This paper considers the relationship between natural resource management and poverty by analysing a specific example: an inland fishery in Bangladesh. The analysis involves substantial extensions to standard models and allows the simulation of market distortions and alternative management policies, using data from the fishery. The simulations show that fish migration is the most important distortion. They also show that both wage reductions and bans on capital-intensive gears can increase employment, and so reduce poverty, without endangering the sustainability of the resource. The techniques used here can be applied to other fisheries and non-fish natural resources.
The rise in world prices of natural resources, coupled with the resource discoveries induced by high prices, is transforming Africa's opportunities. The economic future of Africa will be determined by whether this opportunity is seized or missed. The history of resource extraction in Africa is not encouraging. This paper reviews and develops the political economy of natural resources as a guide to how Africa might avoid a repetition of that history.
En el presente trabajo realizamos una comparación de las tres experiencias populistas clásicas de América Latina, es decir, los gobiernos de Lázaro Cárdenas en México (1934-1940), Juan Domingo Perón en Argentina (1945-1955) y Getulio Vargas en Brasil (1951-1954); a la luz de sus políticas en materia de recursos naturales. El artículo comienza con una breve referencia en torno a los debates teóricos que enciende el concepto de populismo así como las discusiones contemporáneas en relación a la noción de recursos naturales. Acto seguido se procede a la comparación de las tres experiencias políticas referidas tomando como variables de análisis las políticas de estos gobiernos en relación a los recursos naturales en general y el petróleo y la tierra en particular. ; In the present work we compare the three classic Latin American populist experiences, namely Lazaro Cardenas' governments in Mexico (1934-1940), Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina (1945-1955) and Getulio Vargas in Brazil (1951-1954); In the light of its policies on natural resources. The article begins with a brief reference around the theoretical debates that ignites the concept of populism as well as the contemporary discussions in relation to the notion of natural resources. Then the comparison of the three political experiences referred to is carried out taking as analysis variables the policies of these governments in relation to natural resources in general and oil and land in particular. ; Fil: Forlani, Nicolas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto; Argentina
Motivated by the fact that the taxation of natural resources is both crucial and particularly challenging for developing countries, this paper draws on a unique dataset to produce empirical evidence on two issues pertaining to the fiscal impact of oil. On a sample of 31 countries during the 2000s oil price boom, we first assess which country and sector characteristics are correlated with the effective tax on oil, i.e. the share of oil income collected by the government. Secondly, we test whether oil revenue evicts traditional tax revenues. We propose a new methodology to address this question and we conclude to the absence of such an eviction effect: we observe no effect of oil revenue on non-oil taxes through taxation channels, and linkages with the non-oil economy seem to yield additional non-oil tax revenues. These econometric analyses are complemented by six comparative case studies of countries observed before and after oil production begins. Historical, institutional and oil sector-specific information allows to account for differences observed in the evolution of the effective tax on oil and of non-oil taxes.
In many resource-rich developing countries, policymakers, academics, and practitioners alike seek to promote citizen engagement and monitoring in the management of natural resource revenues. However, many of the approaches to improve citizen engagement have not been effective as citizens often lack access to relevant information and opportunities to voice their concerns, and governments have faced financial challenges in engaging citizens. In this article, the authors propose spatial crowdsourcing as an alternative to the traditional ways of encouraging citizen engagement. The proposed approach is illustrated using a simple, intuitive multimedia-based spatial crowdsourcing platform that was tested among farmers who were benefiting from a petroleum-funded project in Ghana. The farmers accessed the platform via their mobile phones and completed a survey relating to the project and petroleum revenue management in Ghana. The findings suggest that spatial crowdsourcing is a promising approach to promote informed citizen engagement in the context of natural resource revenue management. In particular, the farmers indicated that an opportunity to give feedback on the project through a user-friendly platform was very important for them. Furthermore, the representatives of both the government and an oversight body for petroleum revenue management regarded spatial crowdsourcing as a useful tool for collecting feedback on petroleum-funded projects and to increase citizen engagement in natural resource management in general. The authors conclude that although spatial crowdsourcing can help in citizen engagement, its effectiveness in the management of natural resource revenues depends on behavioural changes in governments and citizens. ; publishedVersion
One of the surprising features of modern economic growth is that economies with abundant natural resources have tended to grow less rapidly than natural-resource-scarce economies. In this paper we show that economies with a high ratio of natural resource exports to GDP in 1971 (the base year) tended to have low growth rates during the subsequent period 1971-89. This negative relationship holds true even after controlling for variables found to be important for economic growth, such as initial per capita income, trade policy, government efficiency, investment rates, and other variables. We explore the possible pathways for this negative relationship by studying the cross-country effects of resource endowments on trade policy, bureaucratic efficiency, and other determinants of growth. We also provide a simple theoretical model of endogenous growth that might help to explain the observed negative relationship.
