Natural Resource Governance Institute
The Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to improving countries' governance over their natural resources (in particular oil, gas and minerals) to promote sustainable and inclusive development. The headquarters of NRGI are based in New York. History. The Natural Resource Governance Institute was established through the merger of the Revenue Watch Institute and the Natural Resource Charter in 2013. Originally based in New York, NRGI has opened offices in London, Accra, Dakar, Lima, Washington, D.C., and Dar Es Salaam. This partly reflects its focus on Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana , Guinea, Mexico, Mongolia, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania and Tunisia as focus countries. Organization and Activities. The Natural Resource Governance Institute is led by president and CEO Suneeta Kaimal. Its activities are supervised by a board of directors, with Gilbert F. Houngbo as chair. Finally, NRGI's leadership team and its board of directors are supported by an Advisory Council co-chaired by Michael Spence and Joseph Bell. Other prominent figures affiliated with NRGI include Paul Collier, Ernest Aryeetey, Elena Panfilova, Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, Peter Eigen, Daniel Kaufmann, Antonio La Viña, Ilgar Mammadov, José Antonio Ocampo, Smita Singh, Anya Schiffrin, Andrés Velasco , Tony Venables and Ernesto Zedillo. In line with its mission, NRGI supports civil society organizations, government institutions, private sector enterprises, and the media with technical advice, advocacy, applied research, policy analysis, and capacity development with regard to natural resource governance. Key tools developed in that context include for example the Resource Governance Index, a repository of resource contracts, and the Natural Resource Charter Benchmarking Framework. Notably, research and resources from NRGI have been featured by international media such as "The Atlantic", "Financial Times" and "Forbes", as well as national media in the concerned countries. The Natural Resource Charter. The Natural  Resource Charter is a document aimed at providing advice and policy options with regard to the management of resource wealth in order to help resource-rich countries use their natural resources for sustainable development. NRGI promotes the implementation of the Natural Resource Charter and provides policy advice with regard to this implementation process. The Natural Resource Charter consists of the following 12 "Precepts", which are organised into three parts based on the chain of decisions involved in natural resource management: Resource Governance Index. The Resource Governance Index, developed by NRGI, measures the quality of countries' resource governance. The 2021 index  was constructed by sending a 149-item questionnaire to experts in 18 countries, who research the issues raised in the questionnaire, compile documentation and complete the questionnaire. The quality of the survey data is then assessed by NRGI and enriched by further data on countries "enabling environments". Finally, NRGI calculates the index as a composite score out of the: with higher scores indicating a better resource governance process.