The Natural Dividend

Anne Margrethe Brigham, Jonathon W. Moses

Description

Forced to embrace a post-carbon future, or risk serious damage to the planet, we have begun a race for alternatives to the scarce resources that previous generations relied on. In this book, Jonathan Moses and Anne Brigham consider how best we might negotiate the world’s scarce pool of natural resources, and avoid the pitfalls of the past.

In order to shift the world’s consumption from one set of scarce natural resources to another, they show the need for management regimes that are both politically, as well as environmentally, sustainable. They propose an alternative way to think about resource management for the future, one based on the collective ownership of (stewardship over) nature, and one where the rents resulting from this ownership, like the resources that produce them, belong to the people. Using case studies from particular markets, they demonstrate how such a management model might work to protect our common heritage and allow communities to secure the benefits we can and should expect from scarce resources – our natural dividend.

1. Introduction

2. Who owns the sun?

3. The natural dividend

4. The earth: the market for land

5. The sea: the market for salmon

6. The sky above: the market for renewable energy

7. The earth beneath: the market for fossil and mineral resources

8. A common market? The market for global resources

9. Conclusion

Sujets

• Environmental Policy
• Economic Policy
• Public Policy
• Political Economy
• Human Geography
• Sustainable Development
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Sustainability
• Georgism
• Economic geography
• Macroeconomics
• Economics
• Development
• Business
• Henry George