One of the surprising features of modern economic growth is that economies with abundant natural resources have tended to grow less rapidly than natural-resource-scarce economies. In this paper we show that economies with a high ratio of natural resource exports to GDP in 1971 (the base year) tended have low growth rates during the subsequent period 1971-89. This negative relationship holds true even after controlling for variables found to be important for economic growth, such as initial per capita income, trade policy, government efficiency, investment rates, and other variables. We explore the possible pathways for this negative relationship by studying the cross-country effects of resource endowments on trade policy, bureaucratic efficiency, and other determinants of growth. We also provide a simple theoretical model of endogenous growth that might help to explain the observed negative relationship.
The authors propose an alternative model for environmental education in natural resources with emphasis on a complete systems approach. The model focuses on helping people evaluate and understand natural resources based on underlying ecological principles. This model integrates a broad array of life and physical sciences in addition to sociology, political science, history, government, and communication and provides a context for understanding ecological concepts, natural resource systems, and environmental issues.
Innovation and knowledge about natural resources come from many different sources; application of new knowledge does not occur in a vacuum but has to be incorporated into specific social and ecological contexts. Farmers have been developing agricultural systems, domesticating animals, breeding new crop varieties and constructing irrigation systems throughout the centuries without the aid of formalised scientific approaches and agricultural extension systen1s. In order to develop sustainable strategies it is important to take account of, and learn from, what local people already know and do, and to build on this. A variety of terms have been used in the development literature to refer to the collective knowledge of local people: indigenous knowledge, indigenous technical knowledge, 'traditional' knowledge and rural people's knowledge. The term 'local people's knowledge' (LPK) is used here to include local knowledge of people in both rural and peri-urban and urban communities who use natural resources in some way. This includes farmers - and those with other occupations, such as pastoralists, foresters, hunters and gatherers - fisherfolk, artisans, food processors and traders. Although many are likely to be poor, relatively powerless and marginalized, local knowledge is also held by those in Government and the private sector.
We present cross-country empirical evidence on the role of natural resources in explaining long-run differences in private investment as a share of GDP in a sample of 72 developing countries. Our empirical results suggest important differences between oil and non-oil resources. While revenue from oil exports tends to increase private (and public) investment, there is also a robust negative effect from a measure of export concentration. After controlling for these two aspects of export structure, there is little additional information in other measures of resource abundance, or in other suggested investment determinants, such as measures of the quality of institutions, political instability or macroeconomic volatility.
The principles of how best to manage the various components of national wealth are outlined, where the permanent income hypothesis, the Hotelling rule and the Hartwick rule play a prominent role. As far as managing natural resource wealth is concerned, a case is made to use an intergenerational sovereign wealth fund to smooth consumption across generations, a liquidity fund for the precautionary buffers to deal with commodity price volatility, and an investment fund to park part of the windfall until the country is ready to absorb extra spending on domestic investment. Capital scarcity implies that a positive part of the windfall should be spent on domestic investment. The conclusions highlight the political economy problems that will have to be tackled with these normative proposals for managing wealth.
