Richard M. Auty – författare

The mineral economies comprise approximately one-fifth of developing countries. They face special problems in achieving sustainable development, and have as a group been less successful than resource-deficient neighbours. This book examines the apparent paradox, detailing the current problems facing the mineral economies and the future policies necessary to overcome these problems. Nine countries are studied: Botswana, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, Jamaica, Namibia, Papua New Guinea, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago. The authors argue that the key factor is not the sustainability of the mineral production that initially generates growth, but the maintenance of the economic and social conditions for sustaining that growth. They draw upon recent progress in environmental and natural resource accounting to show how this can be achieved, and also assess the socio-political factors that often constrain sustainable development.

The resource curse is a variant of a wider rent curse that can also be driven by geopolitical rent, regulatory rent, and labour rent. Total rent can therefore be from one-tenth to two-fifths of GDP and sometimes more. Rent is detached from the activity that generates it and is up for grabs so it feeds contents for its capture and its deployment can radically impact the development trajectory for better or worse, all too often for worse.The Rent Curse: Natural Resources, Policy Choice, and Economic Development studies two rent driven models to suggest that low rent incentivizes the elite to grow the economy efficiently, whereas high rent encourages rent siphoning for immediate enrichment at the expense of long-term growth. It looks at low rent Mauritius and high rent Trinidad and Tobago to show that low rent stimulates rapid and relatively egalitarian economic growth with incremental democratization, whereas high rent inhibits competitive diversification and frequently causes protracted growth collapses. The post-war prioritization of industry has proved a double edged sword.The Rent Curse employs rent driven models to explain why low rent East Asia has closed the income gap with advanced economies; why rent rich Latin America may be de-industrializing; why agricultural neglect launched sub-Saharan Africa on a false start to economic development; why South Asia pioneers growth through export services; and why governmenets in the oil-rich Gulf states raised the incomes of nationals without conferring the skills to sustain them.

A definition of sustainable development is that of the Brundtland Commission - ...development which meets the needs of the current generation without jeopardizing the needs of future generations. This volume seeks to analyze the economic basis for this definition, and to look at the critiques of the economic approach - which have their basis in growing disquiet over the role of the productive normative science driving technological change and economic transformation. The discussion is followed by studies of the application of the criteria of sustainability to rural problems in South Asia, Kenya, Nepal, and Latin America and to urban/industrial problems in Jamaica, Chile and Vietnam.