In order to promote economic activity, a country needs a productive and sound financial structure and financial development as a backbone of the economic development of the country. Our study thus ...aims to investigate the “resource curse” hypothesis in the presence of globalization, human capital, and economic growth in China during the period 1971–2017. Within a multivariate framework, we provide more rigorous analysis through several econometric methods, for instance, the Bayer and Hanck cointegration, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL), robustness check by fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), canonical cointegrating regression (CCR), and Breitung-Candelon spectral Granger causality testing. Our findings show that the effect of natural resources on financial development is negative and confirm China's resources curse hypothesis, while globalization, human capital, and economic development lead to improving the financial development of the country. The causality analysis reveals that natural resources, human capital, and economic growth have a long-term relationship with financial development, while globalization short and medium-term linked with financial development. In order to promote financial sector development, our empirical outcomes have significant policy implications that highlight the need to encourage globalization and the development of human capital to ensure the effective management of natural resources.
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•We explore the “resource curse” hypothesis in the presence of globalization, human capital, and economic growth in China.•The Bayer and Hanck cointegration, the ARDL bounds cointegration, and robust econometrics techniques are employed.•In the long-run, natural resources, human capital, and economic growth are important predictors for financial development.•Globalization contributes to financial development in the medium-term and short-term.
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are increasingly being used globally to conserve marine resources. However, whether many MPAs are being effectively and equitably managed, and how MPA management ...influences substantive outcomes remain unknown. We developed a global database of management and fish population data (433 and 218 MPAs, respectively) to assess: MPA management processes; the effects of MPAs on fish populations; and relationships between management processes and ecological effects. Here we report that many MPAs failed to meet thresholds for effective and equitable management processes, with widespread shortfalls in staff and financial resources. Although 71% of MPAs positively influenced fish populations, these conservation impacts were highly variable. Staff and budget capacity were the strongest predictors of conservation impact: MPAs with adequate staff capacity had ecological effects 2.9 times greater than MPAs with inadequate capacity. Thus, continued global expansion of MPAs without adequate investment in human and financial capacity is likely to lead to sub-optimal conservation outcomes.
The oil curse Ross, Michael L
2012., 20120304, 2012, 2012-03-04, 20130101
eBook
Countries that are rich in petroleum have less democracy, less economic stability, and more frequent civil wars than countries without oil. What explains this oil curse? And can it be fixed? In this ...groundbreaking analysis, Michael L. Ross looks at how developing nations are shaped by their mineral wealth--and how they can turn oil from a curse into a blessing.
Forests are a substantial terrestrial carbon sink, but anthropogenic changes in land use and climate have considerably reduced the scale of this system
. Remote-sensing estimates to quantify carbon ...losses from global forests
are characterized by considerable uncertainty and we lack a comprehensive ground-sourced evaluation to benchmark these estimates. Here we combine several ground-sourced
and satellite-derived approaches
to evaluate the scale of the global forest carbon potential outside agricultural and urban lands. Despite regional variation, the predictions demonstrated remarkable consistency at a global scale, with only a 12% difference between the ground-sourced and satellite-derived estimates. At present, global forest carbon storage is markedly under the natural potential, with a total deficit of 226 Gt (model range = 151-363 Gt) in areas with low human footprint. Most (61%, 139 Gt C) of this potential is in areas with existing forests, in which ecosystem protection can allow forests to recover to maturity. The remaining 39% (87 Gt C) of potential lies in regions in which forests have been removed or fragmented. Although forests cannot be a substitute for emissions reductions, our results support the idea
that the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of diverse forests offer valuable contributions to meeting global climate and biodiversity targets.
Analyzing the effect of natural resources on economic green growth and its mechanism of transmission has important reference value for China's economic green growth transformation. Based on the ...statistical data of 30 provinces in China from 2003 to 2016, this paper uses the global Malmquist-Luenberger index to measure the green total factor productivity (that is, the economic green growth index), and then empirically analyzes the effects of both natural resource abundance and resource industry dependence on the green total factor productivity and its mechanism of transmission. The results show that, overall, the more abundant a province's natural resources, the lower the green total factor productivity. Natural resource abundance has significantly inhibited China's economic green growth through resource industry dependence, thus verifying the resource curse. Further transmission mechanism analyses show that resource industry dependence has a negative impact on economic green growth mainly through the extrusion of human capital, technology and investment in innovation as well as increases in the proportion of secondary industry in the economy and reductions in the quality of local systems.
