Natural Resource Dependence Research Articles

Adoption of Geospatial Systems towards evolving Sustainable Himalayan Mountain Development

Abstract. Natural resources dependence of mountain communities, rapid social and developmental changes, disaster proneness and climate change are conceived as the critical factors regulating sustainable Himalayan mountain development. The Himalayan region posed by typical geographic settings, diverse physical and cultural diversity present a formidable challenge to collect and manage data, information and understands varied socio-ecological settings. Recent advances in earth observation, near real-time data, in-situ measurements and in combination of information and communication technology have transformed the way we collect, process, and generate information and how we use such information for societal benefits. Glacier dynamics, land cover changes, disaster risk reduction systems, food security and ecosystem conservation are a few thematic areas where geospatial information and knowledge have significantly contributed to informed decision making systems over the region. The emergence and adoption of near-real time systems, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), board-scale citizen science (crowd-sourcing), mobile services and mapping, and cloud computing have paved the way towards developing automated environmental monitoring systems, enhanced scientific understanding of geophysical and biophysical processes, coupled management of socio-ecological systems and community based adaptation models tailored to mountain specific environment. There are differentiated capacities among the ICIMOD regional member countries with regard to utilization of earth observation and geospatial technologies. The region can greatly benefit from a coordinated and collaborative approach to capture the opportunities offered by earth observation and geospatial technologies. The regional level data sharing, knowledge exchange, and Himalayan GEO supporting geospatial platforms, spatial data infrastructure, unique region specific satellite systems to address trans-boundary challenges would go a long way in evolving sustainable Himalayan livelihoods.

Extending the concept of the resource curse: Natural resources and public spending on health

This paper extends the concept of the resource curse by studying whether and through which transmission channels natural resource wealth affects social spending. Even though the availability of vast natural capital reserves has commonly been linked to the neglect of human development, most of the literature has continued to focus on economic performance. This paper is the first to empirically investigate the link between natural resource wealth and public health expenditures in light of the hypothesis that resource wealth as a source of unearned state income enhances state autonomy and increases volatility, which leads to policies that fail to prioritize human development. Using a large panel dataset of world countries covering the period from 1995 to 2009, we find a robust, significant inverse relationship between natural resource dependence, and even abundance, and public health spending over time. The effect remains significant after controlling for state autonomy, volatility, and other factors. These findings have implications for national authorities as well as the extractive industry. Governments should be made accountable for natural resource wealth and correct taxation could provide additional resources, earmarked for health. The extractive industry could increase their investments in sustainable Corporate Social Responsibility operations, specifically in the health sector.

When Is ‘Yes to the Mill’ Environmental Justice? Interrogating Sites of Acceptance in Response to Energy Development

Abstract Though grassroots organizations have mobilized against US environmental injustices since; the 1980s, academic definitions of environmental justice (EJ) remain limited in important ways, including: a tendency to privilege cases where activists achieve a successful, ‘tidy’ outcome; inattention to roles natural resource dependence and free market systems play in structuring environmental inequality; and a tendency to under-analyze alternative notions of EJ that result, utilized by activists who prioritize local autonomy and procedural justice in land-use decision making. Here, I argue that these alternative notions of EJ help mobilize divergent forms of EJ activism-‘sites of resistance’ to industrial production systems and their risks, and ‘sites of acceptance’ to those same practices. To illustrate, I explore extensive mixed method data in the context of energy development and sites of acceptance related to uranium production in the southwestern United States. I show how alternative notions of EJ are shaped by identification with uranium production, persistent poverty and economic insecurity, and faith that increased uranium production will fuel US nuclear power production and help combat global climate change.

Natural resource dependence, human capital accumulation, and economic growth: A combined explanation for the resource curse and the resource blessing

In existing studies, no consensus has been reached on the relationship between natural resource dependence and human capital accumulation. To narrow the divergence, this paper carries out a normative research to explain the co-existence of the phenomena of the resource curse and the resource blessing based on an organic combination of conceptual and mathematical models. It first establishes a conceptual model to analyse the potential effects of the government׳s policy preference and natural resource development activities on human capital accumulation and economic growth. Furthermore, it develops an endogenous growth model to normatively illuminate the effects in the conceptual model and to explore the condition for the occurrence of the resource curse. The conceptual model analysis indicates that the rate of return on education investment and government behaviours play the crucial role in promoting the formation of the economic virtuous circle at the micro-level and macro-level, respectively, while resource development activities exert dual impacts on the circle. The main mechanisms in the conceptual model can be validated in the mathematical model. The rise in the subjective discount rate, the elasticity of intertemporal substitution, and resource goods price are adverse to the economic virtuous circle, while high-quality education and the institutional environment giving priority to manufacturing can become the necessary condition and sufficient condition for forming the circle, respectively. The allocation efficiency of production factors plays a decisive role in whether the blessing occurs, whereas sufficient human capital is an essential guarantee for evading the curse.

