Natural Resource Charter Benchmarking Framework: 170 Crucial Questions for Resource-Rich Countries

An earlier version of this blog appeared on the NRGI website on 17 October 2016.

Resource-countries face a specific set of governance challenges in making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. A new public tool produced by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) can be used to determine these challenges, and help identify priority areas for reform.

The Natural Resource Charter Benchmarking Framework is 170 questions that you and your government should be asking about natural resource governance. With these questions, you can benchmark management of oil, gas and mineral resources in your country against best practices. Covering the entire range of decisions a government must make to ensure that a country’s resources fuel development and benefit society, these questions are ideal to structure research, discussion and strategy.

The framework is based on the principles of the Natural Resource Charter, itself a product of careful deliberation and consultation with hundreds of experts and practitioners in resource-rich countries. Initiated in 2011 with Oxford Policy Management, the framework we present today is the product of five years of testing in more than 15 country projects. It takes into account the results of a recent evaluation of Natural Resource Charter programming. Among the users we are proud to include the governments of Tanzania and Sierra Leone, coalitions of non-governmental actors in Nigeriaand Myanmar, and political parties in Ghana.

Using the framework across the world, so far

So, how do you use it? As the map shows, the framework is applicable in a variety of situations. From desk research, training plans and cross-stakeholder dialogues to government strategy and its implementation. And we are confident that there might be even more ways to use the framework. This is why we have made the framework public (with an open license for use) and established a helpdesk to support users. In case you want to copy and adapt questions for your own work, we have an Excel version. Each question has guidance on why the question is relevant, an explanation of concepts and further considerations to help structure answers.

The concern that many people have about the proliferation of standards and initiatives is one we take seriously. We have, therefore, tried to make sure that this framework builds on what others have already achieved. We have linked the framework to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, World Bank and IMF indicators, the African Mining Vision and many more. The framework also complements the Resource Governance Index, an NRGI tool that compares governance across resource-rich countries. With the publication of the next edition in 2017, you will be able to use the framework questions to drill deeper into challenges that the index identifies.

Now, it’s over to you.

We encourage you to experiment with the framework for yourselves and we look forward to hearing how you get on. Feel free to email us at nrc-support@resourcegovernance.org with questions, ideas for collaboration and suggestions for improvements.