Resource Governance
Memorandum: To Have and Have Not
Resource Governance in the 21st Century
>> Back to Dossier Resource Governance
A memorandum of the Heinrich Böll Foundation
Second edition,
Berlin, February 2008
By Patrick Alley, Celio Bermann, Luke Danielson, Heidi Feldt, Alejandro Nadal, Chandran Nair, Samuel Nguiffo and Silas Siakor
Transparent, sustainable, fair, and just governance of natural resources is a key for peace and sustainable development worldwide. Natural Resource Governance is high on the G8 agenda. But in our view, real reform ideas are missing.
On the occasion of the German G8 presidency in 2007, the Heinrich Böll Foundation has organised a dialogue between civil society organisations from traditional resource demanders, resource-rich countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and actors from the emerging economies. The dialogue started in March 2007 in Berlin with an expert roundtable on “Resource Governance in Africa in the 21st century” and the Memorandum “To Have And Have Not” as the major output.
The authors of the Memorandum are key civil society activists from Brazil, Cameroon, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Liberia, Mexico, the UK and USA.
The Memorandum can be downloaded in:
» English ("To Have ad Have Not")
» German ("Haben und Nichthaben")
» French ("Avoir et ne pas Avoir")
It can also be ordered from:
Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Hackesche Höfe, Rosenthaler Str. 40/41, 10178 Berlin
Fon: + 49 (0)30-285340
Fax: + 49 (0)30-28534109
E-mail: info@boell.de
The approach of this Memorandum
With this Memorandum, the Heinrich Böll Foundation pursues the following aims:
- We want to offer a major civil society input in the G8 process and hope to convince the German government and its G8 counterparts to follow our political recommendations.
- We wish to provide a foundation for the establishment of an international civil society alliance and to strengthen civil society positions on questions of natural resource governance.
The approach of this Memorandum – incorporating cross-sectional and cross-regional perspectives – and the process that led to it are unique. It is part of our self-conception as a Green political foundation to promote a South-South dialogue and to strengthen networks to that purpose.
The Memorandum is an attempt to turn such dialogues into a policy manifesto that – taking into account the different perspectives and approaches – tries to agree upon common principles and action tools for fair, just, and ecological resource politics; a difficult, ambitious, and challenging but very rewarding process!
We hope that it will serve as a platform of civil society worldwide which will hopefully result in a more intensive dialogue between civil society groups, but also with other actors from the academic, political, and corporate sector.
Support the Memorandum
The Memorandum is already supported by prominent voices such as the President of Liberia Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, George Soros (Open Society Institute), Ed Zwick (Director of the film „Blood Diamond“) and Peter Eigen (Chairman of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative EITI and founder of Transparency International) and the Fatal Transactions Campaign.
You can support the Memorandum “To Have And Have Not” here.
Additionally to these publications we provide our press release.