Natural Resource Dependence Theory: Organizational Impacts of Extreme Weather Events

This study aims to consider altered financial performance resulting from impacts of the natural environment, i.e. extreme weather events such as heat waves, cold waves, heavy precipitation, storms, and droughts. Based on the natural resource dependence theory (NRDT), the authors intend to support management science by demonstrating impacts of the natural environment on organizations. We conducted a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) based on 38 in-depth expert interviews with CEOs from mainly small and medium sized organizations of different industry sectors in one distinct region of Western Europe and related those results to sales growth data. Our analysis reveals organizational dependence on the number of affecting extreme weather events to the possibility of generating positive financial performance. Hence, organizations whose business heavily depends on several climatic elements cannot generate positive sales growth. By testing the NRDT, we contribute to management science considering one of the most challenging environmental risks: climate change. Our analysis represents the first comprehensive investigation on how extreme weather events as part of climate change affect financial performance.

Rainfall Patterns and U.S. Migration from Rural Mexico.

In many rural regions of developing countries, natural resource dependency means changes in climate patterns hold tremendous potential to impact livelihoods. When environmentally-based livelihood options are constrained, migration can become an important adaptive strategy. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, we model U.S. emigration from rural communities as related to community, household and climate factors. The results suggest that households subjected to recent drought conditions are far more likely to send a U.S. migrant, but only in communities with strong migration histories. In regions lacking such social networks, rainfall deficits actually reduce migration propensities, perhaps reflecting constraints in the ability to engage in migration as a coping strategy. Policy implications emphasize diversification of rural Mexican livelihoods in the face of contemporary climate change.

Iraq in the Social Sciences: Testing the Limits of Research

This article argues that the study of Iraq has been critically hampered by the opacity of the regime and the country's inaccessibility for field research, a staple technique for effective social science research. In lieu of these methods, scholars of Iraq have adopted many practices akin to those used in Cold War Sovietology, relying on a number of instrumental variables that are observable remotely. These include taking the discursive turn in examining the regime's public rhetoric and the historical turn in examining the state's colonial antecedents. Despite its inherent policy importance and possible contributions to theories about state formation, ethnicity, and natural resource dependence, the study of Iraq has long been relegated to the margins of social scientific inquiry. Since the removal of the Ba'ath regime in 2003, however, a plethora of new studies have appeared, making fuller use of the methodological toolkit. Still, Iraq's changing political relationship with the United States and the continuation of political instability may spell an end to the brief burgeoning of Iraq studies.

Assessment of Institutional Quality in Resource-Rich Caspian Basin Countries

Natural resource dependence is believed to have potential impact on institutional development, and there is growing consensus in the academic literature that institutional weakness is central to the explanation of the negative effects of resource booms. Generally, the quality of institutional framework and natural resource dependence interact mutually. Natural resources rents can damage institutions by removing incentives to conduct reforms and even to establish a well-functioning bureaucracy. Also, weak institutional quality is the ultimate cause for a disadvantageous management framework of natural resources and process of converting revenue flows into economic development. This paper examines the connection between institutional quality and resource dependence in resource-rich Caspian Basin countries (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan) with transition economies. The analysis for the total natural resources rents suggests that, in aggregate, revenues on total natural resources have a negative impact on government effectiveness.

From federal to city mitigation and adaptation: climate change policy in Mexico City

Climate change is projected to affect Latin America and the Caribbean as a result of increased temperatures and changed rainfall patterns. The impacts of climate change are expected to be unevenly distributed throughout the region, due to differences in geographic location, demographic pressures, levels of poverty, and natural resource dependence. To date, few studies have explored these impacts and the governmental responses to cope with them at a city scale. This article examines the challenges faced by the Mexico City government as it translates the federal climate change policy into successful mitigation and adaptation. It analyzes climate change impacts on Mexico and Mexico City (also known as the Federal District), the federal and city’s mitigation and adaptation responses, and advances and contradictions in the implementation of these strategies at the national and city levels. Similar problems have limited the effectiveness of these actions at both the federal and city levels, including the overexploitation of natural resources, a lack of climate information and monitoring systems, and the subordination of climate change strategies to the objectives of economic growth and poverty reduction. These problems have resulted in poor coordination and collaboration among various levels of government to cope with climate change, in addition to avoiding local capacity building, particularly in regard to forest conservation.

