1.5 Our Approach

This layer is the foundation for comments and diverse views and experiences that are added to the online version by users. In the hard copy, such examples of diverse views and experiences are provided in the text, the footnotes, and endof-chapter suggestions for further reading (“Other Resources”). The online version also provides access to an annotated bibliography, linked to brief summaries of documents, comprising both primary and secondary source material. A further level is provided in the online version by the growing body of attachments containing annotated sample texts and documents, such as laws, model contracts, and actual contracts; commentaries and studies by independent bodies, industry associations, and advocacy groups; and policy documents. This is in turn supplemented by a layer comprising papers on knowledge gaps; these documents have been commissioned by the Sourcebook to address issues that our consultations have identified as inadequately researched or that have acquired a new significance in the existing body of knowledge. The cumulative effect of the layering approach is to allow the user to dig ever more deeply into a particular topic of interest.

1.5 OUR APPROACH

Globally, there are a number of knowledge centers or policy institutes that specialize in the development issues that the Sourcebook has identified as priorities. Usually, these are institutions or units with extensive exposure to societies where there is strong demand for knowledge about EI development. The knowledge centers have provided them with assistance in contract negotiation, on-site workshops, and long-term advice on legal and fiscal arrangements. In virtually all cases, they are responding to a need for additional capacity in the state requesting assistance. Their goal is to apply specialist expertise to specific problems that urgently need to be addressed, and these fall within the categories of the EI Value Chain.

In developing its compendium, the Sourcebook project has taken a first step toward establishing a global knowledge consortium that brings together specialist centers and universities, convenes discussions, and participates in knowledge management. It has showcased their research into the core subjects of the debate on development in the EI sector. The lead partner in the Sourcebook consortium is the University of Dundee’s Centre for Energy, Petroleum, and Mineral Law and Policy in the United Kingdom.

From a core of partners, the Sourcebook consortium has grown to include more than a dozen centers and aims to expand further to ensure a genuinely international collaborative approach. The key criterion for inclusion has been international recognition of the organization’s research relevant to the EI sectors. The disciplines are varied, from economics and law to environmental and policy analysis. As a result, an embryonic international network of diverse institutions with specialist knowledge is now developing. Its goal is to incorporate a set of varied inputs on good practice around the world into the Sourcebook, which lies at the heart of the network.

In its first phase, the international partners included the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining at the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia), the Center for Sustainability in Mining and Industry at the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa), the World Bank and a partnership with the Mining Committee of the International Bar Association (London, United Kingdom). This grouping has developed significantly since the Sourcebook was launched in September 2011. Partners now include WWF International; the Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment, a partnership between Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute at Columbia University (New York); the University of Bourgogne’s Centre de recherche sur le droit des marchés et des investissements internationaux (Center for International Investment Law) (France); the Energy and Minerals Institute at the University of Western Australia; the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative; and the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy (Canada). Civil society groups that have joined include Global Witness, PACT (a not-for-profit international development organization), OpenOil, and the Natural Resource Governance Institute. Leading capacity-building bodies now affiliated include the African Center for Economic Transformation (Accra, Ghana), the Commonwealth Secretariat, Evidence and Lessons from Latin America (ELLA), the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development, and Adam Smith International (London). Well established as the foremost source of standards in transparency are the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. To ensure that the Sourcebook properly accesses industry practice, partnership status has also been given to leading associations of companies in the EI sector or related bodies: the International Council on Mining and Metals, the International Tax and Investment Center, and the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association.

A feature of the research collaboration within the Sourcebook consortium is that a partner may bid for work that fills an identified knowledge gap. Such work may be specially commissioned for inclusion in the online version of

14 OIL, GAS, AND MINING