MORE reasons to find creative solutions. According to this, the World Bank, IMF, G8 and OECD are "brainstorming" next week. KWC Excerpts: Fueling War With the cold war over, more global conflicts are being spurred by a scramble for natural resources rather than by geopolitics, and poor countries rich in mineral deposits are the new focal point. By David R. Francis | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor @ http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1205/p11s01-sten.html "Abundant resources - such as diamonds, emeralds, lapis lazuli, timber, coltan, and oil - should be an economic blessing to a developing nation. Too often, they aren't. They fund conflicts. More and more, "resource wars" trouble poor countries. The pillaging of diamonds, for example, has fed civil wars in Angola and Sierra Leone. Coltan, a costly mineral used in making cellphones, helps finance bloody fighting in Congo. Altogether, about a quarter of the roughly 50 wars and armed conflicts active in 2001 had "a strong resource dimension," says Michael Renner, a senior researcher with Worldwatch Institute in Washington. In these cases, legal or illegal exploitation of resources helped trigger or exacerbate violent conflict, or financed its continuation. Resources sometimes become a curse, with the wars inflicting a horrendous human toll. Pillaging replaces geopolitics During the cold war, many conflicts in Africa and elsewhere resulted from the geopolitical struggle between the US and the Soviet Union. But that motive has faded. The political divisions are being replaced by a global scramble to obtain or tie up essential resources. "In some places, the pillaging of oil, minerals, metals, gemstones, or timber allows wars to continue that were triggered by other factors - initially driven by grievances or ideological struggles and bankrolled by the superpowers or other external supporters," writes Renner in a Worldwatch study, "The Anatomy of Resource Wars." Recent academic research finds that wars in poor countries with rich mineral resources often last longer than similar conflicts during the cold war. As the world's population increases from 6.1 billion to perhaps 9 billion by 2050, the growing demand on resources may stimulate further resource wars. ...Altogether, roughly 5 million people were killed in resource wars in the 1990s. Renner calculates that 6 million fled to neighboring nations and 11 million to 15 million were displaced inside their countries. ...One suggestion is that stock exchanges deny listing to corporations engaged in resource extraction that refuse to make public the taxes, fees, royalties, and other payments they make to host governments. Renner figures this would help nongovernmental organizations that have campaigns to "name and shame" multinationals. Other potential "sticks" are international sanctions and embargoes, gem and timber certification to screen out illicit materials, and judicial action. Another goal is to reduce the traffic in small arms - weapons of choice in these conflicts. On the "carrot" side, industrial nations could offer other countries help in attracting reputable companies to invest in their resources if they go about it in an ethical way. That might include short-term "risk insurance" to pay compensation if a commodity's price dives." For Further Information: World Watch- The Anatomy of Resource Wars Blood, diamonds, and oil New Scientist Global Connections . Natural Resources in the Middle East
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