In this Carnegie Council lecture, development economist Paul Collier calls *The Plundered Planet* his "most important book." Governments, he says, are largely to blame for degradation of the environment. Collier addresses how the public sector can tap into natural assets and repair natural liabilities. Collier also addresses the following questions: What are realistic and sustainable solutions to correcting the mismanagement of the natural world? Can an international standard be established to resolve the complex issues of unchecked profiteering on the one hand and environmental romanticism on the other?
Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and director of the Centre of African Economies at Oxford University. He is also Professorial Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford. Collier is a specialist in the political, economic, and developmental predicaments of poor countries. He is the former director of Development Research at the World Bank. In addition to the award-winning *The Bottom Billion*, he is the author of *Wars, Guns, and Votes*. He holds a Distinction Award from Oxford University, and in 1988 he was awarded the Edgar Graham Book Prize for the co-written *Labour and Poverty in Rural Tanzania: Ujamaa and Rural Development in the United Republic of Tanzania*.