Extractive Industries: The Management of Resources as a Driver of Sustainable Development.

• Author: Davis, Graham A.

Extractive Industries: The Management of Resources as a Driver of Sustainable Development, edited by Tony Addison and Alan Roe (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2018). ISBN 978-0-19-881736-9

One would think that by now, after the early successes of Norway, Canada, Australia and the United States, the more recent success of Chile and perhaps Peru, and the recent failures of Nigeria, Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe, we would know what countries should be doing to achieve maximum benefit from the extraction of natural resources. And, I would argue, we do. But producing good development outcomes from resource extraction appears to be as difficult for most countries now as it ever was. This difficulty may arise from an ever changing policy space, where temporal dynamics make old lessons irrelevant to current challenges. Another possibility is the lack of relevance of past individual country because each and every country case study carries its own idiosyncratic challenges. While these explanations, and others, may have traction, I believe the main cause for disappointment is simply the lack of credible political commitment to good policies. What we need is a "self-help" book so that extractive economy governments who want to do the right thing can actually achieve those goals.

Extractive Industries, a UNU-WIDER product published through Oxford University Press and edited by Tony Addison and Alan Roe, is not that book. The ultimate goal of Extractive Industries is to "offer ideas and policy recommendations" for successful resource extraction outcomes. It is not clear to whom these ideas are offered, other than via a single and broad reference to "policy makers" and their "development partners." To extend my self-help metaphor, the book tells us that going to the gym is good for us, provides data to support that claim, and shows how fit others are who have managed to go to the gym. But there we lie, on the couch, finding excuses not to move.

Extractive Industries contains eight broad and logical sections. The usual topics are discussed within 33 chapters--resource dependence, the resource curse, institutional quality, backward and forward linkages, fiscal management, environmental and community impacts--with corresponding policy guidance and recommendations. What is new, and which the book covers in several chapters, are the increasing power and influence of external stakeholders, and the impact of impending...