Depleting resources

Environmental scarcities generate opportunities for powerful coalitions of elite members within countries to capture windfall wealth. Scarcities can boost the economic power of small elite groups who are increasingly able to ignore state dictates, shirk taxes on their greater wealth, and penetrate the state to make it do their bidding. In particular, they can lobby to change the property rights and other laws governing the use of scarce resources such as water, land, and forests. These groups have pursue such change because the state is usually able to generate large economic rents by expanding the range of permissible uses of resources and by granting monopolistic access to resources. In many societies, these rent-seeking elite groups influence the state through bribery, kickbacks, and other forms of corruption.