Scarcity and Abundance Revisited: A Literature Review on Natural Resources and Conflict

Abstract

<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: small;"><div>Natural resources can contribute to economic growth, employment, and fiscal revenues. But many resource-rich and resource-dependent countries are, in fact,</div></span><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: medium;">body of literature is devoted to the issue of intrastate resource conflicts. These studies can be broadly divided into two groups: studies which focus on resource&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: medium;">characterized by disappointing growth rates, high inequality and wide-spread impoverishment, bad governance, and an increased risk of civil violence. A vast&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: medium;">scarcity and conflict, and studies that analyse the relationship between resource abundance and conflict. While studying resources and intrastate conflict</span><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: small;"><div>is anything but new, we show that the main findings from the literature, which are often conflicting, are difficult to compare due to a lack of adequate,</div></span><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: medium;">and conflict, we discuss the central terminology and approaches to measuring independent and dependent variables (resources and conflict).&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: medium;">general definitions and measurements of scarcity, abundance, and conflict. After overviews of research on resource scarcity and conflict and on resource abundance&nbsp;</span>

Keywords

• Natural resources, resource dependence, resource wealth, resource abundance, resource endow-ment, economic growth, economic and social development, metals, mineral reserves, oil, lumber, diamonds, geographic concentration, resource conflicts, resource war