Customer Reviews

The Plundered Planet: Why We Must--and How We Can--Manage Nature for Global Prosperity

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Collier provides a engaging debate on "tension between prosperity and plunder". In a sense, he picks up where he left off in The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. Here, the focus is on how Nature can be "harnessed to transform" poor societies without overly burdening others. Whether this comes across as an excellent philosophical framing or an over-constrained optimization problem (sorry, geek speak) will determine how well you like this book.

In Part I, Collier uses cutesy but effective algebra employing nature, technology and regulation to show how unique combinations of these results in hunger, plunder or prosperity. The ensuing discussion on ownership v/s custody of natural assets and utilitarianism/propinquity provides a novel way to frame one's ethical and economic responsibilities in the context of environmentalism. In Part II, Collier expands on some of his assertions from Bottom Billion and explains the "resource curse" notion focusing on issues around treating Nature as an asset. Part III discusses his views on what he terms as "plunder" of natural assets. Overall, these two parts form an interesting debate grounded in economic theories (without being overly dry) and serves as an assessment of the different stakeholders in "natural asset extraction". Part IV is more of a cautionary advice to the general population. Collier admits that his thesis that Nature can be entrusted to "values of ordinary citizens" is conditional on their ability not to be misled into beliefs that may be 'comforting, but ultimately destructive'. He then lists three "giants of romanticism" that need to be addressed (fascination with peasant agriculture, ban on genetically modified food, and food-for-fuel). Needless to say, Part IV is likely to face the brunt of criticisms (theoretical or rhetorical), given the amount of popular books on sustainable farming, and clean energy enthusiasts for ethanol, etc. When he discusses political viewpoints (mostly US-centric), a reader cannot deny the balanced approach.

It is challenging to pick a few chapters that are standouts - each one is very successful in articulating a well-focussed message. Be it the discussions around aid policies to mitigate 'commodity shocks', incentivizing investments in Africa, or conflicting constraints on asset exploration, Collier explains economic theories and observations in an accessible manner.

Students of the discipline may find plenty to debate, but that's a good thing. Assumptions regarding taxation, inflation, etc pretty much never appears to have been factored in, for example. Whether or not one agrees with Collier's assertions and hypotheses, one cannot disagree that Collier manages to provoke serious reflection and is more often than not successful in reframing the discussion. This book will provide a reader a logical/rational approach towards environmentalism - stripped from the extreme romanticism or reliance on moralism. I rate the book 5* mostly for this: framing the discussion in a thoughtful way (despite the reluctance in supporting his 'solutions' wholeheartedly).

It is disappointing to see that one of the leading voices in Economics writes a thought provoking book without any citations or very few additional resources for the more curious reader. Nevertheless, this is an engaging and informative read (..so much so that I took a day off to read the book the day I received it) that will cement Collier's position as a thought leader. A must read.

On the whole, this is a good book. It reads well, does not try to cover too much, and uses common sense instead of economic doublespeak or theories pushed beyond their limit. Collier has a valuable mix of ethics and economics: he sees the need to help people, first of all, and, second, to be fair about it; and that means that we see ourselves as custodians of resources for the future.
He is especially good on macroeconomics and national policy, and on the problems of corruption--the "plunder" side of the equation. The middle part of the book, where he dissects this in detail, is by far the best.
He has many good things to say about one of my research areas, fisheries, where we are depleting a resource that should be sustainable, and therefore depriving future generations through sheer irresponsibility. Unfortunately, his cure is to leave fishery regulation to the United Nations and the individual nations that hold territorial waters. The United Nations does not even stop genocide; they saw fit to elect China and Sudan to the Human Rights Commission and then re-elect them. The chances that fish will get better care are somewhat remote.
Collier defends GM crops, nuclear energy generation, and some other things that will raise hackles; I agree with him and the facts are pretty much there, but one must worry about the future with the GM crops, since they are poorly regulated so far.
Collier leaves out two key points that he absolutely needs, to make his case. One is population growth. The delusion that population will naturally stop growing around 2050--a false claim--may have deluded him. In fact, world population is growing far too fast. This could be stopped without any draconian measures, simply by giving girls some education--every year in primary school reduces ultimate birth numbers--and by providing comprehensive health care including family planning options. That done, people are sensible enough to make the right decisions.
Next comes the worldwide decline in good farmland. Urbanization, including building of roads and airports, is a lot of the problem. Erosion and desertification is the rest of it. At current rates of urbanization, my home state of California will lose its last farm around 2050, and China will lose its last one within a century or so. China is moving its agriculture to Brazil, Sudan, and so on--what will the Brazilians and Sudanese eat in the end?
In one place, Collier is wrong, and is so wrong that I find it mystifying: he argues for large-scale agribusiness as opposed to small farms. He holds up the model of the impoverished, capital-less African smallholding or the "romantic" organic hobby farm as the only alternatives! What happened to normal small-to-medium-sized commercial agriculture? There are thousands of studies, over 300 years, using literally tens of millions of data points, that show these are better than large-scale absentee-landlord agribusiness of the Brazil/California style. One can go all the way back to Arthur Young in the 1770s, already proving it. Collier even talked to Hans Binswanger, whom he admits is "the leading international expert on African agriculture" (and, one may add, on some other ag issues), and Binswanger tried to set him straight; but Collier disagrees. One need only read Binswanger's work--or Robert Netting's, or any of a thousand other authors--to see that reasonably-capitalized, intensive, family farming or comparable middle-scale intensive farming is what works. Agribusiness ruins the land and has appalling social consequences; we see a lot of this in California, where, most recently, agribusiness ruined the vast and fertile Tulare Basin by allowing salinization, and now a family farmer is reclaiming a chunk of it through sheer hard work.
Or take my own Mexican research: Maya Indian farmers on tiny plots succeed where every agribusiness effort has failed, in the harsh habitat of the Yucatan peninsula. Hard work and skill will generally beat absentee landlordship and careless use of heavy-duty capital, especially in an environment really needed that skill.

