The Devil's Excrement: The Negative Effect of Natural Resources on Development (World IN REVIEW‪)‬

The discovery of new non-renewable natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and minerals, has often been viewed as a sure-fire foundation for national development--those countries lucky enough to strike black gold, or gold itself, see themselves as having taken the first important step on the road to prosperity. Therefore, it is not surprising that many have placed their hopes in resource exploitation as the means for lifting out of poverty a large proportion of the 2.7 billion people (nearly half of the world's population) who live on less than US$2 per day. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]