Source: Cool Earth
No poor country, in modern times, has been able to become wealthy as a result of being home to extractable products such as oil, it has been noted.
According to The Plundered Planet: How to Reconcile Prosperity with Nature, written by Paul Collier, poorer nations are "cursed" by their extractables and countries including Sierra Leone and the Congo have been "repeatedly ravished" due to their oil wells.Reviewing the book for the Guardian, Alex Renton said that the main question of the book is "how are we to redirect the whole sorry story of mankind's inequitable and short-sighted plundering of the planet's resources?".
In the book, the issue of the ownership and rights to places "whose importance or geography transcends borders", such as the Amazon rainforest, is discussed.
According to the author, current regulations over such areas are inadequate and Brazil as a nation has shown it is prepared to exploit the source while disregarding its own people and the planet as a whole.
The controversial Xingu dam, due to be built in the Amazon later this year, has been the subject of much disagreement in recent months, with environmentalists claiming it will cause huge damage to the rainforest.