Most tragically, exploitation of non-renewable natural resources can fuel wars by making control of the state something lucrative enough to fight for, as has happened in the Sudan and elsewhere. According to “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” a 2000 World Bank study by Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, countries highly dependent on the export of oil or minerals face a 23 percent risk of civil war over a five-year period, as compared to a 0.5 percent incidence in an identical country without natural resources. Furthermore, a 2001 Oxfam America report finds that oil can worsen poverty by incentivizing conflict and other negative behaviors, thereby stunting democratic development. Taken together, these trends severely jeopardize the growth of both the economies and human capabilities in the states that they affect.

Unethical Corporate Behavior

While high-profile non-renewable resource companies have recently made increasing efforts to implement ethical business practices, many such companies nonetheless perpetuate bribery, environmental abuse, violation of human rights, and an overall lack of transparency.

Oil and mineral companies are currently not required by law to reveal how much they award for extraction rights, making it extremely easy for politicians to embezzle natural resource monies. Despite the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, which outlaws bribery, there have also been a series of high-profile bribery scandals, including those relating to oil exploitation in Kazakhstan.

Furthermore, resource exploitation has led to human rights abuses around the world. The oil company Occidental stands accused of providing lethal aid to Columbian armed forces in order to defeat guerilla groups who were threatening pipeline construction. Industry peer ExxonMobil may have been complicit in the abuses committed by the Indonesian military, while Unocal likely benefited from forced labor deployed by the military government in Myanmar. Two cases relating to Myanmar that are currently in US courts will be a test of the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), which allows aliens to sue in US courts for cases involving gross human rights abuses. In 2002, the administration of US President George W. Bush took the unusual step of intervening in a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, arguing that applying the ATCA might hinder US attempts to fight terrorism.

Violation of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

While the exploitation of oil and mineral resources can threaten the human rights of a diverse group of people, the human rights of indigenous peoples have been particularly vulnerable. One of the best-documented threats to indigenous peoples is the construction of access roads to remote drilling sites. Once constructed, roads serve as open arteries for settlers who may engage in subsequent ecologically and economically unsustainable activities, such as overgrazing, on lands previously claimed or used by indigenous peoples. Furthermore, governments have used manipulative tactics to gain access to natural resources, by demanding monetary taxes from subsistence groups that do not use currency and then subsequently evicting groups from traditionally occupied lands.

Oil and natural gas companies are more sensitive than they were in the past to the threats that access roads pose, and they have begun to utilize offshore technology. In addition, governments expropriate indigenous land less than they did during previous decades. Many have gone so far as to incorporate into their constitutions portions of International Labor Organization Convention 169, an international document discussing indigenous rights, which requires that indigenous peoples be consulted about resource exploitation decisions that affect them. However, meaningful consultation often remains sorely lacking.

Environmental Degradation

Non-renewable resource exploitation can lead both directly and indirectly to environmental degradation. Drilling, pipeline construction, and waste removal can directly promote the destruction of rare species, while resource exploitation can indirectly lead to environmental destruction through opening arteries to settlers, as discussed above.

Many corporations have recently started to engage in environmentally sound practices due to pressure from advocacy groups, resulting in a marked improvement over practices in the 1970s. However, environmentally threatening behavior remains common. For example, pipeline routes have not been closed off in the Camisea Basin in Peru, allowing an influx of settlers. In addition, steep pipeline grates that fail to meet international standards have led to massive landslides, and the construction of an oil refinery within a marine buffer zone threatens endangered species in the region. In nearby La Oroya, Peru, a Doe Run copper mine directly behind the town emits 17 times as much sulfur as the entire copper industry in the United States and 17 times the amount of lead of a similar Doe Run operation in Missouri. Such high rates of emission drastically affect the health of local populations.

Natural Resource Policy and Human Development

These extensive shortcomings hardly mean that a country should entirely shut its doors to resource exploitation, as Bolivia did in October 2003 after attempts to export natural gas by now-ousted President Goni Sanchez de Lozada. Mineral and oil resources have the potential to play a key role in lifting some of the poorest regions of the world out of poverty. However, for natural resource exploitation to lead to human development instead of just the enrichment of certain populations, a government must adhere to five basic measures. First, it must consult those affected by the resource exploitation. Second, it must ensure that resource exploitation benefit the people, not just the elites. Third, it must meet a predefined set of environmental criteria. Fourth, it must make the entire process as transparent as possible. Finally, it must make every effort to promote democracy.

Meaningful consultation with those affected by resource exploitation is central, because it confers people with a voice about extractive processes that have the potential to profoundly affect their lives, their health, and the environment in which they live. The belief that resource exploitation represents a conflict between economic growth (if resources are exploited) and culture (of previously untouched groups, now endangered) is a fallacy. Those making this argument view culture as a static entity, a fossil rather than a continuously evolving web of social perceptions and interactions. Economic development can be consistent with cultural integrity, if those affected are properly consulted and have a chance to knowledgably participate in decisions about resource exploitation that affect them. These decisions, if made discursively, confer those affected with the agency to protect their cultural structures and to benefit from resource exploitation, in the form of government investments in education and health.