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The zero carbon agenda and metals demand: some major dilemmas
The transition to net zero over the next few decades will involve a large increase in the global demand for many metals essential to the renewables...
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Blog
The value of non-renewable resources in the era of climate change
The economic decline of Nauru, an island in the Central Pacific, is a cautionary tale. Nauru was the highest GDP per capita country in the world in...
Blog
Looking ahead to COP26
The long-awaited COP26 in Glasgow is about to start. Billed as the most important COP to date, it is widely seen as a last chance to avoid a global...
Blog
Reducing wasted gas emissions is an opportunity for clean air and climateThe 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) is seen as the last best chance for countries and companies to set out how they are actually...
Working Paper
Transparency in extractive industry commodities tradingThe paper reviews the debate about transparency in extractive industry commodities trade. It examines the obstacles to improved transparency. A critical review of the experience with estimating losses from a lack of transparency concludes that many...
Policy Brief
Mining for changeFor a growing number of countries in Africa the discovery of natural resources is a great opportunity, but one accompanied by considerable risks. There is an extensive literature linking natural resource dependence to poor economic performance. One...
Working Paper
Extractives for developmentCountries face both challenges and opportunities in using their extractive industries to achieve more inclusive development—particularly in the developing world. Yet while a large national income can result from resource wealth, it can also be...
Working Paper
Uganda’s oilWe study Uganda’s journey to become a petroleum producer and provide estimates regarding the size and timing of the oil revenues to be expected. At an average US$38 per capita per year over a 33-year period, oil revenue by itself will not be...
Blog
Can natural resources jump-start industrialization?
At the end of last year, I filmed a lecture that will be part of a massive open online course (MOOC) on industrialization in Africa. The course is...
Blog
Paralyzing debt burden threatens Africa’s largest economy
Apart from a ‘badly flawed’ national election, insecurity, and mass exodus of its young talents to the Global North (locally known as Japa), a...
Working Paper
Revenue forecasting in the mining industriesRobust forecasting of mining sector revenues is key to effective budgeting (and broader fiscal management) in many resource-rich countries.However, this is challenging in practice, given commodity market volatility, the extended lags (and often...
Working Paper
Protecting the environment during and after resource extractionNatural resources extraction inevitably imposes environmental injuries including diversion of scarce water away from pressing local needs, disruption of fragile ecosystems, and longer-range and often irreparable harm. These fall most forcefully on...
Working Paper
New industrial policy and the extractive industriesIndustrial policy is back. Advocates for industrial policy argue that the important question is not whether such policies should be applied at all, but how to design and implement them. For the extractive industries this development poses a challenge...
Book Chapter
Protecting the environment during and after resource extractionPart of Book Extractive Industries
Book Chapter
Local content, supply chains, and shared infrastructurePart of Book Extractive Industries
Book Chapter
The role of participation in sustainable community development programmes in the extractives industriesPart of Book Extractive Industries
Book Chapter
Capturing economic and social benefits at the community levelPart of Book Extractive Industries
Working Paper
Rowing against the currentThe exploitation of natural resources is a huge opportunity, but one that carries considerable risks. Relative prices in resource-exporting economies tend to push them towards economic structures dominated by the resource sector. This paper explores...
Working Paper
Mozambique—bust before boomThis paper is a sequel to an earlier paper that looked in broad terms at many of the issues that Mozambique faces today in managing its new extractive resources. The paper first describes the investment surge that has already been prompted by new gas...
Working Paper
Optimal local content for extractive industriesTanzania is rich with natural resources, which have significant potential to contribute to the country’s economic development. Several laws recently passed in Tanzania are dedicated to establishing linkages between foreign firms in natural resource...
Working Paper
What are the prospects for Mozambique to diversify its economy on the back of ‘local content’?In recent years, Mozambique has made international headlines for the significant hydrocarbon deposits found offshore. These have increased the country’s extractive resource endowments, in addition to its mining and onshore natural gas sector. It is...
Blog
New book from Oxford University Press looks at how to make extractive industries sustainable and inclusive
Originally posted by Oxford Policy Management The extractives sector, and the way it works, continues to change rapidly and its importance to many...
Research Brief
Potential benefits and pitfalls of extractives in MozambiqueMozambique has seen a significant expansion of interest and investment in its extractive industries. New gas finds in the past ten years have led to expectations that these industries will contribute very significantly to the country’s future...
Blog
What role for East African hydrocarbons in the global economy post-Paris COP21?
Over the past decade significant hydrocarbon discoveries have been made across East Africa. Unsurprisingly, the respective governments countries have...
Working Paper
Extractive industries and developmentIn common with several other low-income African economies, in recent years Mozambique has seen a significant expansion of interest and investment in its long-established extractives industries. Huge new gas finds in particular have led to...
