue resulted in the creation ofa revenue management plan (see Rosenblum 2002). The revenue managementplan reserves 80 percent of oil revenue for spending on publichealth, social services, education, and rural development. It will bemonitored by an independent body, the Committee for the Oversightand Monitoring of Oil Revenue, which, in turn, will be subject to thescrutiny of Chad’s increasingly active civil society.Meanwhile, an independent advisory group of five external expertswill report to the World Bank on the implementation of the project.The group will meet twice a year, and its reports are publicly availableon its website. 32The project has proved controversial among international nongovernmentalorganizations, which claim that it will prove socially andenvironmentally destructive, particularly in the forests along the pipelineroute. They have little confidence in the willingness of Chad’s governmentto abide by its promises and argue that there is a strong risk ofcontinuing and deepening corruption as a result of the project. Much oftheir criticism and their lobbying has been directed against the WorldBank rather than the companies.Questions for the Future. The main outstanding concerns relate tothe effectiveness of the project’s oversight mechanisms. For example,Peter Rosenblum of the Harvard Law School Human Rights Programhas questioned whether the oversight committee has as much independencefrom the government as it needs and called for measures tostrengthen its authority, including the hiring of full-time staff and the acquisitionof technical expertise (Rosenblum 2002). He also seeks a morepermanent role for the independent advisory group so that it can interactwith the local population continuously rather than only twice a year.Although these measures would undoubtedly help, Rosenblum comesto the “inescapable conclusion” that the success of the Chad-Cameroonproject “depends on the integrity of those in power and their willingnessto engage in a truly transparent and politically open process.” Thatremains a major challenge, but not a hopeless one.Notes1. Personal interview, January 2003.2. For a discussion of the dynamics of the obsolescing bargain, see Moran(1998, pp. 7–14).3. Personal interview, February 2003.