Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is a voluntary global standard established in 2003 to promote transparency and accountability in the oil, gas, and mining sectors by requiring the disclosure and reconciliation of government revenues and company payments derived from extractive activities.[1][2]
It operates through a multi-stakeholder approach involving governments, extractive companies, and civil society organizations, which collaborate in over 50 implementing countries to produce annual EITI Reports that detail resource transactions and governance processes.[3][4] The initiative's core mechanism, the EITI Standard, mandates systematic reporting to identify discrepancies in financial flows, aiming to mitigate corruption risks and enhance public oversight of natural resource management.[5] Independent evaluations affirm EITI's success in diffusing transparency norms, institutionalizing multi-stakeholder governance, and generating high-quality open data across the resource value chain.[6][7] However, empirical assessments reveal mixed outcomes on broader goals, including limited evidence of reduced corruption, inconsistent promotion of accountability or public debate, and context-specific effects on economic indicators such as short- to medium-term GDP per capita growth without sustained poverty alleviation.[6][8] Criticisms highlight EITI's potential as a "tick-box" compliance tool that prioritizes disclosure over enforceable accountability, with some analyses suggesting it may enable superficial signaling to investors or even facilitate greenwashing by extractive firms amid energy transitions, rather than driving fundamental governance reforms.[9][10][11]