ABSTRACT
Malaysia provides an ideal case for examining the relationships among natural resources, environmental quality, and development from an economic perspective. To begin, it is one of the most resource-rich countries in the world. In this regard it stands in contrast to the East Asian “tigers” (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) that are often cited as models of successful economic development, and it is more similar to the rest of the developing world. Land and mineral resources were the basis of the country's economy when the Federation of Malaysia was formed in 1963. The relative importance of resource-based sectors has declined since, but they remain important in absolute terms. Indeed, GDP in primary sectors—mining and quarrying, agriculture, forestry, and fishing—was larger by a factor of more than two in real terms in 1990 than in 1970 (Figure 1.1). So were exports of primary commodities (Figure 1.2). 1