This chapter reviews the literature on natural resource decentralization with an emphasis on forests in developing countries. This literature can be located at the intersection between discussions of good governance and democracy, development, and poverty alleviation, on the one hand, and common property resources, community-based resource management, and local resource rights, on the other. Policies implemented in the name of decentralization, however, are often not applied in ways compatible with the democratic potential with which decentralization is conceived, and only rarely have they resulted in pro-poor outcomes or challenged underlying structures of inequity. Greater attention to who receives decentralized powers, the role of property rights, the notion of "the local," and the meeting of expert and local knowledge provides insights into key issues and contradictions. Fundamental differences in conceptions of democracy, participation, and development lie behind these contradictions and shape strategies for the redistribution of access to political power and resources, which is implied by decentralization.
There is great geographical overlap between key areas of natural resources, global biodiversity and regions of acute poverty. The world's poorest people, including 59% of the population of Asia, Africa and Latin America live in rural areas alongside great natural resources on which they heavily rely for food source and income generation. However, proximity does not imply free unlimited access and often involves a great deal of trade-offs and risk ranging from natural weather and catastrophic shocks affecting resource availability, productivity and even human lives, to changes in governance and resource use regulations. In this dissertation, I study the linkages between natural resources use, livelihoods, governance and the environment, using the case study of Madagascar, a low-income country with great biodiversity and natural resources endowment. In particular, I study how different types of regulations and restrictions affect household resource use and well-being. In Chapter 1, I evaluate the health and wealth trade-offs of the widely practiced fire use in agriculture in Madagascar, using high-frequency satellite data to model pollution exposure taking advantage of random variation in wind direction. In Chapter 2, I study how poor households cope with natural disasters using the quasi-experiment setting of high frequency cyclones in Madagascar. In Chapter 3, I take advantage of a unique dataset coupled with the staggered rollout of a biodiversity conservation policy to study the impacts of community-based conservation on bushmeat hunting in northeastern Madagascar.In the first chapter, I study the impacts of agricultural fires on local health and on agricultural productivity in Madagascar. Every year, despite agricultural fires being illegal, 25% to 50% of grasslands and 7% to 10% of forests are set on fire due to slash-and-burn agriculture and livestock farming. This leads to great pollution throughout the island, yet there is limited empirical evidence on the health impacts of fires in the island. I first estimate the health impacts of fires by using high frequency and high resolution satellite data on fire location and wind speed on the day of fire to model pollution exposure around population centers. Identification comes from the random variation in wind direction and the frequent change in pollution source. I find that agricultural fires greatly impact birth outcomes and respiratory health of infants and that fires are responsible for over 4,000 "missing infants", or 0.7% of all births across the island every year. To identify the agricultural impacts of fires, I use an instrumental variable strategy taking advantage of a rapid expansion of protected areas in Madagascar that led to tripling of protected areas and delimitation of numerous potential parks. I use proposed parks, areas that were physically delimited as potential official protected areas, as an instrument for fires. Delimitation of proposed parks led to reduced fire activity, however, since parks were not actually implemented, surrounding populations were unaffected by potential economic returns or changes in behavior that would raise concerns regarding the validity of the exclusion restriction. Grassland fires led to increased livestock production and yields for cassava and corn, whereas forest fires increased corn farming land and harvest, leading to decreased food prices. These quantity and price effects increased consumer surplus by USD1.884 billion per year, implying that, for the output gains to outweigh the mortality impacts, one would have to assume a value of statistical life of less than USD440,000, whereas typical values for VSL range from 4 million to 9 million USD. Therefore the mortality costs of fires alone, excluding hospitalization costs and morbidity, exceed the benefits from increased agricultural production. Given that land use rights are ambiguous and government resources in regulating forest fires are limited, a more cooperative and integrative approach such as payments for ecosystem services might be effective in incentivizing farmers to engage in less frequent more sustainable fire activity.In the