Abstract

Participatory governance at the community level natural resource revenue management is thought to promote local stakeholders’ interests in how benefits from extraction are shared, strengthen the legitimacy of decisions, and enhance the quality of development projects financed by resource revenues. This article develops a framework to study the potential of localized participatory governance platforms in natural resource revenue management from the viewpoint of the intended beneficiaries, the local community members living in communities hosting large-scale extraction. The study focuses on local benefit-sharing trust funds that receive substantial amounts of funding to finance community development projects. Analysing in-depth two trust funds in Ghana, the article finds that the studied trust funds face three key challenges related to their participatory governance platforms: inadequate inclusion of community members in the processes that established the platforms, lack of relevant knowledge among the platform participants, and power asymmetries. The findings suggest that there is a need to include all intended platform stakeholders already in the processes leading to the platform establishment; ensure the platform’s legitimacy and independence in the eyes of the weaker stakeholders; and build capacity among the platform participants to ensure knowledge-based decisions.