By Nick Pelosi
Research by the Property and Environment Research Center shows that Native American reservations contain “30% of the coal reserves west of the Mississippi, 50% of potential uranium reserves, and 20% of known oil and gas reserves.” The Council of Energy Resource Tribes estimates the value of these resources at nearly $1.5 trillion. Although a number of tribes are embracing resource extraction as a pathway to economic prosperity, Native Americans and Alaska Natives remain the most impoverished demographic in the country, indicating that federal policies may not be allocating dollars generated from tribal resources as equitably as they should be. Furthermore, debates surrounding what, where, and how much to extract can elicit rifts within communities. In some cases, these problems are exacerbated by minimal transparency requirements for mineral leases on tribal lands.
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), an international standard for openness around the management of natural resource revenues, presents opportunities for Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and other Indigenous Peoples to influence emerging transparency laws and norms in ways that benefit their communities, at the local, national, and international levels. Unfortunately, these opportunities are not being realized to their fullest potential due to limited Indigenous participation. Indigenous Peoples’ disproportionate suffering from the negative impacts of resource extraction is perpetuated by their chronic invisibility in movements for corporate accountability and financial reform.
EITI requires resource companies to disclose revenues paid to governments, and governments to disclose revenues received from resource companies. The two data sets are independently reviewed, and released to the public. To date, 31 countries have achieved EITI compliance, and another 17 are considered EITI candidates. Each country creates its own EITI implementation process adapted to its specific national context.
In September 2011, the US announced intentions to become EITI compliant, and established a Multi Stakeholder Group (MSG) comprised of government, industry, and civil society representatives, to oversee the implementation process, define the reporting scope, and prepare an application for EITI candidacy. The application was submitted to the international EITI board in December 2013, and approved in March 2014.
The MSG is developing a tribal opt-in procedure that will enable tribes to institute voluntary USEITI reporting on revenues received from resource companies. However, this process has been hampered by a lack of tribal representation on the MSG. Initially, Rebecca Adamson (First Peoples Worldwide’s Founder and President) was the only Native American representing civil society, and the three spots allocated for tribal governments were vacant. A representative from the Wind River Reservation recently filled one of those spots, but the others remain unoccupied, despite an open call for nominations.
This is costing Native Americans and Alaska Natives opportunities to have their voices heard in a critical policymaking forum, and suggests that the tribal opt in procedure, once developed, will meet little interest from tribal governments. This would cause the benefits of transparency to go unrealized by Native American and Alaska Native communities, while exempting vast portions of resource revenues from the disclosure requirements being formulated under the USEITI framework.
It is true that tribes must be permitted to enter agreements with reasonable provisions for protective confidentiality. Tribal leaders have expressed legitimate concerns that data collected on natural resource revenues could be used against their communities. In Canada, recent transparency legislation met criticism from Aboriginals who believe the government will justify reduced funding for Aboriginal programs and services based on revenues coming from the private sector. Hayden King, Director of the Centre for Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University, writes that “because of the likely superficial media reporting we can expect many to run with the popular ‘corrupt chief’ narrative to shape their desired policy changes. Many so-called experts on First Nations peoples in the media and politics will generalize to indict all leaders as taxpayer leeches…[and] to call for the erosion of treaties, end of ‘special’ Indian status, privatization of reserves, etc.”
At the same time, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) requires resource projects to obtain Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) from Indigenous Peoples, also defined as “broad community support.” When determining whether to give or withhold consent, community members must have the information they need to gauge whether the economic advantages of resource extraction sufficiently offset the social and environmental costs. As national and tribal governments grapple with the complexities of FPIC implementation, transparency provides a crucial conduit for rallying community consensus around development activities that impact them, and making the principles of UNDRIP a reality.
Transparency must be addressed in ways that balance the tensions between proprietary discretion and public interests, and an essential first step is bringing more tribal voices into the conversation through representation on the MSG. Improved outreach to Native American and Alaska Native communities is key to making this happen. To date, the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ communications about USEITI have embodied its “government to government” relationship with tribes, and are thus siloed from many tribal institutions, community organizations, and individuals that stand to catalyze action on the issue.
Additionally, Indigenous Peoples would benefit from representation on the international EITI board, which currently has no Indigenous members, as well as in national EITI implementation processes in their respective countries. For the international EITI board, each constituency (government, industry, and civil society) organizes its own selection of representatives, with the next call for nominations opening in 2016. If employed the right way, improved transparency would enable Indigenous Peoples to restrict the ability of governments and companies to extract their resources without giving them a fair share of the profits, and reverse longstanding patterns of exploitation that have come to characterize development of their lands.