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Shutting the door on ‘resource grabs’
Despite significant efforts around the globe to conserve natural resources, often the news still includes reports of illegal attainment of wood, minerals, and even animals, to the detriment of both the environment and human communities.
Illegal logging in Madagascar’s rain forests, including protected areas, is driven by poverty but taken advantage of by traders who export stockpiles of rare hardwoods. This encourages further illegal logging of protected tree species such as rosewood and mahogany. Demand for the wood comes from companies in other nations, often to make extravagant products such as a million-dollar carved bed frame. The logging exacerbates political instability and negatively affects Madagascar’s unique and fragile ecosystem, while providing little or no economic benefit there. (It can be less than one percent of the wood’s final value.)
In other situations, the resource grab may be more need-based but is still divisive and destructive. For example, the expanding demand for rare earth minerals to use in electronic devices and cellphones has driven environmentally destructive mining practices in already politically unstable but mineral-rich regions such as the eastern Congo. The terms “blood minerals” and “conflict minerals” are often used to describe such situations where the financial benefit of the mining goes to local militias and exacerbates existing conflicts. And in any case, resources are typically taken without concern for ecological or humanitarian consequences.
Enjoy 1 free Sentinel article or audio program each month, including content from 1898 to today.
May 9, 2011 issue
View Issue-
Letters
Terry Holliday, Debby Bhargava, Sue Sonke, Beatrice Labarthe, Anna Willis
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You can be free of allergies
Steve Graham, Managing Editor, Sentinel, Journal, and Herald
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Airport chapels offer spiritual uplift
Scott McCartney
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Spiritual support for scientific advancements
Colleen Douglass
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A quest for the ‘new man’
Kathleen Collins
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It all began with finding the book
Lyn Smith
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Prayer in church
By Anne Melville
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God’s mothering of all
By Patricia Newman
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Shutting the door on ‘resource grabs’
By Georgianna Pfost
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A healing solution to allergies
By Candace Du Mars
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How have you prayed to address allergies?
Michelle, Sue, Sanna, Helene
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Healed of hay fever
By Margaret Schwartz
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In all seasons
Robin Hoagland
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Freed from a seafood allergy
By Rosalie E. Dunbar
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Nothing in God’s universe could harm me
By Christina Camacho
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In the middle of the garden
Michael Morgan
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A leading role at our healing service
By Lauren Haden
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Who’s in the driver’s seat? God!
Chris K., Chris P.
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Impelled to ‘go and help’
Barbara Waite
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Healed of allergic reaction to cats
Nancy Moon
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Quick healing of seasonal allergy symptoms
Mary Kemper
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Emphysema and complications healed
Philippa Pohl
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Let Love defang hate
From the Editors