By 2030, over 60% of European gas imports are expected to come from Russia. This creates a strong economic interdependency that is, however, today surrounded by security threats and political mistrust. Much of this tension was on display at the summit between the leaders of Russia and the European Union in Samara on 18 May 2007. Some of it might be dispelled if these leaders - and the media which tracks their every move - paid attention to the issues addressed at another current international gathering: the seventh world assembly of the global non-governmental organisation Civicus in Glasgow on 23-27 May. There, almost 1,000 civil-society organisations will discuss how civil society can improve accountability.
Are the events in Samara and Glasgow connected? Yes. They are both attempts at civilising power. They show the amorphous landscape of global governance; a world increasingly without champions. A central theme of the Civicus assembly is the accountability of NGOs themselves. The need to reinvent accountability, as a positive force for development, has never been more urgent.
Energy security is the driver of European Union-Russia discomfort. Accusations of unaccountability on either side have put high-level diplomacy skills to the test and more likely will result in trade wars aiming to divide and rule the EU's fragile unity. NGOs are rightly perceived to be in a weak position in Russia. Few would argue that their accountability is used as a means of silencing dissent. A controversial "NGO law" has increased the government's oversight over civil society's daily operations.
Russian NGOs too will be travelling to Glasgow, and participating in an international panel organised by AccountAbility to discuss accountability innovations. A new report launched by AccountAbility - Development as Accountability: Accountability Innovators in Action - offers an alternative view of this challenge.
Alejandro Litovsky is senior advisor at AccountAbility.
The report Development as Accountability: Accountability Innovators in Action can be downloaded for free at Accountability.net
The conference Alejandro Litovsky refers to in this article is the 7th world assembly of Civicus, the World Alliance for Citizen Participation, in Glasgow, Scotland, on 23-27 May 2007:
"The CIVICUS World Assembly is a forum for international civil society representatives to get together, exchange ideas, experiences and build strategies for a just world"
An interview with Alejandro Litovsky at the Civicus gathering is here
A lesson from Moscow
The report demonstrates that more collaborative forms of governance are possible between policy-makers, energy companies and civil-society activists when there are processes in place to realise mutual interests, roles and responsibilities. This was a conclusion of a two-day dialogue organised in Moscow by AccountAbility in partnership with the Russian electricity sector holding RAO-UES, the United Metallurgical Company, BP Russia, the World Bank and a consortium of Russian environmental and social NGOs.
Behind Russia's international bullying lies the shadow of a domestic energy crisis, dominated by under-investment in infrastructure, heavily subsidised energy prices and a pervasive energy inefficiency across all sectors of the economy. This delicate balance is financed with the revenues of energy exports to the EU.
Russian businesses and NGOs, producers and consumers, share a concern and are seeking to find ways to work together effectively. How to direct international finance to the Russian energy sector is key. International financial institutions demand accountability, such as stable legal frameworks, in order to invest in long-term projects. The revamp of the electricity sector is one example. Half of Moscow has no energy-metering; energy consumption is set on an unsustainable path and even an energy giant like Gazprom will find it difficult to meet a growing demand at such subsidised prices.
The AccountAbility dialogue in Moscow showed that traditional forms of accountability are unfit for the new challenges of development. We learned how the "effective" accountability mechanisms of the Moscow city government - which are vertical, complex bureaucratic procedures - did not equip public servants with the incentives or the skills to work together with the Russian NGOs and their energy-efficiency proposals, even though they agreed with them.
The report Development as Accountability showcases a range of innovations: energy campaigners in Moscow, Russian business-NGO partnerships creating voluntary environmental standards, an accountability rating of Russian energy companies, local partnerships for energy efficiency in Russian municipalities. All the evidence suggests that building accountability in Russia is about an organic process relying on grassroots innovation and civil-society champions as much as it is about high-level political leadership.
The civil-society task
Civil-society organisations and social movements seeking to build links with other sectors find that traditional forms of institutional accountability need to improve.
For example, a Russian coalition of twenty environmental NGOs is seeking to influence the social and environmental performance of energy companies and projects throughout the Russian Federation. For them, dialogue and mutual accountability for collaboration with businesses and development banks is by far a greater challenge - and opportunity - than just complying with the requirements of their donors.
The NGO coalition brokered a dialogue with the TNK-BP energy partnership. Now a step-by-step approach is being developed in cooperation with the NGOs for the company to meet environmental requirements. Evgeny Shvarts, director of conservation policy at WWF Russia, regards this as an important step forward because "NGOs can track the dialogue constructively and work with local authorities and communities to progressively expand the platform of cooperation around specifically agreed targets." Shvarts cites the controversial Sakhalin-2 project to argue that "as an NGO we don't participate in any dialogue that is not geared to achieve concrete goals."
Working through partnerships, alliances and dialogues requires that NGOs develop new capacities to mediate these linkages with effective and reciprocal ways of practicing accountability. Without better frameworks for collaboration, dialogues soon lead to participation fatigue and frustration
The collaborative test
Delegates from Russia and Europe returning home from Samara are without a doubt wondering how to make accountability work at a time when Russia and the EU need each other. Exploring mutual interests, bringing more stakeholders to the table as a way to link energy challenges, will help broaden the awareness of what is at stake and what solutions are needed.
As with all leaders designing collaborative governance initiatives, the negotiators face a dilemma. Because accountability is seen as being about compliance mechanisms, attention is usually placed on more pressing issues such as putting action-plans quickly in place. But the window of opportunity to build mutual accountability between unequal partners can soon disappear.
There are no simple blueprints for building and scaling up the collaborative initiatives that promote accountability in development . There is a distinct global challenge of improving collaborative frameworks as a new way to think about development decision-making. Creating effective synergies between governments, businesses, development agencies and civil society is key to making accountability a central goal of development.
At the Civicus world assembly, civil-society leaders need to rethink the role they have to play as societal risks, such as energy security and climate change, escalate the politics of conflict and confrontation. It is essential to pay attention to civil-society accountability, both as a matter of principle and because it guarantees their leverage and legitimacy in engaging politicians and businesses.
But in order to lead the way, civil-society organisations need to improve their ability to broker dialogues and champion mutual accountability between stakeholders. Helping improve relations between Europe and Russia is an opportunity for civil-society leadership, at a time when global governance is increasingly defined by the collaborative challenge.
