Biodiversity,natural resource accounting and ecological monitoring

The role that natural resource accounting and ecological monitoring can play in conserving biological diversity is discussed. There exists a widespread view that modifications to national income accounting procedures are crucial to the pursuit of sustainability and particularly the protection of biodiversity. However, we argue that the availability of biologically-adjusted national income figures would not, of itself, be likely to contribute significantly to the protection of biological resources. The conservation of biodiversity requires, among other things, a significantly improved understanding of the nature of environmental changes arising from imposed management regimes and the effects that these changes have on the persistence of biodiversity. On this basis, and in the context of sustainable development, we suggest that ecological monitoring should take priority over the generation of economic data.In many regions of the world sufficient ecological knowledge is available to design and implement integrated monitoring networks that can be used to track the status of many components of biodiversity and inform decisions taken over their management. We outline how this might be undertaken using a hierarchical and prioritised approach aimed, pragmatically, in the first instance at helping to preserve those ecosystems, communities and species which are perceived to be most threatened. Some emphasis is given to the Australian situation because it is the only rich megadiversity nation and it is at the forefront of the development of scientific techniques that can be used to help design soundly-based and cost-effective monitoring programs.We acknowledge the useful comments of two referees, and claim exclusive property rights in remaining errors.     

新疆存在“资源诅咒”吗

基于国内各省区经济增长和资源丰裕度的统计考察,构造新疆经济增长与资源丰裕度、技术、制度、物质积累等变量的回归模型。检验发现,新疆自然资源对经济增长的负影响存在一期滞后,制度因素对新疆经济增长起着举足轻重的作用。     

Valuing nature: From environmental impacts to natural capital

Economic valuation of natural and environmental assets is now a well established practice. Economic analysis provides several methods for discovering the impact on social welfare associated with changes in the ability of these assets to provide different goods and services. In general terms, these valuation exercises have been performed in the framework of Environmental Impact Assessment or, more generally, Cost Benefit Analysis. There is, however, an increasing demand nowadays to go beyond this framework and to value natural capital (natural resource stocks, land and ecosystems) as such. There are two main reasons for this new demand. On the one hand, sustainability requires that proper account should be taken of capital depreciation and, therefore, there is a need to value natural capital changes. This valuation process, nevertheless, only makes sense when some kind of substitution between natural and other forms of capital is allowed. On the other hand, there is also an increasing tendency to demand that the stock of natural capital present in a given territory be valued, either to discover one of the main components of social wealth or to help adequately plan changes in land use. Yet, whereas conventional valuation methods are probably adequate to fulfill the first task, this is less true in the case of the second, while even more difficulties arise in connection with the third one. Even if at first sight the process appears conceptually identical, these tasks are of a different order of magnitude, as the experience of both the World Bank and the Statistics Division of the United Nations in this respect clearly shows.     

自然资源与区域经济增长:一个文献综述

自然资源是影响区域经济增长的重要因素,但是一直以来资源问题却没有引起主流经济学界的重视,包含有自然资源因素的增长模型是对区域经济增长模型的扩展。经验数据表明自然资源在某种程度上会挤出物质资本,并影响效率,从而形成区域经济增长过程中的"资源陷阱"现象,西方学者对此做出了理论上的解释。     

Natural resources, democracy and corruption

We study how natural resources can feed corruption and how this effect depends on the quality of the democratic institutions. Our game-theoretic model predicts that resource rents lead to an increase in corruption if the quality of the democratic institutions is relatively poor, but not otherwise. We use panel data covering the period 1980-2004 and 124 countries to test this theoretical prediction. Our estimates confirm that the relationship between resource rents and corruption depends on the quality of the democratic institutions. Our main results hold when we control for the effects of income, time varying common shocks, regional fixed effects and various additional covariates. They are also robust across different samples, and to the use of various alternative measures of natural resources, democracy and corruption.     

The curse of natural resources in the transition economies*

The curse of natural resources is a well‐documented phenomenon for developing countries. Economies that are richly endowed with natural resources tend to grow slowly. Among the transition economies of the former ‘Eastern Bloc’, a similar pattern can be observed. This paper shows that a large part of the variation in growth rates among the transition economies can be attributed to the curse of natural resources. After controlling for numerous other factors, there is still a strong negative correlation between natural resource abundance and economic growth. Among the transition economies the prime reasons for the curse of natural resources were corruption and a neglect of basic education. In order to overcome the curse of natural resources and move to a sustainable path of development, the resource abundant transition countries should fight corruption and ensure that their resource revenues are invested in human capital or the preservation of natural capital.     

Constitutions and the resource curse

Utilizing the fact that natural resources are randomly distributed among countries, we investigate how public income shocks have different long run economic effects dependent on constitutional arrangements. We find that (i) the so-called ‘resource curse’ is present in democratic presidential countries—but not in democratic parliamentary countries, (ii) being parliamentary or presidential matters more for the growth effects of natural resources than being democratic or autocratic, and (iii) natural resources are more likely to reduce growth when proportional electoral systems are in place than when the electoral systems are majoritarian. The two first effects appear very robust, the last effect less so.     

