{"id":1550,"date":"2013-03-27T13:52:31","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T18:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/\/"},"modified":"2016-01-22T13:54:50","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T18:54:50","slug":"from-non-renewable-resources-to-unlimited-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/from-non-renewable-resources-to-unlimited-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"From non-renewable resources to unlimited knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"
Developing countries often have more natural resources than they know what to do with. The resources course is still a popular subject for books and essays in the development industry. Decades of work on the subject and still very little has been done to avoid it. Here is a solution:\u00a0Make the resources themselves the focus of a knowledge sector<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I wrote about it last year on\u00a0Got resources? Think Tank Them<\/a>. At the time, I argued that:<\/p>\n The\u00a0University of Dundee in Scotland<\/a>\u00a0is host to students from all over the world who travel there to read courses related to the mining sector. Many Peruvians study there \u2013I know a few of them. Last I heard, though, there aren\u2019t any mines in Dundee were they can practice and experience, first hand, the industry they are studying. So why would a Peruvian leave a country rich in mines to study in Scotland where the mining industry is all but a thing of the past?<\/p>\n The answer is simple: Peru does not have a world-class university that specialises in mining.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The same is true for forestry, tourism, and pretty much everything that is exploitable. Expertise is always somewhere else. And it is not just about extractive industries (of the non-renewable kind): certain crops such as coffee, cocoa and now quinoa remain unexplored for their potential. We sell them to be repackaged and rebranded elsewhere. I find the idea of someone selling ‘Italian coffee’ or ‘Belgian chocolate’ something of an oxymoron. Can someone please show me the coffee plantations in Italy?<\/p>\n And we are to blame. Not only have we not made investments that developed countries did in their tertiary education and research sectors but we have no even done what a few progressive developing countries did either. Colombia, for example, did not just ‘imagine’ the ‘Colombian Coffee’ brand over night. The fact that Colombia has one of the best education sectors in the region goes a long way in explaining its success (at least until recently).<\/p>\n I followed that blog with an article in a\u00a0Peruvian Newspaper, El Comercio<\/a>, in which I used the same title as for this blog. By investing in think tanks and universities specialised on our natural resources, I argued, we could shift from an economy based on extraction to one based on knowledge. The former limited; the latter unlimited.<\/p>\n