8
scale due to its oil wealth alone.”
32
Beyond this, Ross finds more specifically that the
anti-democratic effects of oil cause more damage in poor countries than they do in rich
countries.
33
Second, just as Leite and Weidmann found that labor-intensive renewable
resources did not contribute to corruption, so Ross finds that food and agriculture do not
have anti-democratic effects. In his words, “oil and other minerals impede democracy,
but other primary commodities—which generate few or no rents, produce less export
income for the state, and employ a larger fraction of the labor force—do not.”
34
Risk factors and applicability to Chad
Although the evidence behind it is strong and compelling, the resource curse is
not inevitable. Oil in Alberta has not inhibited democracy, caused civil war, reduced
economic growth or massively increased corruption in Canada. Indeed, outside of
environmental concerns, if the World Bank had loaned money to a pipeline shipping oil
from Sweden to Norway or even from Botswana to South Africa, it would not be
controversial. In the case of Chad, however, there are a number of factors that make this
a particularly high-risk gamble.
Ross finds that the anti-democratic effects of oil are much stronger in poor
countries than in rich countries. Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world. In
2002, its per capita gross national product (GNP) was approximately $250.
35
The World
Bank estimates that 80 percent of its population of 7.5 million lives on less than one
dollar a day and notes that “The depth and pervasiveness of poverty is striking, and only
a small fraction of the population escapes its consequences….”
36
In its 2004 Human
Development Index, the United Nations Development Program ranked Chad 167
th
out of
177 countries, just below Angola and just above the Democratic Republic of Congo.
37
Convention