Abstract
This paper explores the impact of mineral ownership on the resource curse as measured by the Human Development Index. We start from the basic assumption that the Earth and its minerals are common pool resources, and the sharing of benefits would improve development outcomes. Communal title to minerals exists at the international level for the deep seabed, outer space objects, and, potentially Antarctica, and at the sub-national level through communal title to land, such as traditional landowners and aboriginal tribes. A comprehensive summary of national mining title laws for 199 countries was completed in order to determine if communal ownership is recognized at the national level. The finding is that this type of ownership is non-existent at the national level. The methods include historiography, extensive compilation of national constitutions and mining laws, and linear regression analysis. Ownership titles were combined into centralized and decentralized categories, and simple regression conducted to determine correlation with the human development index (HDI) for 199 countries. Initial findings are that decentralized mineral ownership titles are statistically correlated with higher HDI outcomes.
Highlights
We looked at the impact of the national mineral ownership category on the Human Development Index (HDI) using linear regression analysis
While most countries allocate mineral title to the state, it is in international law, space law, seabed law, and native title law that we find the most explicit description of communal, rather than national or private rights, including the “common heritage of mankind” principle
What is interesting about Native American mineral rights is that they is similar to Australia, where Native American tribes rarely have actual title to minerals, since reservations are in the form of a trust held by the federal government
Summary
“commonwealth” is normally defined in political terms, it literally means common property or riches [1]. We start from the basic assumption that the Earth and its minerals are common pool resources. We are defining commonwealth by communal title to minerals. The term “title” or “ultimate title” is used here to refer to the ultimate owner of a resource, in this case minerals. This paper explores the empirical and legal history of communal title to minerals, and development outcomes in various mineral title regimes
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