This is an interesting book about the economics of resource development and who is most likely to benefit from it. It also has an informative discussion, at least from the viewpoint of an economist, on how best to manage natural resources. I had a few problems with the book though:

- The title is misleading. It should really be "How to Plunder the Planet while Paying Attention to the Fact that we Should Consider our Children's Needs to Plunder the Planet" or something like that.

- The book is written from the viewpoint of an economist that believes that all of Nature is there for humans to use as they see fit. While I don't entirely disagree with this concept, I think this author is disdainful of the importance of Nature as something we rely on for our psychological health, not just our monetary health.

- While the author does refer to a web page for his research sources, the only references he sites are his own writings and the writings of a few close colleagues from what I can tell. As a layperson trying to gather more information on this topic, I think he could have done better in the book itself.

- The author is a good writer but his writing is that of a researcher. While his text is readable, he repeats himself, writes confusing sentences, and generally could use the help of a professional writer to improve his effectiveness in communicating with people like me.

If you are interested in having a better understanding of the economic policies that drive resource development and how to improve things for the benefit of poor populations, this is a good book. If you are looking for information on how to create sustainable resource development, this author has some ideas, but there may be better sources of information for that topic.

Recently, I read Paul Collier's The Plundered Planet. The book has a particularly awful sub-title (and why do all these books always have sub-titles?): "Why We Must--and How We Can---Manage Nature for Global Prosperity". Why is the sub-title awful? Who manages Nature? It gives the impression that humans are superior to Nature and that Nature can even be managed. Seems to me Nature can be destroyed, enjoyed, worked with, obliterated and conserved: but Nature cannot be managed. It is arrogant to think otherwise. Nature isn't a business. Nature is our world.

But Paul Collier is a Oxford scholar connected to The Economist. An economics professor. As such he should be immediately suspect. But hey, at least the guy writes about climate change and shows concern for the Bottom Billion of humans who live in abject poverty.

I almost stopped reading after the first couple of pages. When it comes to environmentalism, Collier sets up a dichotomy regarding planet plunder of "the romantics" and "the ostriches". Of course, Collier would see me as a "romantic".

He writes:

"Both the romantics and the ostriches will take us to oblivion, albeit by different routes. Run by the romantics, the world would starve; run by the ostriches, it would burn."

From these two perspectives, Collier goes on to find a middle way. A capitalist liberal vision. He continues:

"In short, The Plundered Planet is written for people who are neither filled with a saintly self loathing of modernity nor are ethically blocks of stone: people who have, perhaps, grown a little impatient with the profusion of homilies about our duty to sustain the natural world in the condition to which it has become accustomed, but who nonetheless recognize that a cheery disregard for nature would be whistling in the dark."

He wants his cake and he wants to eat it too.

Alas, the guy is just too much of a humanistic businessman for my tastes. He fully admits that he sees nature as being made for human benefit. And then he quotes scripture to back it up. He fully admits our dominance over the planet.

