Recent events stress the urgency of addressing governance challenges in the management of natural resources. Corruption and natural resource governance are deeply interwoven in the origins of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We launched the Brookings Sanctions Tracker to provide consolidated and current data on restrictive measures imposed against Russia and have published our first of many analyses to come.

We remain committed to being a useful space to broker knowledge on anti-corruption and natural resource governance issues and promote active engagement to enhance governance systems and overcome corruption-related challenges. Our new video provides the rationale behind our TAP-Plus approach. We use this approach for identifying and prioritizing transparency, accountability, and participation (TAP) efforts that address missing elements of the governance ecosystem, given constraints or windows of opportunity offered by the prevailing context.

Moving forward, LTRC will continue coordinating with civil society organizations and other experts to examine and discuss the new U.S. anti-corruption strategy and the commitments emerging from the Summit from Democracy, where addressing and fighting corruption was a key pillar.

Finally, stay tuned for details on LTRC’s summer conference, which will serve as an opportunity to bring together our colleagues at the country and global levels, our advisory board, and organizations committed to tackling challenges across the natural resource governance field. The event will feature developments and learnings from our different lines of work and underscore our call for audacity in natural resource governance reforms. We look forward to sharing more information in the coming weeks.

The latest from LTRC

• New Video: Unpacking the TAP-Plus approach and how researchers and anti-corruption stakeholders can use it to support their work. Watch in English, Spanish, or Mongolian.
  
  
• Mapping financial countermeasures against Russian aggression. The Brookings Sanctions Tracker provides a regularly updated landscape of the restrictive measures imposed on Russian individuals and entities to help inform recommendations on how to combat corruption, advance accountability, and defend democracy. Read more.
  
  
• Combating corruption to advance democracy. Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Wally Adeyemo kicked off LTRC’s seminar on the fight against corruption and its importance in driving democratic renewal and spoke about the Biden administration’s anti-corruption agenda—including the first-ever U.S. strategy on countering corruption. Later, experts discussed anti-corruption issues through the lens of the Summit for Democracy and our updated “Democracy Playbook.”
  
  
• Evaluating the Summit for Democracy. Norman Eisen, Andrew Kenealy, and Mario Picon write that the Summit “laid a robust groundwork for success despite some skeptical and even pessimistic examinations of the challenges it faced.” Moving forward, it will be up to government, civil society, and private sector actors around the world to build coalitions of change and implement measurable, concrete commitments.
  
  
• The Summit for Democracy commitments are out—now what? With Renzo Falla of the Open Government Partnership, we offer our recommendations to ensure the “Year of Action” is the first of many years of effective, coordinated efforts to advance good governance.
  
  
• Unpacking the challenges of illicit financial flows. LTRC hosted a two-day seminar on the state of—and possible pathways for addressing—illicit financial flows from Venezuela’s gold sector. Watch the event.
  
  
• Elevating good governance. Daniel Kaufmann, Results for Development senior fellow and LTRC advisory board co-chair, emphasized that good governance must be prioritized in the post-pandemic era in his keynote speech at the Mongolia Independent Authority Against Corruption’s national anti-corruption forum.
  
  
• Establishing our Peru portfolio. Our Peru team is set! Included in our portfolio is the application of shared value and territorial approaches to governance, the prospect of delivery units for accountability in mining revenue management, and a civil society platform, all reinforcing each other in the region of Moquegua.
  
  
• Supporting an emerging community on the energy transition and civic space. We are mapping stakeholders focused on natural resource governance, human rights protection, and environmental protection. We are looking at data available from these areas of work to generate insights. If this is of interest to you, please message us at LTRC@Brookings.edu!

Coming soon...

• New findings from our global survey on the future of natural resource governance and highlights from an accompanying roundtable co-organized with the Natural Resource Governance Institute.
  
  
• Research on how to tackle difficult issues around beneficial ownership (BO) in Mongolia.
  
  
• A geolocated evidence base on governance in extractives.
  
  
• LTRC’s summer conference will bring together colleagues from our focus countries, advisory board members, and other experts to discuss the agenda ahead for common challenges.
  
  
• And more!