The Natural Resource Charter is a global initiative to assist governments and societies of countries rich in non-renewable natural resources to effectively govern those resources in a way that generates economic growth, promotes the welfare of the population and is environmentally sustainable.
The Charter is made up of 12 best practice principles, which cover the sequence of choices faced by governments in relation to resource extraction. These range from how to create the right environment for responsible investment, to fiscal terms, contracts, institutions and regulations, to macroeconomic management and strategies for sustainable development. The Natural Resource Charter has also developed an assessment framework, allowing governments and societies to assess their performance in natural resource governance according to the 12 precepts. In 2012 this assessment framework was piloted in Nigeria by a group of Nigerian civil society specialists on the petroleum sector, leading to the publication of an assessment report with traffic light scoring according to the precepts of the Charter. In 2011 the Charter was adopted by the

African Union The African Union (AU) is a continental union consisting of 55 member states located on the continent of Africa. The AU was announced in the Sirte Declaration in Sirte, Libya, on 9 September 1999, calling for the establishment of the Africa ...

Heads of State steering committee for the

New Partnership for Africa's Development The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is an economic development program of the African Union. NEPAD was adopted at the 37th session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in July 2001 in Lusaka, Zambia. NEPAD aims to p ...

as a flagship Natural Resource Governance Programme starting in 2012.

History

The Charter document was initially written by a group of leading experts on natural resource governance including

Paul Collier Sir Paul Collier, (born 23 April 1949) is a British development economist who serves as the Professor of Economics and Public Policy in the Blavatnik School of Government and the director of the International Growth Centre. He currently is a ...

Michael Spence Andrew Michael Spence (born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian-American economist and Nobel laureate. Spence is the William R. Berkley Professor in Economics and Business at the Stern School of Business at New York University, and the Philip H. Kn ...

, Robert Conrad and

Anthony Venables Anthony James Venables, CBE, (born 25 April 1953), is a British economist and the BP Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics, University of Oxford. Venables is known as one of the pioneers of New economic geography. He co-author ...

amongst other senior economists, lawyers and political scientists. It received input from a range of stakeholders during a 12-month public consultation prior to the launch of the Charter in 2010. A second edition was published by the Natural Resource Governance Institute in 2014, with drafting led by Jim Cust and David Manley.https://resourcegovernance.org/sites/default/files/documents/nrcj1193_natural_resource_charter_19.6.14.pdf

People

The Natural Resource Charter is led by an oversight board chaired by former Mexican president

Ernesto Zedillo Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (; born 27 December 1951) is a Mexican economist and politician. He was 61st president of Mexico from 1 December 1994 to 30 November 2000, as the last of the uninterrupted 71-year line of Mexican presidents from t ...

, and joined by Abdulatif Al-Hamad,

Luisa Diogo Luisa (Italian and Spanish), Luísa (Portuguese) or Louise ( French) is a feminine given name; it is the feminine form of the given name Louis (Luis), the French form of the Frankish Chlodowig (German Ludwig), from the Germanic elements ''hlod ...

Mo Ibrahim Mohammed "Mo" Ibrahim ( ar, محمد إبراهيم; born 3 May 1946) is a Sudanese-British billionaire businessman. He worked for several telecommunications companies, before founding Celtel, which when sold had over 24 million mobile phone s ...

, and Shengman Zhang. The work of the Charter secretariat and updates to the document were guided by a Technical Advisory Group of international experts, chaired by

References

{{Natural resources Natural resource management