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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $29.95

Format:
Hardback
224 pp.
6 1/8" x 9 1/4"

ISBN-13:
9780195395259

Publication date:
May 2010

Imprint: OUP US


The Plundered Planet

Why We Must - and How We Can - Manage Natural Resources for Global Prosperity

Paul Collier

Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion was greeted as groundbreaking when it appeared in 2007, winning the Estoril Distinguished Book Prize, the Arthur Ross Book Award, and the Lionel Gelber Prize. The Economist wrote that it was "set to become a classic," the Financial Times praised it as "rich in both analysis and recommendations," while Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times called it the "best nonfiction book so far this year."

Now, in The Plundered Planet, Collier builds upon his renowned work on developing countries and the poorest populations to confront the global mismanagement of nature. Proper stewardship of natural assets and liabilities is a matter of planetary urgency: natural resources have the potential either to transform the poorest countries or to tear them apart, while the carbon emissions and agricultural follies of the rich world could further impoverish them. The Plundered Planet charts a course between unchecked profiteering on the one hand and environmental romanticism on the other to offer realistic and sustainable solutions to dauntingly complex issues.

Grounded in a belief in the power of informed citizens, Collier proposes a series of international standards that would help poor countries rich in natural assets better manage those resources, policy changes that would raise world food supply, and a clear-headed approach to climate change that acknowledges the benefits of industrialization while addressing the need for alternatives to carbon trading. Revealing how these are all interconnected, The Plundered Planet charts a way forward to avoid the mismanagement of the natural world that threatens our future.

Readership : Suitable for General readers.

Introduction: Natural Disorder
Part I: Boom at the Bottom
1. Going, Going, Gone
2. The Scramble for Africa, Mark 2
3. Bonanza: Hunky Dory or Humpty Dumpty?
Part II: Slash and Burn
4. The Breakdown of Custodianship
Part III: How Growth Creates Hunger
5. Carbon Emissions and the Decline in Food Supply
6. Asian Growth and the Increase in Food Demand
Part IV: Restoring Natural Order
7. Handing the Planet On
8. Facing the Food Crisis
9. Old Morality and New Romanticism
Conclusions
Notes
Index

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Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University and a former director of Development Research at the World Bank. In addition to the award-winning The Bottom Billion, he is the author of Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places.

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Special Features

  • A groundbreaking analysis of the ways in which natural resource exploitation affects us all.
  • Offers concrete suggestions for how to fix the problems--including global warming, food shortages, and violent conflict--that result from improper exploitation of natural resources.
  • Written in the same objective, pithy, and original manner as the award-winning The Bottom Billion.