The Extractive Industries Review (EIR) is an initiative of the World Bank, undertaken mainly at the prompting of US-based NGOs and members of Friends of the Earth-International, to work out how it should deal with the oil, gas and mining sectors. International campaigns with slogans such as ‘World Bank: Git your Ass, out of Oil, and Mines and Gas!’ have been effectively communicated to ‘Anti-Globalization’ demonstrators and triggered President Wolfensohn in late 2000 to promise to review the World Bank’s engagement in the sector. NGOs had hoped that this review would be a genuinely independent ‘multi-stakeholder’ review, along the lines of the World Commission on Dams (WCD).

However, the Bank has a perception (disputed by NGOs) that it was somehow prevented from being able to ‘buy in’ to WCD: it has not adopted any of WCD’s main recommendations, which included the provision that no dams should go ahead on indigenous peoples’ lands without their free, prior and informed consent – a standard that the Bank has trouble accepting. The Bank has thus proposed an EIR process, which lacks many of the elements of autonomy that gave WCD its credibility with people outside the Bank. In the case of EIR, the Bank aims to actively engage with the process in order to achieve ‘Bank buy in’ and so that it can be assured that the process will result in ‘actionable recommendations’. The procedures are a bit like a hybrid between a World Bank Sector Review process and WCD. Also, unlike WCD, which carried out a global review of dam-building, the aim of EIR is not to review the whole Mining, Dams and Oil sector, but to focus on the World Bank Group’s (WBG) engagement with it.

In place of a self-selected set of Commissioners from the various interest groups involved in the sector – as had been chosen for the WCD – EIR will be headed up by a single Eminent Person (EP) chosen by WBG, who will oversee the whole review process, including regional workshops, draft the final report and pass his personal recommendations to the WBG President. The EP is Dr. Emil Salim, the Indonesian ex-Minister for Environment and Population, who is also the chairman of the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Although Dr. Salim has a strong record on environmental issues (though he has been less prominent in the field of human rights), people query whether so much should be entrusted to one man, particularly when he has to deal with such a powerful and self-willed institution as the World Bank.

NGOs have raised many concerns about EIR, through meetings and correspondence. The main concerns raised (and outcomes so far agreed) include the following:

• TORs should be revised to ensure an open and inclusive enquiry and not a pre-judged outcome and should provide real independence for EP. (TORs have been revised.)
• EP should be supported by a group of advisers from the various interest groups to share the burden of the work and ensure greater representation and independence. (One advisor has been contracted and more are being sought.)
• Focused research on specific issues should be contracted. (An independent participatory review is to be carried out by the TebTebba Foundation and the Forest Peoples Programme on ‘Indigenous Peoples, Extractive Industries and the World Bank’ has been agreed. Other focused research is also being discussed.) 
• EP and advisers should visit impacted communities. (Some visits are planned.)
• EIR Secretariat should not be housed in the International Finance Corporation on the same floor as the WBG Mining Department nor staffed by World Bank employees. (The head of the Secretariat but not other staff has moved to Jakarta but the personnel remain the same and are still WBG employees.)
• EP should control the full budget and not allow over half to be controlled by WBG. (EP now has greater control of the budget and additional independent funding is being sought.)
• Regional workshops should be open to all observers, delayed, provided with good preparatory documents in the right languages and allow time for testimonies to be presented. Sponsored participants should be self-selected. (All these suggestions appear to have been agreed on but there is still a dispute about the date and location of the Latin America consultation.)
• WBG staff should participate as observers not ‘stakeholders’ in regional workshops. (WBG will have an ‘active role’ in the regional meetings.)
• The review should have more time. (Nine month extension agreed.)
• There should be time for EIR to take on board the results of the internal review of the sector being carried out by the WBG Operations Evaluation Department and Group. (EP will have 45 days after OEG/OEG review is issued before submitting his final report.)
• The review must assess MIGA. (Outcome not clear.)
• Must address climate issues. (Verbal assurances given.)
• The ‘Management Recommendations’, to be made by the WBG staff to the Bank’s Executive Directors after receipt of the EP’s report, should be made available to review participants in draft form for comments before being finalised. (Not agreed.)

Despite its flaws, the EIR seems to offer an important opportunity for civil society groups to make clear their views about the World Bank’s engagement in Oil, Mining and Gas. The more vigorously civil society engages, the more chance there is that the real issues will come to light.

For more details on EIR go to FPP’s ‘EIR’ documents page and http://www.eireview.org or contact Marcus Colchester: marcus@forestpeoples.org