NEW YORK, Oct 18 —The 2015 World Bank reports that the total natural resource rents (% of GDP) vary vastly between Germany, Russia, and Liberia. Germany, the most developed country of the three, retains just 0.068% of its GDP in total revenue from natural resource extraction. The Western European country has maintained a stagnant percentage of total rents from natural resources since 1970 (refer to graph) and will most likely continue to do so, as its economy depends minimally on natural resources. The Russian Federation, the world’s largest nation, reaches further with 10.307% of its GDP from total natural resources rents in 2015. Since Russia was included in the World Bank statistics in 1989, their data has varied far more than countries such as Germany, taking an all-time low in 1998 (during the time of the Russian financial crisis) and an all-time high in 2000 (the same year when Vladimir Putin took office). Since 2000, the Russian Federation has decreased their natural resource rent percentages from 21.656% to 10.307%. Taking the size and distribution of people within the country into consideration, Russia is the second-largest producer of oil and largest producer of natural gas in the world. The federal semi-presidential republic appears to be trending downward in this regard. Finally, at a drastic high, Liberia reaps 46.441% of its GDP from total natural resource rents despite being the smallest country of the three. The data from Liberia is undeniably the most diversified, too. In 1994, the country hit an astonishing 82.589% of GDP in natural resource rents (the highest of any other country in the world during that time), yet nearly halved that percentage to 46.441% by 2015. The instability and unpredictability of Liberia’s data corresponds to its developing economy, as it is most-likely dependent on these natural resources for revenue. While this abundance may offer financial support to the country, the reliance on the environment for things such as rich deposits of oil and minerals often worsens matters such as poverty, inequality, and deprivation.
As a whole, these three separate and very different economies reflect the diverging ways in which separate governments utilize their assets to support the state’s GDP. Germany’s economy is diversified, Russia’s a lot less so, and Liberia’s almost not at all. Further, this means that these high levels of dependence on natural resources also “reflect an atrophied or even non-existent non-resource economy. So, in effect, they are very vulnerable to global price swings” (Moran).
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