NATURAL RESOURCES WEALTH MANAGEMENT

CHALLENGES

Felix niwagaba bamanekola

WEALTH ISSUESResource Wealth Management Challenges in relation to extractive industries.

Introduction. Wealth of natural resources must still be wealth even when not extracted but then it will not make sense to people when it does not help them to live well in the world of lots of needs, wants which must be met to satisfy a man. This calls for then to extract this wealth for the well being of a man, this where challenges of management start to arise.

Natural resource wealth management has become so complicated that even the extractive industries have failed to manage resource revenues they get from these industries. Recall early years of extractive industries beginning, ancient Asians dug or used oil spillages as medicine, Africans did iron ore mining and iron smelting and this was before colonial times but still there used to be inter regional boundary conflicts, cultural, tribal and ownership conflicts because of there natural resources. This indicates that management of natural resources wealth had been a problem mainly because of uneven distribution, personal interests differences. During the colonial era period: Europeans colonized most of the world countries, chopping continents into many colonies so called countries today. They were mainly after exploitation of natural resource wealth and wanting to have control over resource wealth, this gave birth to world wars and hence the beginning of resource curse in the world blessed natural resource wealth. As of today the number of resource wealth demand have multiplied that of early years of extractive industries and this has come up with many fierce competitors like USA, China, Israel, North Korea, India, Russia and other Developed countries-Europe in mind. So if management of resource wealth faced challenges when demand and actors were few what of today and in future when demand has increased and multiplied.

 This paper will enlighten us about the challenges of natural resource wealth management in relation to economic, political and social issues.

CHALLNGESEconomy and natural resource wealth, Most of the countries with natural resource wealth tend to focus their attention on these extractive industry sectors forgetting other sectors.

This brings about over dependence on this sector and with time yields so-called Dutch disease and its related effects. Dutch disease comes about when a country having the capacity and possibility of developing and gaining from different sectors spends much on mineral resources extractive industry, planning and national budget concentrates on this industry lugging behind other sectors let say agricultural industry which employs most of the local people and as a heart of developing countries economy. With time non-mineral resources exports start to decline because a shift from non-mineral industry to mineral extractive industry. Un employment on the side of non-extractive industry personnel increase, non-mineral products reduce like food products increasing dependence on imports and poverty ratios. This finally will create a natural resource economy making resource wealth management difficult for example in developing countries which have got no or less personnel to do extractive industry activities, have less skills and experience, limited capital and other resources to invest in extractive industry such as fossil fuels mining and production. Loan dependency for most of their economic activities finance whether commercial or developmental. International funding is the result of this and hence control and exploitation of their wealth. Still when the natural resources revenue start to flow, loans must be cleared and after clearing of the loans there is also a change of planning for how to spend and consume the resource revenues.

CONT

Appreciation of the local currency will discourage exportation because of increased price for local products as compared to neighboring countries’ currencies. More to that much income from the natural resource wealth will call for high standard of living and luxury life of the citizens forcing the country for do more importation and not forgetting inflation. The fact that the industry needs technical workers, employment will not be equally distributed, income will also be distributed poorly and power and control over these revenues will be in the hands of few elites at last bringing about resource wealth conflicts and wars. When this matures resource curse will be the result and this takes us to the next challenge of social inequalities.  

CONTSocial, society and natural resource wealth, natural resources wealth distribution among the societies, people governance and management is a big challenge. This arises because of many things talk of corruption, different interests, races, regional differences in that these factors confuses the wealth planning bring about conflicts on who is taking what and why questions. For example most of wealth resource countries find it difficult to get the right ratios of wealth distribution such countries include West Africa, Sudan and Southern Sudan, Nigeria, Saud Arabia, DRC and these issues are arising in Uganda about regional sharing of oil wealth, student scholarships.

Still going away from the conflicts on distribution, there are other health challenges issues for extractive industries workers and other stakeholders who are affected either inhaling toxic gases, accidents in mines. Rewarding structures in the extractive industry brings also about income inequalities and related problems because of worker kind needed.

CONTPolitics and natural resource wealth, If all persons were the same: leadership, power, hard work, laws, state and other institutions would not be needed as of now. Persons are different and what brings difference is wealth-money for one who controls money controls the world and for this case USA controls money in away that the world uses US dollar as the World currency, after all she is a super power.

To control the wealth or money, all wealth sources must be controlled where natural resources- extractive industry is a key.

Recall every person, institution, country wants to become the super power hence increase the competitive rate on the control for natural resources to control wealth-money and so the world. This brings in countries like China, Russia, India, Israel, South and North Korea in the game that was earlier played by European countries only. For this fact resource wealth management challenges triples due to many players, take a case of DRC, Southern Sudan and Sudan, Libya, Middle East countries. Politics and resource wealth management cannot match mainly because of different parties interests, values. Looking back to the Libya’s crisis where NATO and USA opened up a war and as the war was going on Americans were busy robbing the oil and unfortunately up to now Libya’s instability have multiplying instead of calming down. Another good example is Iraq under Saddam Hussein where USA did the same in 2003. Middle East political instabilities are also due fossil fuel and definitely politics and resource wealth yield war in most of the times if observations are made from long ago in colonial times, world wars times.

 

CONT

Environment and Natural resource wealth management, Extractive industry and environment cannot match the fact that every activity in this sector has got negative consequences on the environment mention air, water, and soil pollution. For example a mere digging of holes during mining let say gold, coal may lead to erosion, mass wasting, earthquakes due to integration of soil and rock formation of that particular area. Then what of oil, coal nuclear exploration, development and production activities; all these harden health and safety in the extractive industry hence calling for more costs which is challenging in the sector for much of the wealth is some times spend on compensation, safe technologies to reduce the environmental impacts.

Climate change is challenging natural resource wealth management in a way that planers must compare people, environment to draw a conclusion of where to make wealth-spending focus now or in the future. If people are chosen over environment problems will arise in future, if environment is chosen over people then no development, wars and conflicts. Wealth spending balance from the natural resources is needed for sustainable development to occur and this is the challenge.

OWNER

Saiu felix niwagaba

2015

Oil, gas and energy management student

World peaceful atomic love policy