Consider this awful, but honest, quote:

"Biodiversity is a good thing, but within the context of our survival, not as an end in itself. We are not here to serve nature; nature is here to serve us".

Although the book does give some interesting possibilities--leaving room for other species, conservation and all those good goals are not something he wants to push. It is like he can't think of any other way of living. And I appreciate his concern for the Bottom Billion. But I cannot fathom why such concern cannot also be transferred to other species and bio systems.

Humans First! is Collier's cry. Manage Nature. Good bye Nature.

The Bottom Billion was explicitly about explaining the problems of Africa. It was Collier's description of the problem. In that analysis, many of the challenges were constants. A country without a port is forever consigned to some economic vulnerability. Bad neighbors are also a problem. Others are transitory. A corrupt government enables poverty. Abundant non-renewable natural resources (the "resource curse") is another problem. The last issue is at the heart of most of this book. In the global economy, natural resources (oil, coltan, copper, diamonds, et al) are sought after by China and the West. That is where the Bottom Billion finished.

This is his prescription for the problem. Collier is much more pragmatic. He's asking, 'if Africa is poor but it does have natural resources, then how should the extraction of those resources be engineered to actually help people out of poverty?" Plunder is when bad leaders put their own greed in front of the needs of their nations, often with the facilitation of a world power or a global corporation. Too frequently, abundant resources mix with a lack of transparency in institutions, no rule of law, a poor and poorly educated population. It might be coincidental, or it might be that one breeds the other. No difference. It is the problem that Africa faces today.

Here is how it goes: a relatively undeveloped but somewhat orderly third world country wakes up to the news that (diamonds, oil, copper, uranium...) a vast mine of resources is located inside it borders. Global corporations move into town. They would like to explore, perhaps to find more reserves. Those corporations are not alone - they are soon side by side with the ministries of several nations. They want the goods, and they are willing to pay. The country has a government, albeit it unacquainted with geology or with international law. A deal is struck. The money goes into an account. No one sees the dollars in the country, though. It is siphoned off through "facilitation payments" or by ouright theft. The people are worse off than before, because demand for currency drives up the export price of the other economic products of the country. This is Dutch Disease.

There are better ways for a resource-blessed country to proceed. The model is Norway, where oil wealth was invested into safe US Treasuries. The gradual enrichment of the country took time, but now Norway has excellent roads, clean water, and good schools. That investment has in turn fostered an educated labor force that creates its own value. The dark path is that of Zaire or Equitorial Guinea - where resources have wrecked civil society. Collier thinks there ought to be a balance. Norway's path is generally preferable, although Collier takes exception to the idea of putting off spending. He feels like you cannot give everything to future generations at the expense of today.

The first interesting thing that Collier has to say is that Africa is not actually as well endowed with resources as if often though. With a few of his graduate students, he attempted to monetize known resource assets. The answer was intriguing: across 3/4s of the world, there were about 192,000 pounds per acre in resources. In Africa, there was just 23,000. He doubts that the land is so barren, but only that the continent' lack of development has meant that it is still largely unexplored. Nonetheless, most of those countries are dependent upon commodity exports. They have fewer resources on a relative level, but they have even fewer non-resource assets.

The second interesting thing: he's not so black-and-white about Chinese expansion into the resource game. He likes two things. For one, the Chinese will provide the funds for a country to get its own survey of its geology. That means that these countries are negotiating with more certainty. Second, the Chinese pay in a way that prevents plunder. Whereas the West likes to offer dollars through transparent agreements, the Chinese prefer to build infrastructure but not to provide any details about their deals. There is value to that approach. It guarantees that those oil or copper dollars won't go into the Swiss accounts of the Prime Minister.

A third interesting thing: Collier believes that "pastoralism," his term for the rose-colored view of village life and local agriculture, is a short-sighted and potentially harmful concept. Prince Charles has apparently developed a working village community in England, with artisan trade workers and small farming. Development organizations have lately taken to supporting micro-finance projects and small scale farming. The problem with that, he says, is that we already have about one billion people that cannot eat. Population is only going to expand. Moreover, with climate change it is likely that there will be fewer places that are suitable for farming. The world is going to have more starving people, unless we accept large scale agronomy and the opportunities afforded by fertilizers and GMO crops. I think he understands why people love going to their farmer's market: the food just tastes better. And it does, but there is a cost. While all of those farmer's markets probably don't take many acres away from Cargill or ADM, the idea is the problem. If the World Food Programme decides that it is going to fund projects that support small peasant plots, then Africa will never be able to feed its mega-cities.

