2010 Winner: Publish What You Pay

Publish What You Pay, a global civil society coalition dedicated to promoting revenue transparency in the oil, gas, and mining industries, is the 2010 winner of the Commitment to Development “Ideas in Action” Award, sponsored jointly by the Center for Global Development (CGD) and Foreign Policy magazine.

The award, bestowed annually since 2003, honors an individual or organization that has made a significant contribution to changing attitudes and policies toward the developing world. Reflecting CGD's and Foreign Policy's missions, it is designed to highlight the ever-increasing ways in which the actions of individuals, governments, and institutions transcend borders and shape our world.

Isabel Munilla, Director of Publish What You Pay United States, accepted the 2010 award on behalf of the Publish What You Pay coalition, which comprises over 600 organizations working in nearly 70 countries. The award recognizes the work of Publish What You Pay U.S. in helping pass the Cardin-Lugar Transparency Provision of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The provision requires all oil, gas, and mining companies registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to publish how much they pay to foreign countries and the U.S. government.

“Publish What You Pay's dedication to increasing openness about revenues in resource-rich countries reflects CGD's conviction that development is about more than aid,” said Birdsall. “We hope this award shines a spotlight on the passage of the Cardin-Lugar Amendment and encourages the Securities and Exchange Commission to move quickly to put into place regulations that effectively enforce the provision.”

Describing Publish What You Pay coalition members as “pragmatic optimists,” Munilla said resource-rich governments are fully capable of using natural resources revenues wisely to tackle critical development gaps. “We believe that citizens have the right to decide how the money generated from oil, gas and mining is used – and with some assistance, we believe that they can and must be empowered to exercise that right,” said Munilla.

The SEC will develop regulations to implement the Cardin-Lugar Transparency Provision by April 2010. In her acceptance speech, Munilla encouraged members of the policy, NGO, and academic communities to comment on the proposed rules.

The award ceremony also featured remarks from Birdsall and Moisés Naím, co-chairs of the award’s selection committee, and a bipartisan panel discussion, moderated by Glasser. Rori Kramer, a Senior Legislative Assistant in the Office of Senator Cardin, and Nilmini Rubin, a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations joined Munilla on stage to discuss putting the provision into practice.

Munilla and Kramer clarified key questions of interpretation, including what companies will be covered under the legislation, and commented on the implications of the provision.

Responding to questions from the audience, Rubin explained why is it important that civil society organizations such as Publish What You Pay continue to work with other rich country governments to require and enforce similar disclosure rules.

Birdsall and Naím co-chair the award's distinguished selection panel which includes: Eveline Herfkens, founder of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Campaign and former Dutch minister of development cooperation; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, managing director at the World Bank and former minister of finance and foreign affairs in Nigeria; Sebastian Mallaby, director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations; Kevin Watkins, director of UNESCO's Education for All Global Monitoring Report; Diego Hidalgo Schnur, winner of the 2009 Commitment to Development Award; and Susan Glasser, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine.

Previous winners of the Commitment to Development Award include: the European ministers of international development who constitute the Utstein Group (2003); Oxfam's Make Trade Fair Campaign (2004); then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (2005), then-U.S. Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) (2006), Global Witness (2007), the ONE Campaign (2008), and Diego Hidalgo Schnur (2009).

For more information on the Commitment to Development Award, see http://www.cgdev.org/section/initiatives/_active/cdaward.