Reframing resource governance: integrating sustainability in the resource curse debate

The notion of the ‘resource curse’ has become widely used in the study of extractive industries, initially describing how abundant natural resources impede economic growth. Through a novel combination of quantitative and qualitative discursive analyses of scientific literature, we examine how the resource curse has been framed and evolved in the sustainability domain. We quantitatively analysed 1,616 academic articles and performed an in-depth qualitative analysis of 226 selected articles. We identified seven key storylines in the resource curse literature. While multiple indicators are used to define the resource curse, economic growth remains the most influential indicator shaping its framing, although democracy, violence, socio-economic development, and environmental quality are increasingly recognized. Especially the quality of institutions is consistently identified as a crucial factor to explain the resource curse, and improvements in institutional quality are thus often suggested as being essential for mitigating it. Overall, our analysis highlights the broader policy and research implications and the need to move beyond narrow economic analyses of the resource curse towards alternative types of natural resource governance that address all ecological, economic and social dimensions of sustainability and also include also non-state actors.