Transparency, Identity, and Governance of High-Value Natural Resources

In order to improve natural resource governance and social development, a number of poor but resource-rich countries have undertaken transparency initiatives to publicize information about the management of high-value natural resources and their revenues. Although such initiatives have successfully increased the amount of information available to stakeholders, there is little evidence that they have achieved their intended governance or social goals. By seeking to find out why, TIGRe addresses a number of gaps in the current literature and will advance scientific understanding of transparency and natural resource governance. TIGRe seeks to:

• Identify steps in the process that leads from information disclosure to better resource governance that are not well understood theoretically or that have not been validated empirically
• Subject these steps to rigorous empirical testing
• Develop a theory of change for the transparency process.

The project draws on interviews, surveys, and register data, and will employ a range of qualitative and quantitative methods, including impact evaluation. To obtain an in-depth understanding of specific sociopolitical environments, the country-specific parts of the project will focus on Ghana and Indonesia.

The project will provide potentially transformative insights into the role of transparency in natural resource management for national governments, local communities, nongovernmental organizations, media, extractive industry associations and companies, donors, and international agencies.

The research is carried out by an established international team with backgrounds in economics, development studies, geography, law, political science, and policy making and consultation.

For more information about the project, partners and publications, see TIGRe project homepages.