Chapter 13 Determinants of Depletion of Natural Resources across Countries: An Empirical Study

The study makes an attempt to understand the regional state of depletion of natural capital stock based on the World Bank's recent data on natural resource depletion by following comparative growth analysis using growth accounting method and exploratory econometric approach. The study also considers two regions namely South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa for comparative analysis. Although the extent of protected areas is increasing in different regions of the world, the extent of forest land areas is declining in different regions. The study also intends to determine the role of deforestation and land-use change, habitat fragmentation, encroachment, rapid population growth, and urbanization in explaining cross-country variations of natural resource depletion. Besides, it assesses the temporal movement of this natural resource depletion for the most vulnerable countries, namely low-income economies. Results show that the two major regions of low-income countries do exhibit depletion of natural capital stock such as agricultural land, forests, and subsoil assets in per capita terms. These results have important implications for poverty reduction and fulfillment of Sustainable development goals (SDGs) of low-income countries.