‘Enhancing Civil Society Capacity for Governance of Environmental Transparency and Accountability in Trinidad and Tobago’s Extractive industries
The objective of this three-year (3) European Commission-funded project is to enhance the capacity of Trinidad and Tobago’s civil society for the governance of environmental transparency and accountability in the country’s extractive industries. More specifically, the project will: Enhance civil society’s capacity to independently verify extractive-industry-reported environmental data; to foster public-private-civil society collaboration, with defined roles and mechanisms; and to ensure high levels of extractive-industry environmental accountability and compliance (to standards, legislation, licensing conditions, and rehabilitation requirements); and Enhance civil society’s partnership with Government agencies and extractive companies to ensure that related policy, procedure and legislation evolve with extractive-sector trends to environmental best practice.
The Action is working to increase civil society understanding of and participation in the extractive process, enhance inter-agency collaboration and promote inter-sectoral linkages, and thus strengthen institutions and frameworks for decision making and the implementation of policies and plans. It will also create a mechanism by which civil society can collect, independently verify, and publicly disseminate extractive-industry-related environmental information from the Government and companies. Additionally, the Action will improve communication and coordination among regulatory agencies, extracting and exploiting entities, and Trinidad and Tobago citizens, and so ensure high extractive-industry environmental compliance.
The project follows the model of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)—a global body that promotes extractive-industry fiscal accountability by disclosing the payments (verified by civil-society-supervised auditing) made by companies to governments. The EITI data is meant to inform and empower citizens, through civil society organizations, to hold their Government and companies accountable for the revenues generated from the extraction of these resources and how they are spent for their benefit.
The Action ‘Enhancing Civil Society Capacity for Governance of Environmental Transparency and Accountability in Trinidad and Tobago’s Extractive Industries’ is funded by the European Union. The contents of this webpage are the sole responsibility of the project implementers and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union.