Extractives, Equity and Conflict: Lessons from work at local, national and international levels

Tuesday, February 14th
9.30am to 11.30am

Kenney Auditorium
Johns Hopkins SAIS
Nitze Building
1740 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20036

Forum Details:

Researchers have documented that dependence on exploitation of natural resources “substantially increases the risk of civil war.” This is the curse of plenty. However, this does not have to be the case. Oil, gas, and minerals exploitation can fuel equitable development and help people raise themselves from poverty. Poorly managed exploitation of these valuable natural resources and inequitable appropriation of the enormous wealth they generate can mire a country in poverty and exacerbate underlying inequalities which can fuel corruption and violent conflict. In too many developing countries, people living near the extractive industry operations see little benefit from the extraction of this national wealth. Instead they bear a disproportionate share of the costs: environmental contamination and health risks, degraded livelihood security, ruptured social fabric and conflict (Extractives and Equity: An Introductory Overview and Case Studies from Peru, Angola and Nigeria (2011) Edited by Tom Bamat, Aaron Chassy and Rees Warne, CRS page 1).

Panel members will discuss trends and lessons learned in work on equity and the impacts of extractives industries (oil, gas and mining) in developing countries and will particularly highlight the effects on conflict. Rees Warne (Catholic Relief Services) will draw on recent research sponsored by Catholic Relief Services to discuss actions being taken by civil society organizations, communities and the Catholic Church in resource-rich countries to reduce negative impacts and increase local benefits from extractive companies’ operations. Prof. Peter Rosenblum (Columbia Law School) will situate the focus on conflict minerals within the larger international movements on natural resource exploitation and address the need for integrating the conflict mineral discussion with other work on the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Isabel Munilla (US Publish What You Pay coalition) will discuss legal frameworks with international reach that aim to improve transparency of oil, gas and mining revenues paid to governments as a step towards increasing government accountability for the spending of national natural resource wealth.

Free copies of the publication Extractives and Equity: An Introductory Overview and Case Studies from Peru, Angola and Nigeria (2011) will be available at the CPRF.

Register here:

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/6060/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=33897

Speakers:

Rees Warne

Rees is the Senior Technical Advisor for Resource Governance at Catholic Relief Services (CRS), where she also spent 5 years as Policy Advisor for Extractive Industries, supporting advocacy and projects in developing countries. For the past 20 years she has worked in multi-party conflict management, and at CRS she has focused on building bridges among communities, government and the private sector. Before rejoining CRS, she was the Director of Conflict Management and Consensus-building for Innovative Resources Management. She has also worked for the World Bank, the UN, international development NGOs, and local NGOs in developing countries. She holds an M.S. Agricultural and Resource Economics and is completing her dissertation for Ph.D. in Development Sociology, both from Cornell University.

Peter Rosenblum

Peter is the Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein Clinical Professor in Human Rights at Columbia Law School. He spent 7 years with the Harvard Law School, Human Rights Program, worked with the UN, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch and Global Rights, consulted for The Carter Center, and was an associate at Baker & McKenzie in Chicago. He has worked with local human rights groups in Asia, Africa and Latin America and undertaken research and advocacy with his students at Columbia in Chad, Liberia, Peru, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, and Equatorial Guinea. (A.B., Columbia, 1982; J.D., Northwestern, 1986; LL.M., Columbia, 1992; D.E.A. with distinction, University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), 1992.)

Isabel Munilla

Isabel is the Director of Publish What You Pay United States, a coalition of faith-based, human rights, anti-poverty, anti-corruption and development organizations that pushes for transparency in the payments made by the oil, gas and mining sectors to governments. Isabel leads the coalition’s advocacy for improved policies within the US government, multinational companies, and international financial institutions and supports its work on the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative. She led the coalition’s drive to pass Dodd-Frank Section 1504 on transparency of extractive industry payments to governments and subsequent work with the SEC on rulemaking. Previously, Isabel spent 9 years at the World Resources Institute. She holds degrees in French and Journalism (University of Maryland, College Park).

Moderator:

Raymond Gilpin

Raymond directs United States Institute of Peace’s Center for Sustainable Economies where he leads the Institute’s work on analyzing relationships among economic actors during all stages of conflict (including prevention, mediation, resolution and post-conflict). He teaches the Economics and Conflict course at the USIP Academy and manages the Web-based International Network for Economics and Conflict. Previously, he served as: academic chair for defense economics at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University; director for International Programs at Intellibridge Corporation; senior economist at the African Development Bank Group; research director at the Central Bank of Sierra Leone and an economist at the World Bank. He holds a doctorate from Cambridge University in Economics and an Executive Certificate in international finance and capital markets from Georgetown University.