Informations

• Publié par: Agenda Publishing
• Date de parution: 15 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781788214421
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Natural Dividend
The Natural Dividend
Just Management of Our Common Resources
Jonathon W. Moses and Anne Margrethe Brigham
To Aurora and Thandeka
© Jonathon W. Moses and Anne Margrethe Brigham 2023
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2023 by Agenda Publishing
Agenda Publishing Limited
PO Box 185
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE20 2DH
www.agendapub.com
ISBN 978-1-78821-439-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-78821-440-7 (paperback)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Typeset by Newgen Publishing UK
Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own,
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so, but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steal the goose from off the common;
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.
Old English folk song
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Who owns the sun?
3. The Natural Dividend
4. The earth: the market for land
5. The sea: the market for salmon
6. The sky above: the market for renewable energy
7. The earth beneath: the market for fossil and mineral resources
8. A common market? The market for global resources
9. Conclusion
References
Index
Acknowledgements
In 2019 the Norwegian journalist Jon Hustad referred to Norway as “grunnrentelandet”, 1 or (less eloquently) the nation of resource rents . This is because Norway has a history of managing its natural resources for the good of its people. The history of this grunnrenteland began at the turn of the last century, when a young country – newly independent from Sweden – decided to stop foreigners from absconding with the surplus value produced by its (Norwegian) waterfalls. Later, this approach became central to the way that Norway managed its vast petroleum resources, to the benefit of its people.
As long-time residents of Norway, we are intimately familiar with this history of the grunnrenteland , and we wish to share the lessons of this management regime both with younger Norwegians and with a more global readership. As the reader will soon learn, many of the tools used by Norwegian officials to manage their natural resources can be found elsewhere: similar management tools are employed by other countries, and in the management of other types of resources. Indeed, this is not a book about Norway; it is simply inspired by the Norwegian experience. There is nothing particularly unique about the Norwegian approach to managing natural resources, but it offers a glimpse of what is possible to achieve (as well as clear lessons about the dangers of waiting). In the Norwegian case, we see how it is possible to introduce a new and more just management regime for natural resources, but that it is difficult to do so after strong vested interests have been allowed to take root.
We think it is particularly important that a new generation of policy-makers and civil servants become aware of alternative management models, as the history of resource management, or the lessons from comparative policy-making, are often sacrificed on the mantle of economic efficiency. It is for this reason that we have pitched our argument in the direction of academics, policy-makers and civil servants, more than activists or the general public.
This work is inspired by both words and deeds. The first can be found in two remarkable, if underappreciated, works: Thomas Paine’s Agrarian Justice and Henry George’s Progress and Poverty . These two publications are as important and gripping today as when they first were published (1797 and 1879, respectively). They come highly recommended. But we are also inspired by the way in which Norway has come to manage its petroleum resources. Although many people have contributed to this special management approach, the deeds of one person, in particular, have made a strong impression upon us: Farouk Al-Kasim. 2 Al-Kasim’s work was central to what became the “Norwegian model” for petroleum resource management. The success of this model should encourage more countries to secure the Natural Dividend that belongs to us all.
Thus inspired, the impetus for this project can be found in a 2018 funding application to the Norwegian Research Council’s “Bionær” programme. This application, entitled “Funding future welfare: bioeconomy as the ‘new oil’ and the sharing of benefits from natural resources” (BioShare), was spearheaded by Frode Flemsæter and Katrina Rønningen at Ruralis. It resulted in a four-year, broad-based research project that aimed to “develop the knowledge and analytical understanding necessary to assess, organise and manage the sharing of benefits from the utilization of bioresources, and provide policy recommendations accordingly to reinforce the basis for the future welfare state” (quoted from the original application).
This research project provided us with a welcomed opportunity to work together, and our collaboration began with two article publications. The first was entitled “Den nye oljen” (“The new oil”), 3 published in the Norwegian political science journal Norsk statsvitenskapelig tidskrift ( NST : Brigham & Moses, 2021 ). In this article, we consider whether Norway will be able to maintain its standard of living as the country transitions to a post-oil economy. In doing so, we reveal how Norwegian policy-makers have largely abandoned the grunnrenteland model in their approach to managing new natural resources. We were surprised that such a successful model was not being repurposed (as was done earlier with oil), and we began to search for other examples of successful, but ignored, approaches to managing our natural resources in a just fashion.
Later in that same year we published a related article in Marine Policy , entitled “Whose benefit? A comparative perspective for the ISA” (Moses & Brigham 2021 ), which takes a critical look at the way the international community approaches the management of our deep-sea mineral resources. As in so many national contexts, the international community seems to be unaware of the need to secure the Natural Dividend generated by our common natural resources, and we sketched a brief outline of what the International Seabed Authority (ISA) might do to secure some of that Natural Dividend. In researching this article we came to realize how unprepared the global community is to deal with the expected future rush on natural resources found in the global commons.
As our argument is novel, and may prove controversial in some circles, we have striven to provide sufficient documentation, references and cross-referencing. We recognize that this can interrupt the reader’s momentum, but we felt it was necessary on two grounds: to show that our work is not idle speculation (but builds on an established and respectable literature and policy experiences); and to help curious readers track the argument closely, and retrace the foundations upon which our argument rests. We recommend that the first-time reader ignore the frequent references, footnotes and cross-referencing, and simply plough through the book, from one end to the other. Those readers who want to dive deeper into the subject material might return, reread and follow up on all or some of the references and cross-references.
Over the course of researching and writing this book, we have received the help and support of many different people. We are thankful to colleagues and friends for their support and assistance. First among these is Alison Howson, our editor at Agenda. Alison planted the seed for this book project and helped nourish its early development. She saw the potential early on and encouraged us to pursue it by securing a number of excellent, anonymous and critical reviewers from distant intellectual and political corners. In doing so, she introduced us to a much broader swathe of the literature. In short, this project would never have seen the light of day had it not been for Alison’s strong support and encouragement.
We are lucky to be surrounded by a community of like-minded scholars, at both the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and Ruralis (the Institute for Rural and Regional Research), who are also interested in resource rents. This has led to many informal exchanges in Trondheim, where the main office of Ruralis is located, either in more general conference settings or in our focused reading group. At Ruralis, we would like to thank members of the Ground Rent reading group and the broader BIOSHARE research community, especially Eirik Magnus Fuglestad and Katrina Rønningen. At NTNU, we have benefited greatly from the critical comments of several colleagues working in nearby fields.
As this book grew out of two earlier publications, we are indebted to the many commenters and reviewers who have combed through these article manuscripts. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers at both NST and Marine Policy , but also to several friends and colleagues who have helped along the way. Several people have read and commented on article and chapter drafts that were first used to sketch out the ideas in this book: Reidar Almås, Michael Alvarez, Rahul Basu, Eirik Magnus Fuglestad, Paul Harnett, Espen Moe, Rune Skarstein, Anders Skonhoft, Jostein Vik, Anna Zalik and Heidrum Åm. We are also indebted to Lars Douceet for translating our NST article into English, making it accessible to a wider audience.
Finally, we are most indebted to a