NATURAL RESOURCE DEPENDENCE IN RURAL MEXICO

<strong>T</strong>he relationship between poverty and natural resources is complex and the empirical evidence to date, mostly from studies of forest activities and poverty, is inconclusive. The main purpose of this paper is to identify empirically the effects of household characteristics and of inequality at the village level on natural resource extraction and dependence. We use data from the Mexico National Rural Household Survey (ENHRUM). Our results show that in rural Mexico natural resource extraction is predominantly an activity carried out by poor households. The same is true for dependence. There are important differences across Mexico in terms of both participation and dependence on resource income. These differences are most evident when one compares the south and north of the country. When relatively rich households participate in resource extraction their natural resource income is considerably higher than that of the poor.

Impacts of Madhupur National Park on Local Peoples’ Livelihood

In this study, the impact of Madhupur National Park on local peoples’ livelihoods was assessed. To find local peoples perception on collaborative natural resources management. This study was conducted from July, 2012 to December, 2012 on two villages named Talki and Sholakuri. Data collection was based on stratified random sample. Stratification was based on park proximity of respondent households that is (inside park) 0 km, 0.5 km distance, 1 km distance, 1.5 km distance and 2 km distance from Madhupur National Park boundary. The five strata were compared with respect to household’s natural resource dependency, household’s income, income diversification, income level, assets and perception on present management system. Present management system was also discussed to emphasize park management authority contribution on local livelihood. Based on analysis of collected data from two villages it was assumed that the nearest people were more dependent on natural resource of park than far people. The simple correlation coefficient for the distance of household with natural resource dependency was negatively significant. Household average monthly incomes in two villages were approximately same but Talki villagers were 79.25% depend on park related activity and this dependency decreased with increasing of distance. Present park management system plays an important role to reduce people and park animosity by providing aid and training to the local offensive persons and involve them into park conservation. A trend analysis of decreasing forest offences represented that, the present management system is better than past time and it could be able to reduce people park animosity.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jesnr.v5i2.14603 J. Environ. Sci. & Natural Resources, 5(2): 63-66 2012

Framing and tactics for projecting a corporate socially and environmentally responsible image

We present a grounded theory of organizational image building within the context of corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER). Our findings suggest that firms use sensegiving frames to explain CSER to their stakeholders in four distinct ways: investing in the future, mitigating risks, managing natural resource dependency and abiding by founding values. Additionally, a firm’s CSER frame was found to differentiate the pattern of image building tactics it uses to project its CSER image. We contribute to extant research by identifying four differential patterns in how firms frame their CSER efforts, demonstrating a link between these CSER frames and the tactics firms use for image building.

Nonemployment Income and Natural Resource Dependence in Rural Canada

Income derived from nonemployment sources (i.e., investment income and government transfers) is of increasing importance in rural areas. Knowing the extent and characteristics of a community's nonemployment income dependence can guide regional economic development and diversification strategies. This article explores nonemployment income dependence in Canada and compares social and economic characteristics of these communities to communities dependent on natural resources. Our findings suggest that the number of highly nonemployment income-dependent communities in rural Canada is relatively large, ranking second only to the number of highly agriculture-dependent communities. The prevalence of nonemployment income dependence in Canada varies by region, and social and economic characteristics in nonemployment income-dependent places are mixed. Nevertheless, a goal to attract private pension- and investment income-dependent households may be a sound economic diversification strategy for single-resource-dependent communities.

Regulatory governance in African telecommunications: Testing the resource curse hypothesis

This paper examines regulatory governance in the context of African telecommunications. Though there is already a substantial literature devoted to the regulatory practices in developing countries, it generally conceptualizes the quality of regulation as an exogenous policy variable that affects the performance of the telecommunications sector or treats it as a normative recommendation to improve performance.In this paper, the quality of governance is approached from a different perspective, investigating how it might be related to the structural economic characteristics of the developing country. It applies to telecommunications the theory known in development economics as the paradox of plenty or the resource curse, by which countries richly endowed with natural resources lag behind in the development of governance institutions. An inverse correlation is thus expected between natural resource dependence and the quality of regulatory governance, both generally in the economy and specifically in telecommunications.To measure regulatory governance, both previously-published general indices, as well as sector-specific telecommunications governance indices developed for this paper are used. These governance index values were then compared to several measures of natural resource dependency in 53 African countries. The results indicate that, while governance standards in the overall economy behaved as expected by theory, the sector-specific telecommunications governance did not. Several speculations are offered why telecommunications governance acted contrary to resource dependency theory.