Natural capital and quality of life: a model for evaluating the sustainability of alternative regional development paths

Natural capital contributes to the quality of life of a region in two complementary ways: first, by directly providing environmental services that cannot be imported, and second, by supplying the natural resources that, through a human controlled production process, become valuable to humans. The evolution of the combination of these two components of the quality of life determines the path of development a region takes. Environmental services also determine the ability of natural capital to regenerate itself. Ecosystems and other components of the regional natural capital produce environmental services that provide life-support functions necessary for natural capital reproduction. The destruction of this critical natural capital impairs the internal sources of improvement of the quality of life of a region, leading to a non-sustainable path of development. This article describes a model of the relationship between natural capital and quality of life that provides a stricter definition of sustainable development through explicit characterization and classification of natural capital according to its ability to produce life-supporting environmental services, by its substitutability, and by its possible reconstruction. Application of this model then shows that there are 51 possible regional development paths, only 32 of which are sustainable and only 14 of which are sustainable while also providing improvements in quality of life. Only six of these 14 sustainable development paths are attained with economic growth, however, while the other eight paths increase quality of life by increasing the production of environmental services. The model could help in the development of institutional interventions that would promote regional development paths that are sustainable.     

Natural resource dependence, non-tradables, and economic growth

I argue that the commonly used nominal measure of natural resource dependence – the share of exports of primary products in GNP – understates in growth regressions the negative link between natural resource dependence and per capita GDP growth. I show that using a purchasing power parity adjusted measure yields an economically much larger negative relationship between per capita GDP growth and natural resource dependence than what has been suggested by the nominal measure. Consistent with the rent-seeking literature, I show that the resource curse is a symptom of societies characterized by high levels of corruption and sluggish checks and balances on political decision-making.     

From natural resources and environmental accounting to construction of indicators for sustainable development

Norway has a long history in trying to develop management tools for sustainable development. From the early development of natural resources accounts in the 1980s, through discussions of the usefulness of indices like “green GDP” to efforts of developing sustainable development indicators, experiences have been gained. The paper seeks to both describe the landscape and discussions associated with the key terms, and to communicate some lessons drawn from the Norwegian experiences. The conclusion focuses on the fact that whatever information is collected and organised to support the relevant decision-making processes, the final outcome should always be judged in terms of its impacts on policy processes. Thus, we issue a warning against large-scale development of information systems, without due regard to the final utilisation of the output.     

Wealth Accounting,Exhaustible Resources and Social Welfare

The empirical literature on natural resource accounting uses methods which implicitly or explicitly entail measuring changes in total resource asset value when an exhaustible resource is depleted. In contrast, the growth theoretic literature on saving, social welfare and sustainable development is built upon a central finding, that the change in real wealth (as measured by net or ‘genuine’ saving) is proportional to the change in social welfare. We show that the change in total wealth exceeds the change in real wealth in optimal and non-optimal models of resource-extracting economies. This suggests that the change in social welfare is over-estimated when the change in total resource asset value is used as the measure of depletion. A simple empirical exercise, using World Bank data on ‘adjusted net saving’, reinforces the results from theory.     

Water accounting for the Orange River Basin: An economic perspective on managing a transboundary resource

The framework for water accounting is applied to an international river basin, the Orange River Basin, which is shared among Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and South Africa. Each of the riparian states faces water constraints and relies increasingly on shared international water resources. The countries have adopted the principle of an economic approach to water management, once basin human needs are met, and all but Lesotho have constructed national water accounts to assist in water management. The water accounts for the Orange River Basin bring an economic perspective to water management at the regional level. The accounts include supply and use tables, which are used to compare the contribution to water supply from each riparian state to the amount used. The water accounts are then linked to economic data for each country to calculate water use and productivity by industry and country. There are considerable disparities in water productivity among the countries, which should be taken into account in future decisions about water allocation, pricing and infrastructure development.     

Regime types,ideological leanings,and the natural resource curse

While many consider institutional quality as a central explanatory variable when finding what causes the variance in per capita GDP growth performance of resource-abundant countries, this paper attempts to focus on more structural factors: regime type and its ideological approaches to economic policy. Several joint effects of natural resource abundance and regime type on growth are found. The natural resource curse is likely to be more severe in authoritarian regimes than democratic regimes. Among democracies, it is found that the natural resource curse is more salient in presidential regimes than in parliamentary regimes. This paper also suggests that the natural resource curse is more likely when a certain type of democratic regime coincides with a particular ideological orientation of the regime with respect to economic policy. Presidential democracies with left-wing economic policy are found to be least growth enhancing among the combinations between regime type and its economic ideology offered, given similar levels of natural resource abundance.     

Natural resources and international labour mobility

We study the relationship between natural resource wealth and (skilled and unskilled) emigration. The source data for international migration rates come from Brücker, Capuano, and Marfouk (2013) and measures of resource wealth from the World Bank database. We find that natural resource abundance reduces skilled emigration regardless of countries’ natural wealth, but that natural resources reduce unskilled emigration only in resource-rich countries.     

