The Plundered Planet: How to Reconcile Prosperity With Nature

Reading this book effectively brings home the fact that issues regarding natural resources are central to the future of many of the poorest countries. Add to this the subject of global warming through carbon emissions and it would be hard to think of a book which dealt with more fundamental issues.First and foremost Collier is an economist through to his core, and quite a free market one at that. The strength of the best parts of this book derives from this fact, as also do the parts which other strongly environmentalist readers may baulk at.He gives an excellent accessible account of the basic economic incentive and contractual problems at the heart of relations between many weak and often corrupt poor country governments and the private companies that extract their natural resources. There is no prevaricating on the evils of large corporations, just astute insights into the nature of the issues. Just like the poverty traps explained in his "Bottom Billion" book, these insights and explanations are pure gold. As in the bottom billion he explains how natural resource incomes can taint the incentives and processes of democracy.A major theme which some environmentalists may struggle with is the concept that depleting nature is more acceptable for a country as long as the incomes from that depletion is invested to provide future generations with a higher standard of living. Many environmentalists would be unwilling to give nature or natural assets any such opportunity cost or value, but as an economist Collier is prepared to, and points a finger at the "romantics". He puts forward that we have "custody" responsibly over nature and should not plunder it, but we do not have the obligation to completely preserve it.He discusses at length two tragedy of the commons type issues, being fishing and carbon emissions. Regarding fishing he suggests that the international seas should have ownership rights which revert to the United Nations, where profits can be used for food aid. The ownership would be the perquisite for a quota system to stop plunder.Regarding carbon he favours a universal "shadow price" for carbon emissions rather than a cap and trade system. He argues that a cap and trade system encourages "gaming" by states to angle for advantage. Cap and trade approaches could see rich polluters willing to pay poorer countries to use up their pollution allocations, where as a shadow tax approach aspires to make polluting equally more expensive for everyone, which obviously is proportionally more hurtful to poorer people. His approach could therefore be argued to be more efficient but perhaps regressive. But of course an economist may conclude that efficiency should come first, and issues of distribution can be balanced after by other means.Finally another point Collier brings up is that although China's habit of paying for extracted African resources by building infrastructure has been criticised by the West for being opaque, actually compared to the poor record of African governments effectively investing resource incomes, the Chinese approach could be viewed as a good deal.That's enough summarising. Just buy it.

Professor Collier is one of the most progressive thinkers in development economics. His earlier book `The Bottom Billion' was an inspired piece of intellectual virtuosity. His follow-up doesn't disappoint.Putting to use his razor-sharp economics brain, Professor Collier cuts through the sea of romanticized preconceptions and prejudices surrounding development economics. He has no time for self-interested lobbies or the fluffy middle-class love affair with peasant agriculture. The book is written with two basic ethical principles in mind:1) the world's poorest must be lifted up; and2) civilisation must be made sustainable.Almost everyone will find some of their positions exploded (I certainly did).The first section lays out his ethical principles. The second (long, technical) section deals with the chain of decision-making required for African countries to orchestrate an economic transformation through resource exploitation. The final sections deal with the big-picture environmental issues of the day.Some key points- International fishing rights need to be owned, otherwise international fisheries will be destroyed- All subsidies to the fishing industry should be ended as soon as possible.- A carbon tax is by far the most economically rational solution to climate change- The key players who might block such a deal are Russia and the Middle East (i.e. the carbon exporters), not China and the USA- The world needs more commercial agriculture on the Brazilian model, not less- America should drop its fantasy of achieving energy independence through home-gown biofuels- Europe should lift its damaging and anti-progressive ban on GM- Organic food is a rich-world luxury, not a tool for feeding the poorTelling statistic: until the GM ban in 1996, European grain yields tracked those of the US. Since 1996 they've fallen behind by 1-2% per year. As Europe is a big grain producer this is a major contributing factor to higher food commodity prices.Quote: "The idea that fishermen should get the rights to scarce fish for free is analogous to oil companies getting the rights to oil for free."Professor Collier points out that in this networked age, people power will prove decisive to more enlightened public policy. Have a look at NaturalResourceCharter[DOT]org. A brilliant book - anyone interested in a better, more sustainable, world would do well to absorb its lessons.Peter Baker

A very original and very well written book. Incredible how a subject treated so often in writing can be given a whole new angle. The best way to help the poorest countries is most likely not the various popular and ubiquitious types of human development projects but perhaps rather e.g. prospecting aid which - unfortunately - has little public appeal and goes up against vested interests of multinational mining conglomerates.Importantly, also a simple and convincing description of economic theory dealing with socalled "global commons" such as international fisheries and carbon emissions. Yet also a problem in that category: Why not admit that the same theory applies equally well to child birth and population growth? Not even a passing mention. I suspect the author consider the subject too controversial and rather than writing some gobbledygook he knows is false, he choose to ignore it.

As Paul Collier points out, on the basis of thorough economic analysis, natural resources such as oil, and mineral deposits have the potential to transform the economies of poor countries, provided they are well managed. Poor governance and management mean that most often they are not used for the benefit of future generations, though there are a few positive examples. Professor Collier makes suggestions for how countries can be helped to make better decisions on how the resources are exploited, how greater benefits can be obtained by better deals with exploration companies and what can be done to improve transparency. As he points out, the potential benefits to many countries in Africa far outweigh those from overseas development assistance (ODA), though ODA could provide assistance in improving the governance and management processes.