second chapter, I use cyclone track data and hourly wind direction data to model cyclone exposure and study the impact of tropical storms in Madagascar. Madagascar is the second most exposed country to multi-disaster risks in Africa, and experiences multiple episodes of droughts, floods, locust invasions and cyclones every year. On average, the island yearly experiences three to five cyclones that claim 10% to 30% of annual GDP in post-disaster losses and damages. Indeed, 74% of total labor is employed in agriculture, furthermore, agricultural products including exports amount to 45% of GDP. Yet, there is little government effort in terms of risk mitigation, resilience building and even disaster relief. Looking at the impact of cyclones on household well-being along multiple dimensions, I find that both rural and urban households are negatively impacted by cyclones in Madagascar despite better infrastructure and less reliance on natural resources in urban areas. While rural areas experience more physical losses than urban areas as measured by cyclone e↵ects on housing and access to electricity, rural households are able to smooth consumption and are less prone to cyclone-driven poverty compared to their urban counterparts. In this latter group, average cyclones have no significant impact on physical assets, but lead to lower consumption and higher rates of transient poverty. I show that this is the result of a strong informal safety net between rural and urban families through informal insurance and relief in the form inter-household transfers. To provide relief to rural families, urban households reduce expenditure in non-food expenditure including education. This suggests that, while partially effective in managing risk and achieving consumption smoothing along some key dimensions, lack of formal insurance diverts resources away from potentially productive investments such as education and towards unequivocally necessary informal relief.In the third chapter, I use a unique household-level panel data to evaluate how community- based conservation impacts bushmeat or wildlife hunting and consumption in the northeastern rainforests of Madagascar, where lemurs, bats, carnivores, tenrecs and bush pigs are commonly consumed to satisfy nutritional needs. Taking advantage of the staggered rollout of the policy, I find that community-based conservation has decreased overall hunting in the study area by reducing opportunistic hunting and hunting by less reliant, richer house- holds. This effect was larger among relatively more educated households. Furthermore, community-based conservation successfully modified consumption patterns among poorer households such that illegal hunting (hunting of lemurs and bats) was reduced and substituted by hunting practices conforming with conservation practices (seasonal hunting of sustainable prey). While these results are encouraging given the increasing shift towards decentralization, it is important to note that, in my study setting, community-based conservation was found to have some limitations. First, effects did not persist and faded over time. Second, not all types of hunting were successfully reduced and the policy led to increased active hunting through weapons and traps as households respond by retaliating and over- extracting resources in fear of completely losing access in the future. The effectiveness of community-based conservation on opportunistic hunting and bushmeat purchase was found to be heterogeneous based on income and education. Better community integration and dissemination of community conservation design principles is therefore recommended as it has proven to effectively reduce illegal hunting and also has the potential of solving the retaliation and fear-based extraction behavior. Furthermore, given that biodiversity is a global public good, local users should not be the only bearers of conservation costs and alternative livelihood strategies need to be introduced for the long-run success of conservation efforts.
The goal of the EARTh (Environmental and nAtural Resources Technology) Center is to leverage the extensive work of the Consortium partners who are leaders in environmental technologies (ET) and natural resources to create a national ATE Center. This Center synthesizes the cross-disciplinary efforts of ET-related sectors and collaborates with industries, government and public agencies, professional organizations, 2- and 4-year colleges and high schools to define and disseminate the critical knowledge and skills required in ET education and support the environmental advanced technology industry. To meet this goal, the Center has created a Leadership Network to support the development and sharing of best practices in environmental technology; establish collaborations between existing, new and potential ATE projects in ET fields to mentor new and prospective PIs and broaden the impact of ATE; provide models and leadership for collaborations between secondary, 2- and 4-year institutions, business and industry, economic development agencies and government; promote ET careers; educate highly skilled technicians and provide faculty professional development; and develop institutionalization of Center functions to sustain activities after the grant.
