It's a place of darkness. People are poor and hail from tribes and clans. They live in basic shelters in remote villages, with no running water or electricity, and no access to clinics. Subsisting on seasonal work, hunting and fishing to stock up food for the lean months, they worship nature's beauty. They consider themselves hardy, descendants of those who suffered war, famine, and religious persecution. They resent that their part of the earth gets attention only through the prism of movies or when natural or manmade disasters strike. Then oil is found and they are blessed.
Nope, this is not one of the 53 countries in Africa. It is not a "fragile state" the term often used for the richest in oil and gas and other mineral resources countries in Africa with the poorest citizens affected by the curse of resources: foreign meddling, conflict, war, corruption and autocratic dictators. This is Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in the 1970s.
In 1975 the Alaska legislature asked itself: Was it morally acceptable or ethical for the generation whose presence in Alaska coincided with the oil boom to get all the benefits, leaving the following generations to deal with the decline and fall? No said the majority who thought the Alaskans of the future should have a nest egg and be allowed to share in a temporary windfall from the finite oil resource.
Alaska set up the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (AHF). In 1987, the APF was worth US$11 billion, and by 1997 it was US$24 billion, exceeding total state oil and gas revenues. As of March 2013 it was US$45.5 billion (here). The lesson is that managed professionally, a national asset can grow into the future beyond the finite resource. You can read the whole case study by Steve Cowper, a former Alaska Governor (no, not that one), in a book edited by the World Bank's ...
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