•We analyze the effect of natural resources on economic green growth.•We use the global ML index to measure economic green growth.•The dependence on resource industries inhibits economic green growth.•We analyze the effect mechanism of resource industry dependence.
This paper evaluates the impact of major natural resource discoveries since 1950 on GDP per capita. Using panel fixed-effects estimation and resource discoveries in countries that were not previously ...resource-rich as a plausibly exogenous source of variation, I find a positive effect on GDP per capita levels following resource exploitation that persists in the long term. Results vary significantly between OECD and non-OECD treatment countries, with effects concentrated within the non-OECD group. I further test GDP effects with synthetic control analysis on each individual treated country, yielding results consistent with the average effects found with the fixed-effects model.
•Effect of resources on GDP/capita are estimated using quasi-experimental methods.•Major resource discoveries caused positive short and long-run effects on GDP/ capita.•Effects are limited to developing countries, with no impact on developed countries.•Mixed evidence of positive effects on productivity, capital, labor and schooling.
Volatility in the prices of natural resources particularly in the Covid-19 period is the subject of major concern in recent times. Although many studies have empirically investigated the influence of ...oil prices on economic growth and Covid-19 on oil prices. However, the current study contributes to the literature by investigating the causal linkage of natural resources commodity prices and economic growth in the pre and post Covid-19 period for China over the period from January 01, 2019, to April 01, 2021. This study employed the wavelet power spectrum, and the wavelet coherence approaches, and the frequency domain causality test, which is known for the causal identification in the long-run, medium-run, and short-run. The empirical findings reveal that the natural resource commodity prices are more vulnerable than the economic performance particularly in the Covid-19 peak period in China. However, the wavelet coherence approach demonstrates that a bidirectional causal association exists between natural resources commodity prices and economic performance at different frequencies and time periods. Additionally, the frequency domain causality test confirms that the natural resource commodity prices volatility significantly causes economic performance only in the medium-run. Based on the empirical findings, this study recommends that innovative technological and precautionary measures must be taken to accommodate or overcome natural disasters in the future, and tackle natural resources commodity prices volatility.
•Natural Resource Commodity Price Volatility and Economic growth have been tested.•Wavelet power spectrum and coherence approaches are used.•Higher volatility has been found in the natural resource commodity price during COVID-19 period.•Natural resource commodity price causes economic performance in the medium-run.
The ecological footprint, a measure of human demand on earth’s ecosystems, represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area that is necessary to supply the resources a human ...population consumes and to mitigate associated waste. This study estimates the impact of economic growth and natural resources on Pakistan’s ecological footprint using an autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) model for long-run estimation. The empirical findings indicate that natural resources have a positive effect on an ecological footprint that deteriorates environmental quality and that natural resources help to support the environmental Kuznets hypothesis (EKC). Bidirectional causality is found between natural resources and the ecological footprint, along with a long-run causality between biocapacity and the ecological footprint. The innovative findings have important implications for policy.
In line with global targets agreed under the Convention on Biological Diversity, the number of marine protected areas (MPAs) is increasing rapidly, yet socio-economic benefits generated by MPAs ...remain difficult to predict and under debate. MPAs often fail to reach their full potential as a consequence of factors such as illegal harvesting, regulations that legally allow detrimental harvesting, or emigration of animals outside boundaries because of continuous habitat or inadequate size of reserve. Here we show that the conservation benefits of 87 MPAs investigated worldwide increase exponentially with the accumulation of five key features: no take, well enforced, old (>10 years), large (>100 km(2)), and isolated by deep water or sand. Using effective MPAs with four or five key features as an unfished standard, comparisons of underwater survey data from effective MPAs with predictions based on survey data from fished coasts indicate that total fish biomass has declined about two-thirds from historical baselines as a result of fishing. Effective MPAs also had twice as many large (>250 mm total length) fish species per transect, five times more large fish biomass, and fourteen times more shark biomass than fished areas. Most (59%) of the MPAs studied had only one or two key features and were not ecologically distinguishable from fished sites. Our results show that global conservation targets based on area alone will not optimize protection of marine biodiversity. More emphasis is needed on better MPA design, durable management and compliance to ensure that MPAs achieve their desired conservation value.
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