Natural resource use, income and dependence among San and Mier communities bordering Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, southern Kalahari, South Africa

Contemporary strategies for natural resource management espouse the need to integrate local people and their livelihood needs into biodiversity conservation projects to achieve sustainable ‘development and ecological integrity’. Valuation of natural resource use provides empirical evidence and conceptual arguments of local people's dependence on these resources, which could be factored into biodiversity conservation planning. Based on household surveys and key informant interviews, this study looked at the contribution of dryland natural resources to the livelihoods of two culturally different but neighbouring communities, the San and Mier, bordering Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, South Africa. Overall, natural resources represented an important livelihood source for the San, contributing on an average 32% of total annual income, compared to 9% for the Mier. Fuelwood was the predominant contributor to natural resource incomes in both cases. Income quintile analysis showed that dependence on natural resources decreased moving to higher income groups for Mier households, but increased with income for San households. Well-off households still derived higher total income from natural resources; often from the more lucrative sources of such income, notably from fuelwood sales. Contextual factors such as culture and social institutions, among others, influenced access to, and consequently the use of, particular resources and the value of these to households. Sustainable natural resource management interventions should consider these disparities in patterns of natural resource dependence among different income groups.

Natural resource dependence and the accumulation of physical and human capital in Latin America

In a simultaneous model of human and physical capital accumulation for 17 Latin American countries from 1975 to 2004, we show that overall resource dependence has no significant direct effect on physical and human capital. When disaggregating the natural resource variable into sub-categories, we find that petroleum export dependence has a significant positive direct effect on physical capital, but a significant negative direct effect on human capital. Agricultural export dependence shows a significant negative direct effect on physical capital. Petroleum exports have a long run positive effect on physical capital but a negative long run effect on human capital. Agricultural exports have a negative long run effect on physical and human capital.

Environmental Depletion, Governance, and Conflict

While the link between natural resource dependence and internal conflict has been approached from a variety of angles in a large and growing interdisciplinary literature, the feasibility‐discontent dichotomy still frames a fluid research agenda in both economics and political science. This article attempts to help bridge the gap by allowing for both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of potential rebels. Simple non‐cooperative bargaining yields a nonlinear impact of regulatory quality on the likelihood of conflict and shows that corruption and resource depletion jointly affect the outcome. The empirical analysis that follows looks at the effect of environmental depletion and government corruption on the emergence of civil conflicts using a large panel data set. Resource depletion, the quality of governance, and their interaction are found to be significant determinants of civil conflict incidence. Results are robust to model and specification as well as to several steps taken to address potential endogeneity concerns.

History, historians, and development policy: a necessary dialogue

1. How and why history matters for development policy- Michael Woolcock, Simon Szreter and Vijayendra Rao 2. Indigenous and colonial origins of comparative economic development: The case of colonial India and Africa- C. A. Bayly Commentary: History, time and temporality in development discourse- Uma Kothari Historical contributions to contemporary development policy issues Social Protection 3. Social security as a developmental institution? The relative efficacy of Poor Relief provisions under the English old Poor Law- Richard Smith 4. Historical lessons about contemporary social welfare: Chinese puzzles and global challenges- R. Bing Wong Commentary: Why might history matter for development policy?- Ravi Kanbur Public Health 5. Health in India since Independence- Sunil S. Amrith 6. Health care policy for American Indians since the early 20th century- Stephen J. Kunitz Commentary: Can historians assist development policy-making, or just highlight its faults?-David Hall-Mathews Public education 7. The end of literacy: The growth and measurement of British public education since the early nineteenth century- David Vincent 8. The tools of transition: Education and development in modern southeast Asian history- Tim Harper Commentary: Remembering the forgetting in education- Lant Pritchett Natural resource management 9. Energy and natural resource dependency in Europe, 1600-1900- Paul Warde 10. Special rights in property: Why modern African economies are dependent on mineral resources- Keith Breckenridge Commentary: Natural resources and development - which histories matter?- Mick Moore Index

Natural Resource Dependence: Implications for Children's Schooling and Work in Chile

While natural resource dependency has been a feature of the Chilean economy for decades, its influence on Chilean society remains underexplored. This research analyzes data from a nationally representative survey of Chilean households to understand the implications of household and residential dependency on natural resources for children's school attendance and work. Descriptive results indicate that collectively children of household heads employed in agriculture, forestry, fishing, or mining are less likely than others to attend school and more likely to cite problems of access to schools and economic difficulties as reasons for not attending school. They also are more likely to work, help at home, or engage in other idle activities than attend school. Multivariate hierarchical models suggest that observed disadvantages are largely accounted for by lower levels of parental education and by the location of households in rural, isolated, and impoverished locales. Important differences across natural resource industries are observed.

Botswana: A development-oriented gate-keeping state

Due to a combination of exceptional economic growth and social development, Botswana has been hailed as an African developmental state. This article rejects the developmental state theory and instead attempts to build an alternative theoretical model. It argues that from the 1930s until the present, Botswana has experienced a state structure characterized by natural resource dependency, lack of economic diversification, a dual society, selective social development and a close connection between the economic and political elite. In the tentative theoretical model presented and discussed here, these are all defining traits of a gate-keeping state. It is hence argued that while Botswana's socio-economic development since independence should in no way be underestimated, it is better understood as the efforts of a development-oriented gate-keeping state rather than a developmental state. (Less)