Resource Wealth, Power, Crime, and Conflict

This chapter describes linkages between environmental wealth and illegal trade in diamonds, timber, and wildlife, and the internal conflicts, corruption, and flow of profits to external locations that can leave resource-rich countries with a poor return. It reviews ways in which natural resources can be a source of conflict, can fuel or fund existing conflicts, and can be a casualty of conflict. In these processes, the results include environmental degradation and the erosion or denial of social justice and human rights. Approaches to amelioration, prosecution, and protection of populations and species are outlined, but the authors acknowledge that there are no ?one-size-fits-all? solutions. Under current global economic conditions, there will be limits to the impact of democratic development in resource-producer nations unless Western production practices and exploitative patterns of consumption are addressed.