Here are the reasons:
- Lack of property rights, particularly for poor
- Those who are most dependent on natural resources are the poor and powerless who are also less able to resist corruption
- Limited supply when the rate of use of renewable natural resources exceeds the natural replacement rate
- Remote locations makes resources difficult to monitor
- Excessive state discretion over natural resources in cases where the state has a monopoly
- Elsewhere, excessive private discretion over natural resources – particularly in case of state capture or in remote areas where the state is weak.
- Commodities are often traded through complex chains, including smuggling.
- Lack of market prices for some nartural resources – primarily their ecosystem aspects services – means that corrupt behaviour is low cost.
Payments to ‘look the other way’ are also evident in commercial fisheries: to sustain the fish stocks on one of South-East Asia’s largest lakes, for example, there is a ban on fishing from August to October, though this is commonly ignored by commercial fishing companies who bribe officials to turn a blind eye to transgreesions.
On a smaller scale, poor people will often have to pay bribes for permits to use resources such as land, water resources or forest products.
Fraud and embezzlement – Public officials may for example, run their own ‘Off – the book’ business using state – own natural resources assets.
Conflicts of Interest and Favouritism – Many politicians also have extensive investiments in the companies whose activities they are supposed to be regulating or they can award concessions or favours to family members or political allies.
Public officials also often blur the lines between their official responsibilities and their private interests. Many can be seen as using ‘Revolving door’, moving back and forth between public office and private companies, exploiting their period in a government department for the benefit of their future employers.
An official in a forestry department, for instance, may support pro- timber policies and then join the Board of Directors of a major timber company.
State Capture – In the extraction of Natural Resources, this is one of the most serious and pervasive forms of corruption as private companies pay public officials to shape laws, policies and regulations to their advantage.
This has been an issue in the Pacific Islands where international logging companies have been accused of trying to influence policy decisions by bribing members of governments. State capture can, however also be achieved through legal routes – by intense political lobbying or by making donations to the political parties.
Given the nature of state capture, in some cases it can be difficult o distinguish this from pure mismanagement of natural resources.
These different types of corruption can create complex and seemingly impenetrable webs of influence. It might be tempting to envisage a simple linear model of corruption with dishonest public officials at one end and state-capture at the other.
Infact, these options are usually interwoven with many ambiguous networks or associations between state officials, political elites and private businessmen.
John Damola
Honiara
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