Recently I’ve been reading “The Future State of the World: As It Relates to the Australian Aid Program” which was commissioned by the Australian government ahead of the significant expansion of their overseas aid program.  It makes for interesting, if not disturbing, reading.  Anybody who has spent a few minutes thinking about the range of complex problems the world faces cannot be unaware of how interconnected the challenges are. …

Since Paul Collier began to work on the economic correlates of conflict a lot of attention has been focused on extractive industries.  A fair amount of attention has been focused on mining and its relationship to violent conflict.  Conflict diamonds, conflict focusing on the mining and trade in minerals such as tantalum in the DRC, and the impact of large mining projects such as the Panguna mine in Bougainville.  I think there’s a good case to be made that mining done irresponsibly or badly…