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Report

From Curse to Blessing? Using Natural Resources to Fuel Sustainable Development

Publisher
International Social Science Journal

This book investigates how revenues derived from natural resource exploitation can be translated into real benefits for the citizens of resource-rich countries. 

International Social Science JournalVolume 57 Issue s1 , Pages 1 - 157 (May 2005)

  • Shows how despite unprecedentedly high prices of natural resources such as oil and gas on the global market, resource-rich countries are home to over 60% of the world’s poorest people
  • Discusses the counterintuitive phenomenon known as the “resource curse” and how mineral wealth can impoverish countries
  • Presents the major obstacles for the international community in the fight against poverty and in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals
  • Debates the ways to lift the curse, and suggests policy interventions to break the vicious circle
  • Includes cross-country comparisons as well as focussing on countries such as Azerbaijan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and the Russian Federation

Table of contents

Part I: Natural resource wealth, good governance, transparency and sustainable development: a general debate.

1. Introduction (Irakli Khodeli).

2. Resolving conflicts of interest in state-owned enterprises (Jenik Radon and Julius Thaler).

3. The devil’s excrements as social cement: natural resources and political terror, 1980–2002 (Indra de Soysa and Helga Malmin Binningsbø).

4. Natural resource rent-cycling outcomes in Botswana, Indonesia and Venezuela (Richard M. Auty).

5. Governance strategies to remedy the natural resource curse (Joseph Siegle).

6. Budget transparency and development in resource-dependent countries (Paolo de Renzio, Pamela Gomez and James Sheppard).

 7. Before the peak: impacts of oil shortages on the developing world (Ben W. Ebenhack and Daniel M. Martínez).

Part II: A view from the field.

8. Social and economic implications of oil policy development in Nigeria (Alexis Rwabizambuga).

9. The public oversight of oil projects in Azerbaijan, 2004–2007 (Farda Asadov).

10. Energy relations in Russia: administration, politics and security (Andrey Makarychev).

11. Doing business with integrity: the experience of Anglogold Ashanti in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Paul Kapelus, Ralph Hamann and Edward O’Keefe).

Part III: A view from the industry.

12. The IPIECA social responsibility working group and human rights (Jenny Owens).

Index.