Securing Greater Social Accountability in Natural Resource Management

Abstract

The world is experiencing a historic convergence of increasing demand for natural resources from emerging economies, prices at record levels across various commodity groups, a downward trend in resource supply, serious trends of ecological instability, and the rise of inequality between those who develop and profit from such resources and the communities that host them. As the world convenes in 2012 for the Rio+20 Earth Summit and marks 50 years since the passage of the UN Declaration on Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, natural resources are once again changing the geopolitical landscape of countries around the world. Three and a half billion people—half of the global population—live in 56 resource-rich and resource-dependent developing countries, representing less than one third of the 193 members of the UN. (…)