Natural resources,economic growth and geography

Worldwide materials extraction increased by a factor of 8.4 over the course of the 20th century. In the meantime, global GDP and population increased by factors of about 22 and 4, respectively. This reveals that one of the key factors driving the increase in the exploitation of the resources was the growth in world population, although mitigated by the reduction in the intensity in the use of the resources in production. In this paper, we present a model that combines the theory of endogenous growth and the economy of natural resources, but taking into account the geographical distribution of economic activity. Indeed, the New Economic Geography provides insights about two elements that, although speeding up GDP growth, can curb the pressure on natural resources, namely the reduction in transports costs and a boost to pace of innovation.     

自然资源、经济增长与创新三者的关系分析

自然资源是经济增长的过程中的一个要素,理论上这个要素能够扩大生产可能性边界,但是,现实生活中自然资源常常阻碍了经济增长的提高,而缺少自然资源的地区反而可能有更快的增长速度.本文考察了自然资源禀赋、经济增长与创新之间的关系,作为"资源诅咒"的传导机制的重要部分,并发展了一个基于内生经济增长理论,变化的拉姆齐-卡斯-库普曼斯模型来解释"资源诅咒"现象.资源收入通过直接减少工作动力和间接导致较小的从事创新的劳动力比例两种方式阻碍经济增长.     

Research on the human resource development of the Three Gorges Region, China

The Three Gorgers＇ Region （TGR） is an economic region of China, and lies in the western part of Yangtze economic belt. It takes the Three Gorges Project as leading. Chongqing and Yichang City as main body, the Three Gorges Reservoir as ligament. It covers about 700 km of the Yangtze River valley from Chongqing to Yichang, including Chongqing City, Yichang City and Enshi District of Hubei Province. Since the construction of Three Gorges Project and establishment of Chongqing as municipality directly under the Central Government. the regional economy, culture, education, technology, etc., all developed harmoniously and rapidly, and the diathesis of the rgional human resources also got an exaltation. While compared with the eastern region of China. the economy, science and technology in this region still fall behind, and the current situation is of no optimism. Based on the theory of human resources development, this paper analyzes current situation and problems in the human resources development oJ the TGR, and puts forward the countermeasures such as planning human resources development program based on ＂anaphase support＂policy,developing echucation and training husiness,reasonably organizing labor export,etc.     

Mapping community values for natural capital and ecosystem services

Whilst biophysical, and increasingly economic, values are often used to define high priority hotspots in planning for conservation and environmental management, community values are rarely considered. The community values mapping method presented in this paper builds on the concept of natural capital and ecosystem services and the landscape values methodology to link local perception of place to a broader measure of environmental values at the landscape level. Based on in-depth interviews and a mapping task conducted with 56 natural resource management decision-makers and community representatives, we quantified and mapped values and threats to natural capital assets and ecosystem services in the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin region. GIS-based techniques were used to map the spatial distribution of natural capital and ecosystem service values and threats over the region and analyse the proportional differences at the sub-regional scale. Participants assigned the highest natural capital asset value to water and biota assets primarily for the production of cultural, regulating and provisioning services. The most highly valued ecosystem services were recreation and tourism, bequest, intrinsic and existence, fresh water provision, water regulation and food provision. Participants assigned the highest threat to regulating services associated with water and land assets. Natural capital asset and ecosystem service values varied at both sub-regional and place-specific scales. Respondents believed people were integral to the environment but also posed a high threat to natural capital and ecosystem services. The results have implications for the way values toward natural capital and ecosystem services may be integrated into planning for environmental management.     

“资源诅咒”与我国资源型城市可持续发展路径

当前,我国资源型城市面临可持续发展问题,资源诅咒的幽灵在影响着资源开发和资源型城市发展。资源诅咒在我国资源型城市发展中有一定的适应性,通过有效路径选择可以规避资源型城市发展中的资源诅咒现象。     

中国西部地区的能源开发与经济增长——基于"资源诅咒"假说的实证分析

Based on resource curse hypothesis, this paper carries out an econometric analysis on the relationship and its transmission mechanism between energy exploitation and economic growth with cross-province panel data over 1991–2006. Results reveal that there is the significantly negative correlation between energy exploitation and economic growth, which indicates since the 1990s, the resource curse effect from energy exploitation has appeared evidently; though, before the implementation of the Western development strategy, energy exploitation acted negatively on opening degree, S&T innovation and human capital input, the effect was yet uncreated. However, after the implementation of the strategy, the effect emerged evidently as a result of the enhanced negative effect of energy exploitation on S&T innovation and human capital input. Moreover, further tests indicate that energy exploitation impeded economic growth mainly through three indirect transmission channels: The crowding-out effect towards human capital input and S&T innovation, and the weakening of institution aroused by rent-seeking and corruption. And among them, human capital input is the strongest transmission factor. __________ Translated from Jingji yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2008, (4): 147–160