Since its establishment in 2002, Publish What You Pay (PWYP) and its member organizations have successfully advocated for increased transparency in the oil, gas, and mining industries. Our demands for comprehensive financial disclosures, our analysis of previously secret contracts, and our campaigns to increase accountability for fossil fuel and mining corporations as well as governments around the world have resulted in greater transparency in these industries, which in turn better protects affected communities and our planets. Most importantly, citizens in commodity-rich countries have access to more information and more leverage to demand accountability from both governments and companies.
PWYP-US is part of a global coalition of more than 700 member organizations in 50 national coalitions. These coalitions work together to leverage our collective power to meet the advocacy challenges of a post-Covid world amidst a climate crisis.
PWYP-US is made up of 40+ member organizations representing a diverse cross-section of civil society including tax justice groups, environmental advocates, faith groups, anti-corruption experts, watchdog organizations, and development NGOs.
Transforming our work to support a globally just transition
For two decades, PWYP has been a powerful global network of organizations focused exclusively on oil, gas, and mining governance. We acknowledge our collective duty to go further to incorporate global demands for a just energy transition into our goals and to adapt our advocacy to support this fight. PWP’s work to deter corruption in the extractive industries, our expertise in the industry’s techniques for wielding power to influence public policy and our knowledge of industry economics provide an invaluable perspective that can help in addressing the barriers to an equitable and managed decline away from fossil fuel dependence.
Industry influence has led to policies that erode government revenue through corporate welfare measures that expose our economy to undue risk. They endanger communities by allowing pollution and other cost-cutting measures to threaten the ecosystems and public health of those living near sites of operation. Meanwhile, our dependence on these energy sources continues to drive and deepen the global climate crisis.
We will continue our work to curb political capture by the fossil fuel industry in order to reverse policies that subsidize continued extraction and to help catalyze a just transition away from fossil fuels. At the same time, we plan to work with others to ensure that the renewable energy sector does not repeat and carry on some of the worst ills of the fossil fuel and mining industries to date, to ensure a truly just transition for citizens in mineral-rich countries free from the most harmful elements of the extractivist model.
A number of PWYP members and coalitions have started operationalizing this commitment by outlining new global positions to be adopted by the PWYP Global Council and new areas of work to guide our collective exploration and scoping.
PWYP-US has played a key role in shaping PWYP’s trajectory into energy transition work. PWYP-US will continue to support PWYP to take on new global level advocacy and campaigning on the energy transition. At the same time, we are expanding our domestic portfolio. The United States is the world’s largest fossil fuel producer and current plans for industry expansion put the entire world at risk. PWYP-US, as well as PWYP chapters in other historically high-emitting, high-income countries, is adapting our work to challenge continued and expanded fossil fuel production in our country.