Western Consumer Demand Fuels Resource Wars in Poor Nations

Jim Lobe reports today,

Consumer demand in Western industrialized countries for sophisticated electronic equipment and luxury goods earned at least US$12 billion last year for rebels groups, rapacious governments, and warlords in resource-rich developing nations around the world, according to a new report released by the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C. Thursday.

The 91-page report, 'The Anatomy of Resource Wars,' found that local conflicts over control of diamonds, tropical hardwoods, and other minerals like coltan, which is used in the production of cell phones and other electronic equipment, have killed or uprooted more than 20 million people, most of them in Africa, over the past decade.

"From Colombia to Angola to Afghanistan, people are dying every day because consumer societies import and use materials irrespective of where they originate," according the author, Michael Renner...

Update: "The Anatomy of Resource Wars" report is available, in its entirety, here (as a PDF file).