I imagined that this would be a book about the destruction of our natural environment. It was the title, "Plundered Planet," as well as its subhead about nature and prosperity, that made me think Collier would be skip to a discussion about stewardship of nature. Ah, but that is what this book is not about. Collier even singles out the idea of "stewardship" as misguided. How can we put the interest of nature first if it means consigning more nations to poverty, and more people to lives without sanitation, education, and adequate food? The problem is that many environmental aims are met by holding development in place. He wants clean forests, stocks of fish, and fresh air. He also wants economic growth. This book is about satisfying both of those aims. The success or failure will be witnessed in Africa, where people are already poor but will also be among the most vulnerable to climate change.

I enjoyed this book because it is so thorough, and also because I feel like I have been listening to someone who is not afraid to contradict a popular opinion. These are the thoughts of someone that has spent his life thinking about how we can actually make a difference for the Wretched of the Earth. Although it is written by a world-class academic, it is still written in a way that it can be understood by the average reader.

Paul Collier wants to bring prosperity to the world's poorest inhabitants and ensure prosperity for future generations. To accomplish this, he argues, we must manage nature. In "The Plundered Planet" Collier carefully explains the economic intricacies of managing nature to ensure global prosperity for all earth's present and future generations. The layperson unfamiliar with economics may at times become lost in the details of Collier's explanations, but the overall argument can be followed with careful reading. Collier lays out a decision tree with precise steps for managing natural resources. Separate chapters describe each of the steps in detail.

Collier is an economist. He views nature in economic terms. Nature to him is an asset to be used by humanity. Nature holds no intrinsic value. Plants and animals have no inherent rights to life. Their value is based only on their usefulness for humans. Some may protest Collier's support of industrial agriculture and genetically modified foods. He argues, though, that environmentalists and economists need each other. He advocates for a middle approach that avoids the extremes of romantic environmentalism and Utilitarian economics.

If you care about the issues of poverty or the environment, this book is worth a read. Collier attempts to map how nature can be harnessed to transform poor societies without burdensome demands on the rest of us. His goal is to explain how we may restore environmental order and eradicate global poverty. Some of his approaches may be open to argument, but his recommendations are worth consideration.

Paul Collier is Professor of Economics at Oxford, and mainly famous for his previous book The Bottom Billion, on the economics of the third world, notably Africa. In this new work he develops that theme but also expands his scope to the more general topic of managing the world's resources globally.

It would be fair to call Collier very logical, but of course his logic rests on certain values and ethical assumptions. Fundamental to his case is that natural resources have no private owners, with the corollary that natural liabilities such as greenhouse gases are also public responsibilities. This perspective seems only common rationality and common sense to me, but I expect there are conservative schools of thought to whom such ideas are anathema. In fact Collier goes further and regularly points to governments as being the only proper owners and managers of the resources that he categorises as being public, so presumably if you view actions by governments as being the agency of the devil on earth you may find the professor's reasoning unpalatable. In that case I should warn you that there is even worse in store, and that Collier brazenly prescribes international action as being necessary, via the United Nations if necessary.

None of this commits Collier to any unduly rosy view of governments much less of the UN. His argument, if I am not misrepresenting him, is not that governments carry out their responsibilities well, only that certain tasks are inescapably governmental responsibilities whether carried out well or badly, and of course he does not rule out delegation by governments to private or at least non-governmental groups where there is clear benefit in doing so. He is also, or certainly appears to be, extremely methodical in testing his findings by historical analysis. When the historical research comes up with counter-intuitive findings, he does not gloss this over but comes out upfront with what his analysis tells him. Sometimes, indeed, he might seem to be labouring the obvious ever so slightly, as when he solemnly informs us that good governance in Africa has beneficial economic effects for the governed. It needs no professor come from Oxford to tell us this, you might say, but really I support his way of doing it even here. Perhaps we can trust our common sense in the way we can trust our memory - a large proportion of the time. However a large proportion is not a totality, and it is worth checking whether the perception in question is a majority or a minority instance.

