IJUP08 - Universidade do Porto

Location and Ownership of the Natural Resources in Iraq
C. Silva¹; H. Azevedo¹
¹Department of Geography, Faculty of Letras, University of Porto, Portugal
The Geography, with its traditional emphasis in demarcating, measuring, describing and
classifying the territory, is naturally important for the politics. Nowadays there is a new
geography and a new typology of the conflicts, where the priorities of Countries are related
with the natural resources. The geopolitical, economical and ecological perspectives are
the main causes of the "wars of resources", in other words (Klare 2001), they are
responsible for the "conflicts that happen for the ownership of critical materials." This term
also includes the "description of the fights of local populations against the resource
exploration and the neoliberal reforms in control of the resources" (Gedicks 1993;
Perreault 2006).
Many people cannot be sustained properly in the world, because their countries were not
formed naturally. They are frequently dominated by external powers, generally the
Western countries. The western geopolitical thinking on resources was dominated by the
trade, war and power equation.
Nowadays, we attend to the dispute of territories for the most important and valued
resources, namely the oil-producing products, by the designated developed western
society. The main cause of the importance of the resources has to do with their shortage,
with the need of the consumer’s satisfaction and with the implications in the world
distribution.
With the elaboration of this work for class “Geopolitics and Natural Resources”, it was our
objective to deepen our knowledge concerning the most valued natural resources to the
world scale, of the Middle East and of Iraq, realizing if these have evident influence in the
per capita income of the population and in the actual situation that the World and the
country crosses.
For such, we proceeded to the collect of available statistical information with the intention
of proceeding to its graphic and cartographic representation. In this extent, we collected
data concerning the population, per capita income and natural resources. The scientific
procedure adopted was the deductive, as the project is structured in three scales: world;
regional (Middle East) and local (Iraq).
The actual energy needs of the world economy are satisfied, essentially, by non-renewable
energies, as the oil, natural gas and coal. The developed economies, as the Westerner, are
energetically dependent of countries, like Iraq, in that its economy is extremely dependent
of the exports of oil.
Iraq possesses natural resources that guarantee the energy independence. However, it
continues to have social problems, due to the sanctions that are imposed because of the
frequent conflicts. As Iraq has to import the goods essential to the survival of the
population, the diversification of its economy would be fundamental, betting more in the
primary and tertiary sectors, in a way to contribute for the economical growth of the
country, reducing the external dependence and supplying job to the population, turning the
country more competitive globally.
If Iraq cuts in the provisioning of oil, it will cause serious economical crisis in the
countries that are dependent of this resource. We are in the presence of a closed world
political system where all the crisis of an exportation area would be reflected all over the
world, in all the regions, even if geographically distant.
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