From Standard to Action: Does the EITI Remain Relevant?

To explore this question, the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), the Transparency International Accountable Mining Programme, and the Resource Justice Network (RJN), with support from the Extractives Global Programmatic Support (EGPS) Multi-Donor Trust Fund, hosted a virtual event on 23 April 2026, bringing together civil society, private sector and government officials from over 30 EITI implementing countries. The answer was a cautious but clear conclusion: the updated Standard contains important new tools, but civil society and government reformers must work to turn disclosure into accountability.

How the 2023 standard is rooted to the current moment

Ketakandriana Rafitoson, Executive Director of the Resource Justice Network, opened by emphasizing the role EITI has played for the resource governance movement — and warning that if civil society leaves these spaces, transparency risks being privatized: shaped by commercial confidentiality and industry preferences rather than accountability to citizens and affected communities. Pilar Acosta of Transparency International Australia then walked participants through the key evolutions in the 2023 standard, highlighting how they responded to:

• New forms of corruption, including those linked to fast-tracked licensing and opaque ownership in critical mineral sectors; 
• Energy transition risks, linked to urgent climate pressures, the critical minerals boom, and ongoing efforts to transition away from fossil fuels; and 
• A volatile geopolitical landscape reshaping who controls extractive industries and on what terms.

How the 2023 standard is being used

The heart of the session was a set of case studies from RJN network members, each illustrating how the standard is being used on the ground.

Kazakhstan — pushing for transparency of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Danila Bekturganov of Civil Expertise NGO drew on a new study assessing the disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions from Kazakhstan's extractive sector. The findings are stark: while Kazakhstan has a developed national accounting system for GHG emissions, the data it collects is largely shielded from public view. A legal gap between the definition of "pollutant emissions" and "greenhouse gas emissions" in Kazakhstani law means that companies can, and do, classify actual GHG data as commercial secrets. Civil society is using EITI Requirements 3.4 on GHG emissions, and 6.4 on environmental impacts of extractive activities to push for change within the multi-stakeholder group, and to argue that EITI reporting should include disaggregated, project-level GHG data. As Kazakhstan aligns its economy with a carbon neutrality target of 2060 and faces increasing pressure from the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), this transparency gap carries real economic and political consequences.

Togo — scrutinizing fast-tracked licenses. Pius Kossi Kougblenou of ACOMB described how civil society in Togo is using the 2023 standard to hold the line on discretionary and fast-tracked mining license allocations. Analysis of EITI reporting revealed that data on license transfers and approvals had not been fully communicated by the relevant government directorate, and that Togo's multi-stakeholder group had not yet established a methodology to assess procedural deviations. Using Requirement 2.2, civil society is pushing for systematic publication of license award and transfer data, a complete and verifiable mining cadastre and genuine traceability of decision-making processes.

Philippines — grounding Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in reality. Beverly Besmanos of Bantay Kita / Publish What You Pay Philippines described how Filipino civil society is using the 2023 standard to move beyond revenue tracking and focus on the upstream integrity of mining projects, particularly the quality of FPIC processes. Bantay Kita conducts "ground-truthing" to verify whether the consent reported by companies aligns with the actual experiences of Indigenous communities. They have submitted shadow reports to EITI International highlighting the harassment and red-tagging — the practice of publicly labeling activists as communist or terrorists, regardless of their political association, which has been linked to harassment, surveillance, arrests and killings — of environmental defenders. They are also pushing for the passage of a Philippine EITI law that would make community consultation disclosures a legal mandate rather than a voluntary exercise. With 90% of Philippine nickel exported to China, Bantay Kita is also investigating opaque investment structures and shadow ownership designed to bypass national laws — what Beverly called the rise of "corrosive capital."

Zambia — unlocking power purchase agreements. Tamika Halwiindi of Transparency International Zambia offered a compelling case of innovative EITI implementation. Zambia's mining sector consumes over half of the national power supply, and a history of expensive, opaque power purchase agreements has saddled the country's state utility with significant debt. Drawing on Requirement 2.4 on contract transparency, civil society has successfully pushed for a register of power purchase and supply agreements to be published on the Zambia EITI Fusion portal, showing contracting parties, contract duration, and agreed capacity. Comprehensive disclosure is not yet in place, but the direction of travel is clear — and the work sets a precedent other implementing countries could replicate.

Barriers to implementation

Participants then split into discussion groups on the main barriers to implementation and the changes that would most strengthen EITI as a tool for action. Three recurring themes emerged: 

First, enforcement remains inconsistent. There are currently no sanctions for extractive companies that fail to provide EITI reports, and many of the new provisions—including on subsidies, reserves and greenhouse gas disclosure—remain encouraged rather than mandatory. Without consequences, EITI risks becoming a reputational shield for the companies and governments least committed to reform.

Second, major blind spots remain around state-to-state deals and subnational implementation. Resource-backed loans, infrastructure-for-minerals agreements, offtake arrangements, and development corridor projects largely fall outside EITI's remit, yet these are increasingly how extractive deals get done. Meanwhile EITI implementation concentrates at the central government level, leaving the communities where extraction actually happens with limited access to the initiative.

Third, civic space restrictions are limiting civil society's ability to play its role. Through the targeting of environmental defenders to shrinking participation in intergovernmental processes and the absence of institutionalized local CSO selection, civil society faces real barriers to influencing multi-stakeholder groups and national EITI processes. Governments and companies must actively support the civic space needed to make the standard work — not merely tolerate it. At the same time, participants were clear that civil society itself must be proactive: the 2023 standard creates real opportunities, but only if organizations take them up creatively and push national EITI processes to act on them.

A cautious conclusion

The 2023 EITI Standard is better calibrated than its predecessors to the corruption risks, energy transition pressures, and geopolitical shifts reshaping extractive industries today. But a stronger standard does not automatically produce stronger accountability. The case studies and discussions from this event made clear that disclosure requirements only deliver results when civil society and government reformers actively turn them into political leverage: demanding disaggregated data, challenging fast-tracked licenses, exposing opaque ownership, and pushing multi-stakeholder groups to use every available provision. With civic space shrinking and extractive deals outpacing the mechanisms meant to hold them to account, that work is more urgent than ever.