The Poverty of Resource Extraction

Abstract

One of the defining characteristics of industrial capitalism is the rapid expansion of social production. This expansion requires increased use of matter and energy. Society cannot create either matter or energy, so industrial expansion in one place means that matter and energy must be extracted and transported from other places. Because social production expands through both new technologies and new products, industrial growth requires not only greater amounts, but also an increasing variety of material and energetic forms. Because these different forms of matter and energy are found in limited quantities in different parts of the world, expansion, technological innovations, and product differentiation in productive economies entail the frequent relocation of extractive economies, either because they have depleted the natural resources on which they depend or because new technologies have shifted the market. Regions which depend on exporting extracted natural resources are therefore likely to suffer from severe fluctuations in income. Capital sunk in extractive infrastructure may devalue radically. These problems limit their capacity for sustained development. Nonetheless, resource extraction figures prominently in the economic plans of many lessdeveloped nations. A growing literature addresses the economic or the political pitfalls that beset extractive economies. This essay explores their ecological roots.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 17 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.