Joseph E. Stiglitz
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz a reçu le prix Nobel d’économie en 2003. Il a travaillé pendant des années à la Banque mondiale. Il est aussi connu pour ses ouvragest : Quand le capitalisme perd la tête et La Grande Désillusion qui est une critique du fonctionnement du FMI.
UNDP partners with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis, and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves the quality of life for everyone. On the...
Connie Hedegaard is EU Commissioner for Climate Action.
Achim Steiner est le directeur exécutif du Programme des Nations Unies pour l'Environnement (PNUE). Auparavant, il a exercé de hautes fonctions à la Commission mondiale des barrages puis à l'Union...
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz a reçu le prix Nobel d’économie en 2003. Il a travaillé pendant des années à la Banque mondiale. Il est aussi connu pour ses ouvragest : Quand le capitalisme perd la tête et La...
The chief editor of GoodPlanet Info’s website created Le Courrier International’s green page and took part in the creation of the TV programme Vu du Ciel on the French television channel, France2. ...
Between 1981 and 2000, Simon Upton was New Zealand’s Minister for the Environment, Minister of Research, Science and Technology and Minister of Health. He is now the Director of the OECD Environment...
Michel Rocard, former Prime Minister of France and a former leader of the Socialist Party, is a member of the European Parliament.
Patricia Espinosa Cantellano is Foreign Minister of Mexico.
Manana Kochladze is a campaigner at CEE Bankwatch Network, an NGO that monitors international financial institutions active in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the winner of the 2004 Goldman...
George Soros is Chairman of Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Institute. Photo : © AFP PHOTO / ERIC PIERMONT
Fondée en 1993 et présente dans 80 pays, Transparency International est une ONG qui lutte contre la corruption.
Yuliya Tymoshenko was Prime Minister of Ukraine and is now leader of the opposition. © AFP PHOTO /POOL
Benjamin K. Sovacool, a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, is the author of Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power and co-author of the...
William Bourdon exerce la profession d'avocat. Sa spécialité : la défense des droits de l'homme. Il a créé en 2001 l'association SHERPA qui défend les victimes de crimes commis par des opérateurs...
The chief editor of GoodPlanet Info’s website created Le Courrier International’s green page and took part in the creation of the TV programme Vu du Ciel on the French television channel, France2. ...
Environmental Justice Foundation est une ONG britannique fondée en 2000. Elle milite pour une plus grande justice écologiste car de l'état de l'environnement dépend la vie de millions de personnes....
Laurent Neyret, Law Lecturer at Versailles Saint-Quentin University
Yevgenia Albats is Professor of Political Science at The Higher School of Economics and Editor of The New Times Magazine.
Professeur à l'Université de Gand, où il enseigne les cours de droit des médias, de droit d’auteur et de déontologie journalistique. Il dispense également le cours de droit des médias à l’Université...
Antoine F. Goetschel is a laywer who specializes in animal rights.
Serge Orru est le directeur général du WWF France.Photo : © AFP PHOTO FRANK PERRY
Fred Pearce is journalist specialized in the environment and development. He was born in the United Kingdom and studied geography in the University of Cambridge. His latest book is When the Rivers...
Khadija Sharife is a South African journalist. She is also an activist and a scholar at the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and a contributing author...
Figure du militantisme altermondialiste et surtout anticapitaliste depuis la sortie de No Logo en 2000, Naomi Klein est une journaliste engagée. Elle concentre son travail sur les dérives du...
Daniel Goleman est un psychologue américain né en 1946, Diplômé de Harvard en psychologie clinique et développement personnel, il a publié en 2009 aux Etats-Unis Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing...
George Monbiot is a well-known investigation reporter and columnist for the British newspaper “The Guardian” as well as a member of the BBC Wildlife magazine’s advisory board. He is also the author...
Edgar Morin is a sociologist and a philosopher. He is the author of “Pour entrer dans le XXIe” (Entering the XXIst century) (Seuil, 2004)
George Monbiot is a well-known investigation reporter and columnist for the British newspaper “The Guardian” as well as a member of the BBC Wildlife magazine’s advisory board. He is also the author...
Michael Johnston is a Professor of Political Science and former head of Social Sciences at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. He has studied political and administrative corruption since 1975,...
L'Institut de recherche pour le développement (Research Institute for development) is a French public organization, which is dependent on the Ministries of Research and Cooperation. Its mission is to...
Daniel Kaufmann is the Director of Global Programs at the World Bank Institute (WBI) where he oversees the governance and knowledge agenda. Regarded as a leading expert, researcher, and adviser on...
Daniel Kaufmann is the Director of Global Programs at the World Bank Institute (WBI) where he oversees the governance and knowledge agenda. Regarded as a leading expert, researcher, and adviser on...
