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Why CSOs Must Be Involved in Monitoring Oil, Gas Sector(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) AS the oil and gas sector in East Africa continues booming, concerns among local communities about the impact of oil-gas and mining projects on their livelihoods are also increasing. The now forgotten Mtwara flare-up raised direct concern over the preparedness of the CSOs in participating fully and expressing the wishes and demands of society in an industry that has been known to be the cause of civic chaos and even wars. Africa has had bad experiences in managing natural resources whose discovery has turned out to be a curse as seen in several African countries, including Cameroon, Nigeria and South Sudan. Such incidents gave the region an embarrassing peep into its unreadiness to handle issues around sharing of resources as oil and gas exploration. "There is a growing skepticism over whether the oil and gas revenues would be properly managed to benefit the current and future generation because of lack of transparency in the sector," said WWF Tanzania Oil for Development Project Officer, Novati Kessy. WWF Tanzania country offices contracted Dunny Geoinformatics Consultancy & Services and other four consultancy firms to prepare documents aimed at charting strategies that would promote good governance and high environmental standards of oil and gas companies' compliance. The contract, according to Kessy has been effected under a project titled Integration of environmental concerns and civil society engagement in petroleum related resources in developing countries. The project purpose or goal is to ensure petroleum (oil and gas) resources exploited and developed in Tanzania are effectively used to promote sustainable development while affected ecosystems maintain their integrity. "The focus of the project is to have an active and wellinformed Civil Society, actively holding governments and petroleum/oil companies accountable for natural resource management and equitable governance for sustainable development," said Kessy. When managed well, natural resources can boost development and foster economic growth. Oversight bodies such as parliaments, media and civil society organisations (CSOs) have a pivotal role to play in ensuring proper management of natural resources. CSOs can play an important role in promoting sound management of oil and gas resources and mitigating negative socio-economic, political and environmental impacts. They can facilitate involvement of grassroots communities; assess and monitor the impact of extraction; and hold key players (including in the government and the private sector) accountable. The project has since continued to build the capacity of the civil society through training, information management services, awareness raising and other capacity building initiatives. According to Dunny Geoinformatics Consultancy & Services Director, Mr Dunford Mateso, the company was tasked with suggesting ways of building capacity of CSO coalitions to monitor, document and report progress and compliance with international industry standard for oil and natural gas such as among others, the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Publish What You Pay (PWYP) by the Oil & Gas companies. The strategy and plan of action, according to Mr Mateso, was built upon the past relevant strategic experiences such as the National Conservation Strategy for Sustainable Development of 1995 and the Eastern Arc Mountains Conservation Strategy 2003-2009 among a number of strategies in Tanzania. Various stakeholders were involved in the formulation of this strategy, according to the report which explained that the stakeholders included ministries across sectors, related to land, agriculture, forest and other land use; as well as ministries concerned with socio-economic development objectives. "Stakeholders were consulted through a workshop that was convened in Dodoma and various specialists gave their views and analyses of the pressing environmental problems in Tanzania and their solution," the report said. A number of action plans for reaching the objectives have been set which include updating of inventories of all Oil & Natural gas (O&NG) stakeholders, initiating and enhancing the effectiveness of all ongoing O&NG initiatives, raising awareness competency and skills of stakeholders on Oil & Natural Gas (O&NG), and planning and initiating O&NG activities on advocacy research. It is not happening in Tanzania only, it has been done in Ghana when oil and gas were discovered in 2007. A few Ghanaian CSOs had specific experience or expertise in this regard. Tanzania could be in a very lucky position because it can start from scratch. It has the unique position of studying the performance of countries around the world which all perhaps feel they have rushed into exploiting oil and gas without complete necessary preparations. Copyright Tanzania Daily News. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). |