The extractive industries provide substantial government revenues in many low-income and middle-income countries, but efforts to diversify economies have been disappointing. Moreover, there are major revenue shortfalls due to ineffective regulation, under-reporting by producers, poor transparency, and badly designed tax systems. Incentives are still badly titled towards extraction, and away from protecting renewable resources such as biodiversity, forests and water as well as ending greenhouse gas emissions. The COVID-19 pandemic has also caused an unprecedented shock that has exposed the vulnerability of economies dependent on extractive revenues, and the project examines how to manage the revenue risks.
This project builds on the Extractives for Development (E4D) project undertaken by UNU-WIDER from 2014-18. The new project aims to further enhance the links established to senior policy makers, international organizations and the oil, gas and mining industries themselves to share lessons across regions, and to identify opportunities as well as risks (and ways of mitigating those risks), and to chart the future of the global extractives industries and the consequences for both low and middle income countries.
The project will deliver research papers, to be published in the WIDER working paper series. The first set of papers focus on identifying critical issues for the sector, in light of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as climate change. A monograph will be finalized in 2020, for publication in 2021, building on a book published by Oxford University Press from the previous UNU-WIDER project.
All papers, events, briefs, blog posts, and opportunities to engage relating to the project will be available on this webpage.
The research will address SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. In addition, it will support the attainment of SDG 7 (Affordable and clean energy), SDG 12 (Responsible consumption and production, as well as SDG 13 (Climate action).
Follow the conversation at #Extractives4Dev
This project is part of the Domestic Revenue Mobilization programme.
Focal point: Tony Addison
Project support: Jutta Stenholm
Communications: Anna Toppari
University of Copenhagen (UCPH)
Financial support from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation
(Norad)
The Sustainable Development Agenda
This project builds on previous work completed under Extractives for Development (E4D)
BOOK IN PRODUCTION: SCHEDULED PUBLICATION DECEMBER 2024Almost 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...
Companies 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...
While 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...
This 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...
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...
This 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...
The 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...
This study proposes a new measure of Fiscal Dependence on Extractive revenues: FDE. The FDE estimates, simply, the extent to which extractive-producing countries can fund day-to-day government spending with non-extractive revenues.By focusing...
Illicit gold flows constitute a major development challenge for governments and a social responsibility challenge for the jewellery industry, which accounts for the majority of global gold demand. This paper highlights aspects of gold supply chains...
In Africa, there is a distressing correlation between debt and the need to export raw materials. A new paradigm is needed in which African countries...
The recently concluded COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh had one important outcome for developing countries: the announcement of a loss and damage fund. This...
The green energy transition is projected to cause an increase in metal demand. Will this demand lead to the opening of deep-seabed mining? As of now...
The aims of this paper are twofold. It firstly identifies and discusses the extent to which public revenues from natural resources are adequately captured in existing cross-country revenue databases, before exploring the extent to which such data can...
In this study, we develop an empirical framework that allows us to trace out a time path of metal prices. This framework shows that unpredictable shifts in demand, extraction costs and discovery of reserves, make estimation of the slope of this...
The emergence of a mass market for electric vehicles (EVs) offers development opportunities for countries that have abundant resources of cobalt, nickel, lithium, copper, aluminium and manganese. Not surprisingly, developing countries have proposed...
Most research on illicit financial flows (IFFs) has focused on illicit outflows from developing countries and the role of non-state actors in generating IFFs. Less attention has been paid to processes and interfaces through which IFFs enter formal...
After 50 years of optimistic predictions that marine mining will soon take off, it still remains to be seen if and when this will happen. In 2018 the total value of all marine mining, including both offshore mining and the so far non-existing deep...
Extractive 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...
The global energy transition is happening, but too slowly to limit climate change to acceptable levels, for diverse reasons. Carbon emissions policies and measures focus too little on absolute emission targets and too much on relative measures such...
This paper applies an environmentally extended input–output analysis, leveraging the Eora database, to estimate the global raw material footprints of 51 African nations from 1995 to 2015. It employs least absolute shrinkage and selection operator and...
In a series of high-level UN Roundtables, in which I participated in 2021, experts and stakeholders explored the risks and opportunities presented by...
Electric vehicles (EVs) are confidently expected to decarbonize road transportation, contribute substantially to the net zero agenda, and so help to...
Economic 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...
In this blog, the managing editor of the WIDERAngle shares his personal view on some of the most important —and potentially overlooked— work recently...
Just over seven months ago the United Nations convened its 26th Climate Change Conference (COP-26) in Glasgow, with the world nervously emerging from...
In many countries, news of an oil discovery or the award of an exploration license is rarely greeted with enthusiasm by the general public. Any hopes...
This second of two papers on global oil theft discusses ways to reduce oil theft, misappropriation, and fraud. At US$133 billion per year, oil is the largest stolen natural resource globally, while fuel is the most smuggled natural resource. Oil...
This paper, the first of two on global oil theft and fraud, discusses the prevalence, methods, and consequences of global oil theft, valued at US$133 billion per year and equivalent to 5–7 per cent of the global market for crude oil and petroleum...
We show that the incorporation of offshore entities increases when oil and gas exploration licences are awarded. We exploit leaked data on the incorporation of shell companies and detailed information on tax havens and the awarding rounds of oil...
Zambia has changed its mineral tax regime repeatedly during the past decades in a bid to raise mineral revenue, but with only modest success. This paper looks at what the country needs to do to create a mining fiscal regime that could sustain...
Theme: 2019-23, Transforming states
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