The governance of extractive resource wealth has received significant academic, development, and private sector attention. The focus on how to improve a countries’ ability to transform natural resource wealth into long-term sustainable development has, for the most part, been focused at the national level. Less attention has been paid to the process of governing extractives at the subnational level.

Communities near extraction sites are often disproportionately affected by social and environmental impacts and do not share proportionally in the jobs and other non-fiscal benefits that extractive projects generate. Unmet community expectations and deepening inequality between urban and rural areas can in turn lead to social conflict, which, in addition to risking lives and livelihoods in producing regions, can delay extractive projects, with significant costs for countries as a whole. When conflicts escalate into sustained violence, national peace and cohesion are at stake.

The Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) and ODI co-host this event, which aims to tackle some of the key questions surrounding subnational extractive governance. Why is working at the national level not sufficient? How does extractive resource governance differ at the subnational level? And what can national and subnational governments do to improve the impact of subnational resource governance?