PWYP Submission for EITI Standard Revision

Publications

May 4, 2022

At the EITI Global Conference (mid-2023) the EITI Board will adopt changes to the EITI Standard. As part of the process, EITI launched a survey for stakeholders to provide suggestions on the scope/areas for changes to the Standard.

PWYP participated in the process and presented a submission which was endorsed by the Global Council, PWYP’s elected strategy setting body, and included feedback received from coalitions from all over the world as well as partner organisations.

The submission includes detailed recommendations to develop the Standard in the following areas :

Energy transition: the EITI Standard must respond to the energy transition. It is key to refine it to make it more forward-looking, by securing additional transparency around production and reserves; undue influence of fossil fuel interest in policy making; and the carbon intensity of production and reserves.
Contract transparency: the EITI requirement on contract transparency should be strengthened. It is particularly crucial to update the definition of contract in order to include infrastructure and barter agreements, social and environmental agreements, and sales and offtake agreements ; to require the publication of contracts that have been signed before 2021 ; and to clarify that the EITI requires countries to publish payments related to infrastructure and barter agreements where these are materials.
Gender: any revision of the Standard must support and promote gender equality, taking into account the specific recommendations that have already been shared by civil society. This includes the provision of data at extraction sites level, disaggregated by gender and other relevant social identifiers.
Anti-Corruption: the EITI contributes to the transparency agenda by making clear demands in high-risk areas. However, there is still room for improvement in order to ensure that the EITI moves from promoting transparency to effectively helping to tackle corruption. For this to happen, the scope and definition of beneficial ownership currently included in the Standard must be expanded, and changes around EITI reporting, composition of multi-stakeholder groups and validation must be introduced.