Where I suspect Collier is pulling his punches a little is when the economic benefits that he identifies point in the opposite direction from the non-economic. Where exactly has he positioned himself with regard to the preservation of natural species, for instance? On the one hand he is unequivocal in his support for large-scale farming, but we all know that this threatens some varieties of wildlife. He is impatient with certain environmentalists' attitudes that seem to him `romantic', and I suppose justifiably so up to a point, but is he tacitly implying that the giant panda is heading for extinction by its own efforts or lack of them, never mind as a result of human-engineered developments? He is patently humane and fair-minded, but not exactly a sentimentalist, as I suppose I must be to a certain extent. I would also like to pull him up sharply over the question of nuclear power generation. He states, as its proponents always state, that it is guiltless of carbon emissions. This is true of course, but what are we to do with the wastes? I have the uneasy suspicion that wholesale commitment to nuclear power, or at least fission generation, is only going to take us out of the frying pan into you-know-where. You can't destroy nuclear material, you can only take it somewhere else, and some of the actinides are dangerous for what is effectively the rest of eternity as measured against the human life-span, wherever we are supposed to put them. It may be a different story if we can overcome the monumental obstacles inherent in fusion generation, but that does not look to be just round the corner.

However I recommend this important book without hesitation. Collier can be witty and even acerbic at times, witness his withering comments on the recent Copenhagen conference and its idiotic fumbling. He is not a great stylist in the sense that I would call Galbraith a stylist, and he is in general less polemical and `political' than Galbraith might be thought to be. However he majors on thoroughness, and if at times he might even seem slightly flat-footed, I recall what Galbraith himself said about new concepts in economics - there are none. The only financial reality is cash, the rest is smoke and mirrors. On the matter of public responsibilities, here is another - it is the duty of every adult citizen to become familiar with at least basic economics, because the stridently vocal and pathologically ignorant are getting away with too much by way of `debate'. Collier is not difficult to read, so it is up to the rest of us to read him.

Paul Collier is well known as the author of "The Bottom Billion," about the poorest people of the world and what the future might hold for them. That book received well-deserved plaudits for a scintillating analysis designed for a general audience about the disparity of wealth around the globe. This book, using another inviting alliteration in its title, pursues the complex issues associated with what Collier refers to the as the "global management of nature."

"The Plundered Planet" seeks to balance the challenges of global climate change, especially the warming of the globe overall and the rise of radical weather patterns, with the difficulties and benefits of industrialization. Paul Collier, professor of economics and Director of the Center for the Study of African Economies ar Oxford University, calls for a stewardship over these resources as something critical for welfare of our progeny.

Divided into five major sections--the ethics of nature, nature as asset, nature as a factory, nature misunderstood, and natural order--"The Plundered Planet" insists that everyone must work together because a crisis is upon all of us. In Collier's estimation, environmentalists and economists have more in common than they have differences. Both must agree to work together in the responsible development of natural resources. Collier goes into depth in his academic specialty, African studies, and spends considerable time on the problems of the nations, peoples, and economics of that continent.

Collier seems bent in "The Plundered Planet" on treating nature as fundamentally a commodity to be managed using all of the resources of the modern world. That is a strikingly different approach from that advocated by many other observers. He offers high technology solutions as the means, indeed the only means, whereby humanity might overcome difficulties in the twenty first century. This book is an accessible call to action and a useful entrée into the compelling and critical subject of global warming and its challenges for the future, especially as it will affect those most marginalized by modern society.

The Plundered Planet is about how we need to rethink the way we value natural assets. The author discusses the framework we need to embrace so that resource planning becomes institutionalized instead of resource plunder. I have not read the bottom billion which is quite heavily referred to, despite this, the book was very readable and made some very strong and convincing arguments for both local and global reform.

The author first discusses some basic resource economic ideas. He starts with the view of his son, who is saddened by resource depletion in brazil. The foundational "axiom" on which the authors perspectives and solutions are based, are that the earth's resources are to be used by mankind as a species, not mankind in a generation. As a result means we need to have a time consistent way to deal with resource usage. Various methods are described, from the ultra risk averse view of saving 100% of the revenues to how the utilitarian calculus would work. These exercises are not mere thought experiments. Case examples of how resource revenues are spent and how crowding out of other enterprises are discussed and the reality of the problem begin to set in with the reader. Cause and effect are blurred and the sense of needing the right institutions in place in order to have the right policies becomes a seeming infinite regress given right institutions need the right institutions which need the right institutions... Collier describes what he believes are the seeds of good institutions, in a sense there are some very innovative ideas about the true foundation of economic growth that has a defined policy starting point.

The author goes on to talk about the problems involved in current resource policy at the local and global level. In particular corporates have asymmetric information with respect to the value of resources but governments have the ability to change their contracts forcing solutions of rapid depletion which are not time consistent. Also the local politics are discussed with politicians able to line pockets which allow them to be more likely to win rather than the opposite is a corrupting force. The author thinks transparency is the key and is an advocate of a program forcing companies to disclose the countries in which they buy resources, making resource plunder as partly a consumer choice. He discusses some of the global problems we face and how to avoid a race to the bottom and free rider problems with over-fishing and carbon emission.

