Revenue Watch to Publish Books on Natural Resource Revenues Management

Three books addressing the management of oil, gas, and mining revenues in natural resource-rich countries will be published and available free of charge in the coming year by OSI's Revenue Watch policy program.

The guidebook Follow the Money: A Guide for Civil Society Monitoring of Oil and Gas Revenues is a resource for civil society groups who wish to become more active in monitoring government budgets, especially in natural resource-rich countries. Follow the Money is the product of a workshop held at Central European University in April 2004 that brought together some of the most experienced budget monitoring groups from around the world to determine what makes their work successful. The guidebook aims to help civil society groups better promote government transparency and accountability and aid in lifting the "resource curse" - whereby petroleum and mineral wealth does more to damage countries' well-being than to improve it.

Journalists are the audience for Covering Energy and Development: A Reporter's Handbook, a collaborative work between Revenue Watch and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue. Despite the environmental and economic devastation frequently resulting from oil, gas, and mineral extraction, few media professionals in natural resource-rich countries fully understand the legal, economic, and environmental risks associated with the sector. This handbook seeks to help journalists better understand their country's resources and the likely impacts of extraction on people and economies.

The third publication is a guide to investing in extractive-sector companies and governments, written for professional investors and fund managers. The guidebook will explain the risk to shareholders of companies that extract natural resources from countries with corrupt and repressive governments, or that invest in the sovereign debt of countries whose governments are guilty of theft of natural resource revenues.

To find out more, and pre-order free copies, visit the Revenue Watch website.