Blog
Forecasting revenues from extractive industries: Information asymmetries and other disadvantages of host governments
In the first part of this blog, Alan R. Roe writes about the difficulties governments face in predicting revenues from extractive industries. Read...
Blog
Information asymmetries in extractive industries: What can be done?
In the second part of this blog, Alan R. Roe discusses what is known about the informational failures that pose challenges for governments in...
Book
Mining for ChangeFor a growing number of countries in Africa the discovery and exploitation of natural resources is a great opportunity, but one accompanied by considerable risks. Countries dependent on oil, gas, and mining have tended to have weaker long-run growth...
Working Paper
Downstream activitiesThe paper discusses the practical possibilities of achieving increased downstream processing and the policies that are commonly used for this purpose. It reviews the reasons why forward vertical integration is not always an optimal choice for...
Working Paper
Local content, supply chains, and shared infrastructureLocal content policies in the context of extractive industries have attracted increased interest in recent years. Most countries with a significant extractive industry have included local content requirements either in their legislation or...
Working Paper
The role of participation in sustainable community development programmes in the extractives industriesA major challenge for almost all extractives activity is that benefits accrue predominantly at the national level while disruptions are invariably highly localized close to the resource. Recently, extractives companies have intensified efforts to...
Working Paper
The potential of extractive industries as anchor investments for broader regional developmentThe paper reviews what we know about the possibilities of designing and implementing policy measures that raise the contribution of the extractive industries’ production/consumption links to economic growth and wellbeing, and reviews how policies...
Working Paper
Natural resources, institutions, and economic transformation in MozambiqueIn the light of Mozambique’s natural resources boom—especially its large-scale investments in mining, oil, and gas—this paper analyses the prospects for the extractive industries to contribute to economic transformation from an institutional...
Book Chapter
Local content and the prospects for economic diversification in MozambiquePart of Book Mining for Change
Blog
Want to catch up on UNU-WIDER research? Here are 10 of the most interesting papers published over the last year
In this blog, the managing editor of the WIDERAngle shares his personal view on some of the most important —and potentially overlooked— work recently...
Working Paper
Tax provisioning by extractive industry multinational subsidiariesExtractive industries are spread across mining of metal and minerals, oil and gas, among others. Multinationals in these sectors are confronted with different challenges ranging from corruption, political risk, economic uncertainty, sunk costs, and...
Working Paper
Illicit financial flows and country-by-country reporting in extractive industriesEconomic data are important in governing the international political economy. Some of the most widely used macro statistics risk being undermined by systematic misalignment in reporting of economic activity due to illicit financial flows, as well as...
Book
Extractive IndustriesThis is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.New initiatives recognize that...
Book Chapter
The Uncertain Development Impact of the Extraction SectorPart of Book Mozambique at a Fork in the Road
Working Paper
Capturing economic and social benefits at the community levelCivil society organizations have played various roles in promoting the capture of benefits from and protection against the negative impacts of extractive industries. Payment disclosure is one potentially powerful tool for such organizations to...
Working Paper
The role of gender in the extractives industriesIn recognizing that women’s participation and gender equity is a precondition for the achievement of acceptable development outcomes, extractives industry companies are increasingly making public commitments to integrating gender equality, inclusion...
Working Paper
Extractive industries: imperatives, opportunities, and dilemmas in the net-zero transitionThe extractives industries are highly controversial but remain vitally important in much of the developing world. This paper considers their role in reducing energy poverty and discusses scenarios for the future of the global markets for oil, gas...
Working Paper
Extractive industries: recognizing and managing the risks in resource-dependent economiesThis paper analyses the risks facing resource-dependent countries. These include: (i) economic mismanagement (the ‘resource curse’); (ii) political mismanagement; (iii) environmental damage (climate change and the destruction of natural capital). It...
Working Paper
Extractive industries: transforming states and improving economic managementWhile market mechanisms and private initiatives can deliver much for development, public action is also necessary to: maximize the economic benefits of the extractive industries; manage potentially large capital and revenues flows; minimize adverse...
Working Paper
Extractive industries: transforming companies for better development outcomesCompanies in the oil, gas, and mining sectors face ever intensifying scrutiny over their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices and impacts: from civil society but also from investment funds and other stakeholders with ESG mandates...
Working Paper
Extractive industries: addressing transparency, corruption, and theftThis paper analyses the roles that states, civil society, and international actors can play in tackling the weak governance that sometimes leads to resources being used for private rather than public benefit. It discusses the corruption that bedevils...
Working Paper
Extractive industries: enclaves or a means to transform economies?This paper argues for a change in government attitudes to their extractive industries: as enclaves useful primarily as revenue sources. This is too narrow a perspective: it fails to recognize the broader economic linkages that are invariably possible...
Book
Resources MatterAlmost everything that is essential to modern society—transport and power systems, buildings, machinery, and medical devices—depends upon metals, minerals, and stone as well as oil and natural gas which provide the energy for households and...
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