The author considers carbon in the same spirit as non-renewable resources. He looks at carbon as a natural liability; its a very interesting idea. He considers us leaving this debt behind and thus it needs to be looked at that way. The "value" of this debt was estimated as $40 a ton and this price is then used as the number we need to tax carbon production at. I think the idea of considering carbon a debt, is an excellent one, i think the $40 tax isnt thought out as well as it should be. The obvious issues that come to mind are, the value of carbon can only be defined as some number if we can clean it up as that number with constant elasticity of supply. The number used is derived i believe from reducing demand, which is off of today's demand curve (and even that cant be theoretically determined or stationary). Therefore just taxing carbon without having a place for those tax dollars isnt perscriptive, it could go right back into subsidies, it could get taken hostage by interest groups putting into ethanol farming etc. The premise is good, but the map of what to do is very incomplete.

The author then discusses renewable resources. In particular, overfishing and farming. Overfishing is discussed clearly (its a classic game theory problem who's solutions have been studied extensively) and I think this is good reading for anyone unfamiliar. The author then discusses farming. This is where some economists differ and the articulates that he has a differing perspective than a colleague of his by promoting large industrial farms vs smaller family though capitalist farms. In anycase, the need for certain things to be fixed, like allowing GM crops etc is well argued and helps give practical solutions to real problems.

The author has two major concerns, the poorest in the world, and the future of the world. With those being what one worries about, you cant really consider the author as being selfish. His solutions go against vested interests, but he is concerned with feeding the poor, not nostalgia and romanticism. Stunting of growth has permanent irreversible effect and using grain to make enthanol because of the subsidies raises food costs. The inelasticity of supply in crops makes prices ultra sensitive to supply and demand shocks. Mainly to the upside given stocks of food are quite low. The treatment of carbon starts out with a great idea, carbon as a debt, though the rest of it isnt complete (nor can it be given what we know). This is well worth reading, its more difficult than a lot of economics for the general public, but it provides valuable insight by a man trying to help those in the world which most need it, those without the knowledge and power to make informed decisions and those of the future who have no voice.

I must admit that economics is not my strong suit, so it took me a while to get through this book. I ordered it because I am currently reading a lot of material on ecology from various viewpoints. This author proposes a synthesis between environmentalism and economics, two disciples that have, in his words, been at each other like cats and dogs. He suggests that environmentalists and economists must work together, using the following formula: nature+technology+regulation=properity. If there is no regulation of natural assets, he explains, the result is rampant plunder that eventually leads to econonic crashes and poverty. He therefore advocates that natural resources should be regulated and managed and, if this is done responsibly, everyone can benefit. Of course, his thesis is much more complex than this. There are differences between non-renewable resources such as oil, and renewable resources such as timber. There is also a difference between privately owned resources, such as fish farms, and publicly owned wild fish caught in international waters. (For the latter, he suggests an international regulatory body, perhaps connected to the United Nations, to prevent over-fishing. Currently, there is no internatonal regulation at all.)

I also found it interesting that the United States in the only country that uses a "finders keepers" approach to mineral prospecting. Other countries have some provision for using mineral deposits for the common good, and not just by whatever corporation gets there first. Whether or not these regulated mineral resources do, in fact, benefit the common people depends on the type of government in power and how the income from the resources are managed. In some cases, where assets are poorly managed, they can become a curse, because once they are used up, the economy crashes unless replacement resources have been developed.

One area he didn't really touch on was how switching from animal-based diets to plant-based diets could help feed more hungry people. The current tendency is to import factory farming and feedlot agriculture, which is a very inefficent way of producing food for the masses. The beef industry is a major destroyer of rainforests in South America, where land cleared to raise cattle is soon depleted of nutrients and turned to wasteland. However, I'm not surprised that vegetarianism was not examined as an alternative -- it rarely is. Even Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth failed to take into account the ecological impact of factory farming.

Collier makes the point that, although future generations do not have a vote, we do have a responsibility to ensure that for every resource we use up, we must leave something of equal value in its place for future generations. Failing to do so is a more sophisticated form of plunder, but it is plunder just the same. For many of the complex problems he discusses, the solutions lie in people learning to think beyond their own borders and their own generations. For me, a non-economist, this was a very challenging read.