The societal metabolism and resource curse of developing economies: a comparative study of Ghana and Ivory Coast

This thesis proposes a new analytical framework to analyse the relationship between material
and energy use with indicators of well-being and economic growth in developing countries,
conducted in the context of debates around the resource curse and development theories. By
combining the societal metabolism approach with a historic and political context, this
methodology explores the social metabolism and resource curse over time, relying on
biophysical indicators of resource abundance.

The analytical framework developed in this thesis identifies different aspects that have shaped
the development trajectories of currently developing countries. It demonstrates that in order to
understand present and future development paths of developing countries, a holistic approach
that can combine different sets of data is needed, as it can inform about possibilities and tradeoffs
of development pathways such as those envisioned by the Sustainable Development Goals.
Therefore, the approach developed in this thesis provides the basis to carry out developmental
research utilizing a metabolic approach in developing countries where data issues prevent
societal metabolism research. In this thesis two case studies are presented to test the
methodology, finding that: (1) socio-political stability plays an important role shaping the
metabolism of an economy and avoiding the resource curse; (2) well-being can improve
without growth in economic activity or resource consumption; (3) international governance has
had major impacts shaping the present economic structure of the selected economies.