Natural Resources and Violent Conflict - WaterWiki.net

80 swanson, oldgard, and lundeof payments as a condition for company listings. A related approach isto amend existing reporting requirements in oil companies’ home governments.Many home governments already require companies to makean aggregated statement of payments to foreign governments; thechange would require them to disaggregate that reporting by country.If mandatory reporting is attempted in an uncoordinated fashion,one could effectively transfer the collective action problem from companiesto stock markets or home governments. This is why, whatever thetactical approach taken (for example, stock market listing requirementsor other company filings), there should be a coordinated approachamong home governments. The U.K. government’s efforts to catalyzeglobal action in the context of the Extractive Industries TransparencyInitiative are an important step in this direction.Such coordination could be attempted in more formal waysthrough the OECD or multilateral bodies like the United Nations orthe World Bank. A model could be the antibribery convention andother similar OECD agreements that have obligated each membergovernment to introduce certain common domestic legislation, thusleveling the playing field. Home governments could use the OECD asa forum to negotiate an agreement to introduce common legislation tolevel the playing field for company reporting. This would make changinghome-country jurisdictions less tempting. Such an agreementwould have to specify a clear and consistent approach regarding thenature and level of aggregation of payments to be disclosed.A possible problem with mandatory company reporting is that it isunlikely to include companies from developing countries that couldprovide credible and less demanding alternatives to OECD-based companies.However, the OECD antibribery convention could providea precedent, since several non-OECD countries participated in itsnegotiation.Unfortunately, multilateral negotiations often are very timeconsuming.Attaching a company reporting agreement to an existinginstrument could allow it to take advantage of existing infrastructureand protocols, which potentially could speed the process of negotiation.Nevertheless, success ultimately will depend on the political willof the negotiators.It is sometimes easier to get an agreement among a smaller group ofkey countries. Thus another interesting vehicle could be the G-8, whichencompasses the home governments of almost all major OECD oil companies,in addition to Russia. Agreement within the G-8 probably couldgo much of the way toward solving the collective action problem or atleast could provide political momentum to fast track an agreementamong a larger group of countries, for example, through the OECD.