Why Governments Waste Natural Resources: Policy Failures in Developing Countries

Rating:
Summary: This book tells it like it is!
Review: Anyone interested in conservation or resource use should have this book. It is the first book I have seen that actually tells in detail how bad resource use decisions are made in Third World countries. I picked it up with a sense of "ho hum--another book on resource econ--I bet I know it all already." I did know most of what Ascher says, but I hung on every word anyway, because what he does with the info is so original and incisive. He provides many case studies of resource management failures. I have worked in many of the countries involved, and can testify to the accuracy and insight of the accounts (though he does pull a few punches). There are some problems. The worst is that he confines his attention to Third World countries, even when they are just doing what First World countries told them. His discussion of Mexico's disastrous irrigation policy, for instance, does not include the fact that Mexico was copying the US, and with US advice. Mexico was a fine student--managed to wreck the land, water, and small-farm economy as badly as the US has! (Ascher might have compared Charles Wilkinson's BEYOND THE LAST MERIDIAN to the Mexico case.) Brazil's disastrous "development" of the Amazon was also inspired by US example (the "winning of the west"--Indian genocide and all). In short, Ascher has put his finger on general processes of resource devastation, not "Third World" ones. This being said--this is an essential book for conservationists and resource economists.

Rating:
Summary: This book tells it like it is!
Review: Anyone interested in conservation or resource use should have this book. It is the first book I have seen that actually tells in detail how bad resource use decisions are made in Third World countries. I picked it up with a sense of "ho hum--another book on resource econ--I bet I know it all already." I did know most of what Ascher says, but I hung on every word anyway, because what he does with the info is so original and incisive. He provides many case studies of resource management failures. I have worked in many of the countries involved, and can testify to the accuracy and insight of the accounts (though he does pull a few punches). There are some problems. The worst is that he confines his attention to Third World countries, even when they are just doing what First World countries told them. His discussion of Mexico's disastrous irrigation policy, for instance, does not include the fact that Mexico was copying the US, and with US advice. Mexico was a fine student--managed to wreck the land, water, and small-farm economy as badly as the US has! (Ascher might have compared Charles Wilkinson's BEYOND THE LAST MERIDIAN to the Mexico case.) Brazil's disastrous "development" of the Amazon was also inspired by US example (the "winning of the west"--Indian genocide and all). In short, Ascher has put his finger on general processes of resource devastation, not "Third World" ones. This being said--this is an essential book for conservationists and resource economists.