A blessing or a curse?
NPR aired a story this morning on the “Paradox of Oil,” which discussed the economic disparitybetween foreign oil workers and local people in Angola.
The idea intrigued me. Could the communities in the Marcellus Shale region also be subject to this paradox? Environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing technology such as water contamination and forest fragmentation are already being discussed. But what if the development of Marcellus Shale not only endangers the natural resources of Pennsylvania, but also threatens its long-term economic development?
According to Wikipedia, “the idea that natural resources might be more an economic curse than a blessing began to emerge in the 1980s.”
The resource curse (also known as the paradox of plenty) refers to the paradox that countries and regions with an abundance of natural resources, specifically point-source non-renewable resources like minerals and fuels, tend to have less economic growth and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources
This thesis typically applies to oil-rich, third-world countries. But you can find an example of the resource curse in the coal regions in West Virginia:
How can it be when West Virginia has enjoyed a Century-long abundance of valuable natural resources, it compares so poorly to the rest of the country economically? How can it be that the counties with the most coal extracted are among the poorest places in the United States?
West Virginia suffers from a resource curse. The curse of natural resource wealth is extraction industries extract valuable items from the ground, take the wealth out of communities, and leave behind spent land and spent people.
I’m not saying that the resource curse is inevitable. But to protect ourselves from the curse, we need leaders with the political willpower to represent their local people, not the gas industry.
I do believe that the Marcellus Shale formation can be developed responsibly and in a way that benefits the local residents. But it won’t happen unless we stay informed and stay involved.
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Invest in the Millennium 
November 9, 2009 at 1:59 pm
The Soviet Union and its blocs exemplify the resource curse, notwithstanding its political structure.
North central PA is as much a poster child of the resource curse as western KY or WV. The valleys of the Bennett’s branch and the Toby Creek watersheds are dotted with remnant mining towns where people came for work, often renting homes and dissolving their lungs, and then in large part leaving when operators had extracted the resource and invested proceeds elsewhere. There was no sustaining proprietorship for the local communities. The ultimate environmental damage, however, remains, and is directly and indirectly addressed by programs funded by state and federal taxes. Marcellus shale will, too, be a temporary boom with unknown environmental impact. This is why a severance tax on the resource extractors, who are not long-term stakeholders in the region, is imperative for future clean up and current policing of operations.
My historical novel Heartwood, set in north central PA and which traces the recurring tug of war between humans and our local landscapes, builds from the idea that we have always had a transient relationship with our place, dating even to the era of native Americans who largely used our bounty in temporary forays. I believe that part of the reason for our transience is the forbidding landscape itself, which even detoured settlers until well after most of the rest of our country was domesticated. I believe as well that there are sinister threats we should be more concerned with. From an interview the Daily press:
“An avid outdoorsman and proponent of our area’s natural beauty, PJ’s work praises our breathtaking vistas, rare solitude and wild places. But it also has undertones of warning, cautioning that the modern threats to our recovering landscapes are the dishonest ones–politicians and bureaucrats in thinly veiled disguises, telling us what’s best for us.”
We are much too easily convinced again and again that salvation lies the trite promises made by politicians. This only leads to another chapter in the same story, while it bolsters ultimately and only the short term goal of re-election. Local media, universities and gossipers buying into the easy, ready made formula that resource extraction equals a clear number of jobs, without critical analysis and diligent ferreting of differing views that question sustainability, are complicit.