In this brief presentation from a roundtable at the UNEP meeting (Feb. 2007), Deputy Director Betsy Apple draws linkages between globalization, environment and gender.
Globalization has accelerated the race for control over key natural resources. As we know, many developing countries are endowed with critical natural resources: timber, oil, natural gas, and copper among others. Nonetheless, the blessings of those natural resources often do not result in the kind of poverty eradication they should and could. Rather, in many cases, these resources result in deepened poverty, environmental devastation, and human rights abuses associated with the protection and extraction of such resources. In short, their blessing becomes a curse, the resource curse.