From Resource Curse to Blessing
13/08/2012 10:57 am
New discoveries of natural resources in several African countries – including Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique – raise an important question: Will these windfalls be a blessing that brings prosperity and hope, or a political and economic curse, as has been the case in so many countries?
On average, resource-rich countries have done even more poorly than countries without resources. They have grown more slowly, and with greater inequality – just the opposite of what one would expect. After all, taxing natural resources at high rates will not cause them to disappear, which means that countries whose major source of revenue is natural resources can use them to finance education, health care, development, and redistribution.
A large literature in economics and political science has developed to explain this “resource curse,”and civil-society groups (such as Revenue Watch and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative) have been established to try to counter it. Three of the curse’s economic ingredients are well known:
* Resource-rich countries tend to have strong currencies, which impede other exports;
* Because resource extraction often entails little job creation, unemployment rises;
* Volatile resource prices cause growth to be unstable, aided by international banks that rush in when commodity prices are high and rush out in the downturns (reflecting the time-honored principle that bankers lend only to those who do not need their money).
Moreover, resource-rich countries often do not pursue sustainable growth strategies. They fail to recognize that if they do not reinvest their resource wealth into productive investments above ground, they are actually becoming poorer. Political dysfunction exacerbates the problem, as conflict over access to resource rents gives rise to corrupt and undemocratic governments.
There are well known antidotes to each of these problems: a low exchange rate, a stabilization fund, careful investment of resource revenues (including in the country’s people), a ban on borrowing, and transparency (so citizens can at least see the money coming in and going out). But there is a growing consensus that these measures, while necessary, are insufficient. Newly enriched countries need to take several more steps in order to increase the likelihood of a “resource blessing.”
First, these countries must do more to ensure that their citizens get the full value of the resources. There is an unavoidable conflict of interest between (usually foreign) natural-resource companies and host countries: the former want to minimize what they pay, while the latter need to maximize it. Well designed, competitive, transparent auctions can generate much more revenue than sweetheart deals. Contracts, too, should be transparent, and should ensure that if prices soar – as they have repeatedly – the windfall gain does not go only to the company.
Unfortunately, many countries have already signed bad contracts that give a disproportionate share of the resources’ value to private foreign companies. But there is a simple answer: renegotiate; if that is impossible, impose a windfall-profit tax.
All over the world, countries have been doing this. Of course, natural-resource companies will push back, emphasize the sanctity of contracts, and threaten to leave. But the outcome is typically otherwise. A fair renegotiation can be the basis of a better long-term relationship.
Botswana's renegotiations of such contracts laid the foundations of its remarkable growth for the last four decades. Moreover, it is not only developing countries, such as Bolivia and Venezuela, that renegotiate; developed countries like Israel and Australia have done so as well. Even the United States has imposed a windfall-profits tax.
Equally important, the money gained through natural resources must be used to promote development. The old colonial powers regarded Africa simply as a place from which to extract resources. Some of the new purchasers have a similar attitude.
Infrastructure (roads, railroads, and ports) has been built with one goal in mind: getting the resources out of the country at as low a price as possible, with no effort to process the resources in the country, let alone to develop local industries based on them.
Real development requires exploring all possible linkages: training local workers, developing small and medium-size enterprises to provide inputs for mining operations and oil and gas companies, domestic processing, and integrating the natural resources into the country’s economic structure. Of course, today, these countries may not have a comparative advantage in many of these activities, and some will argue that countries should stick to their strengths. From this perspective, these countries’ comparative advantage is having other countries exploit their resources.
That is wrong. What matters is dynamic comparative advantage, or comparative advantage in the long run, which can be shaped. Forty years ago, South Korea had a comparative advantage in growing rice. Had it stuck to that strength, it would not be the industrial giant that it is today. It might be the world’s most efficient rice grower, but it would still be poor.
Companies will tell Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique to act quickly, but there is good reason for them to move more deliberately. The resources will not disappear, and commodity prices have been rising. In the meantime, these countries can put in place the institutions, policies, and laws needed to ensure that the resources benefit all of their citizens.
Resources should be a blessing, not a curse. They can be, but it will not happen on its own. And it will not happen easily.
From Resource Curse to Blessing
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
]Did you enjoy this piece of news ?
Subscribe to our daily newsletter Join us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter
Signaler un abus
-
Nef : cooperative solidarity-based finance -
The International Centre of Comparative Environmental Law -
Wind turbines in Morocco
-
Italians say no to nuclear power
-
Less pesticides in Quebec
-
California covers itself in solar panels
-
Less advertising
-
Scrapyard bonus
-
How do you reduce the number of traffic jams ?