Assessment, based on statistical analysis, of the contribution of the natural resources sector to the economic development of Latin America - gives basic information on the evolution of production, consumption and export trade of natural resource commodities, and covers the copper industry, the iron and steel industry, the petroleum industry, coal mining, agricultural products (incl. Coffee, sugar, cotton, etc.), forestry and fishery products, etc. References and statistical tables.
"The question of how to treat commodity production and how to manage recurrent cycles of booms and busts has always been a challenge for policymakers in commodity-dependent countries, including many in the LAC region. These challenges have led to allegations of a "commodity curse'' that retards development in these countries, but as of yet, there is no consensus as to whether such a curse exists, and if so, how can negative effects be minimized. This book contributes to this debate. Much of the report is focused on an examination of specific channels through which commodity dependence may affect the economic and institutional development of countries. This includes broadly 4 sets of concerns: one set dealing with the direct economic effects of commodity dependence and the implications for long-term growth; one dealing with the interactions between commodity production and the rents it generates on the one hand, and a country's institutions on the other; a third dealing with the macroeconomic challenges of managing the volatility of revenue flows, including the distributional implications at the household level posed by cyclicality of social spending; and a final set associated with potential negative environmental and social impacts. The book finds that some commonly accepted negative effects of dependence on natural resources are largely myths, while some are realities. But all can be managed, and the book draws on the best available information in existing literature as well as original analysis to provide practical advice on how to do so. It also presents descriptive facts and analysis of the impacts in LAC of the recent commodity boom, helping the reader understand the implications for the region's development and policies. It should be of great interest to policy-makers and analysts, as well as laypersons interested in the economics of commodity markets and their role in economic development."
This paper studies the impact of natural resource extraction in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) from a number of angles. First, we exploit a novel dataset on the universe of giant oil and gas discoveries in the region to trace out the cyclical response of macroeconomic variables to discoveries over the short- and medium-run. Second, we use non-stationary panel data techniques to look at the long-run (trend) relationship between GDP per capita and the value of oil and gas production—our results imply that the recent fall in prices could depress GDP per capita by several percentage points. Last, we use Bolivia, which discovered huge gas reserves in the late 1990s, as a case study to apply the cross-country results and to study the impact of discoveries at the subnational level.
The Routledge Handbook of Latin America and the Environment provides an in-depth and accessible analysis and theorization of environmental issues in the region. It will help readers make connections between Latin American and other regions’ perspectives, experiences, and environmental concerns. Latin America has seen an acceleration of environmental degradation due to the expansion of resource extraction and urban areas. This Handbook addresses Latin America not only as an object of study, but also as a region with a long and profound history of critical thinking on these themes. Furthermore, the Handbook departs from most treatments on the topic by studying the environment as a social issue inextricably linked to politics, economy, and culture. The Handbook will be an invaluable resource for those wanting not only to understand the issues, but also to engage with ideas about environmental politics and social-ecological transformation. The Handbook covers a broad range of topics organized according to three areas: physical geography, ecology, and crucial environmental problems of the region. These are key theoretical and methodological issues used to understand Latin America’s ecosocial contexts, and institutional and grassroots practices related to more just and ecologically sustainable worlds. The Handbook will set a research agenda for the near future and provide comprehensive research on most subregions relative to environmental transformations, challenges, struggles and political processes. It stands as a fresh and much needed state of the art introduction for researchers, scholars, post-graduates and academic audiences on Latin American contributions to theorization, empirical research and environmental practices.
Introduction -- Stylized facts of commodity production and trade in LAC -- Natural resources and long-term growth -- Institutions and the resource curse or blessing -- Managing commodity price volatility -- Environmental and social consequences of commodity production -- Conclusions and policy implications.
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region is exceptionally biodiverse. It contains about half of the world’s remaining tropical forests, nearly one-fifth of its coastal habitats, and some of its most productive agricultural and marine areas. But agriculture, fishing and other human activities linked to rapid population and economic growth increasingly threaten that biodiversity. Moreover, poverty, weak regulatory capacity, and limited political will hamper conservation. Given this dilemma, it is critically important to design conservation strategies on the basis of the best available information about both biodiversity and the track records of the various policies that have been used to protect it. This rigorously researched book has three key aims. It describes the status of biodiversity in LAC, the main threats to this biodiversity, and the drivers of these threats. It identifies the main policies being used to conserve biodiversity and assesses their effectiveness and potential for further implementation. It proposes five specific lines of practical action for conserving LAC biodiversity, based on: green agriculture; strengthening terrestrial protected areas and co-management; improving environmental governance; strengthening coastal and marine resource management; and improving biodiversity data and policy evaluation.
In 1989, the International Labor Organization stated that all indigenous peoples living in the postcolonial world were entitled to the right to prior consultation, over activities that could potentially impact their territories and traditional livelihoods. However, in many cases the economic importance of industries such as mining and oil condition the way that governments implement the right to prior consultation. This book explores extractive conflicts between indigenous populations, the government and oil and mining companies in Latin America, namely Mexico, Peru and Bolivia. Building on two years of research and drawing on the state-corporate and environmental crime literatures, this book examines the legal, extralegal, illegal as well as political strategies used by the state and extractive companies to avoid undesired results produced by the legalization of the right to prior consultation. It examines the ways in which prior consultation is utilized by powerful indigenous actors to negotiate economic resources with the state and extractive companies, while also showing the ways in which weaker indigenous groups are incapable of engaging in prior consultations in a meaningful way and are therefore left at the mercy of negative ecological impacts. It demonstrates how social mobilization--not prior consultation--is the most effective strategy in preventing extraction from moving forward within ecologically fragile indigenous territories.
This book is open access under a CC-BY license. The multiple purposes of nature – livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists – have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations, and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal, and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales.
