Industrial and artisanal exploitation of natural resources: Impacts on development

Renewable resources raise fundamentally different questions for economic analysis, especially since the intensity of their exploitation has a direct impact on their renewability. Non-renewable natural resources rather raise the question of their management during the exploitation phase and of their depletion potential. This chapter proposes a presentation of the literature that analyzes the macroeconomic link, at the country level, between resources and development, before moving on to the most recent advances in the economic literature, which focus on the local impacts of resource exploitation, particularly mining. A local industry may be created to try to meet the demand of extractive industries, but the creation of such enterprises is hampered by another central feature of industrial extraction: the exhaustion of mineral resources. Extractive industries may use corporate social responsibility investments. Artisanal and industrial mines differ in almost every respect. Artisanal activity is more labor-intensive than industrial activity.