Natural Resources, Policies and Planning for Developing Countries

Abstract

Developing countries need to know a great deal about their natural resources of land, energy, water, and minerals, and about the industries, products, and services closely associated with them. They also need to make headway in translating that knowledge into programs of development. These two closely associated goals are important to developing countries because resource industries are dominant in their economic life, because improvement in the resource sectors usually is a prerequisite of escape from situations in which rapid population increase is accompanied by low productivity and income, and because raw material exports frequently have to be depended on for foreign exchange with which to purchase needed capital equipment. Furthermore, subsequent growth will be conditioned by the pattern of location of population and industry and by the development experiences established during the earlier phases of economic development when natural resource occurrences and characteristics are more influential.