Avoiding the Resource Curse: Indigenous Communities and Canada’s Oil Sands

Avoiding Turmoil: A Comparative Exploration of the ‘Resource Curse’

As petroleum extraction and consumption has steadily increased in recent decades, economists and development researchers have been puzzled by discrepancies in the growth, development, and governance of oil-dependent countries around the world. The divergent development outcomes of oil states beg the following question: what are the political and economic conditions that determine the consequenc...

After Peak Oil: Who Escapes the Resource Curse?*

Given the discovery of resource wealth, which factors account for future economic success and which factors hinder success? This case study compares two countries which discovered oil wealth in the late 1960s: Ecuador and Norway. The analysis gives the economic and political context and then compares three bodies of resource curse literature that relate to economic success. The study ultimately...

Avoiding the Resource Curse – Political and Economic, Domestic and International Factors to Foster Competitive Arrangements

Once an economy starts to specialize heavily in the extraction and export of natural resources, several negative repercussions in the wider domestic economy tend to arise. Such problems are often described as the “paradox of plenty” or the “resource curse” and they have occurred both in developed and developing countries. This paper summarizes the current debates surrounding the “resource curse...

Oil Sands Contaminants

Alberta oil sands development.

P olycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a ubiquitous class of hundreds of organic compounds composed of two or more aromatic rings that are released naturally and from human activities. Natural sources of PAHs include forest fires, oil seeps, and volcanic eruptions; anthropogenic sources include burning of fossil fuels and wood, production of coke and charcoal, petroleum refining, and petr...