(46)A favourite prediction of environmentalism has bitten the dust—too many natural resources, rather than too few, are the caus

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问题     (46)A favourite prediction of environmentalism has bitten the dust—too many natural resources, rather than too few, are the cause of an increasing number of wars in the 21st century.
    (47)Many greens had predicted that the new century would see a rash of wars in countries where natural resources such as timber, water, minerals and fertile soils are running out. But far from it, says the 2002 State of the World report from the prestigious Washington-based think-tank, the Worldwatch Institute.
    In fact, says the report’s co-author Michael Renner, there are "numerous places in the developing world where abundant natural resources help fuel conflicts." More than a quarter of current conflicts are either being fought over, or are funded by, some lucrative natural resource. Examples cited by the Worldwatch Institute include:
    -Diamond mines in Sierra Leone and Angola making the two African nations ripe for plunder by warlords
    -Profits from sapphires, rubies and timber arming the ’Khmer Rouge in their interminable jungle war in Cambodia
    -Guerillas using the threat of sabotage to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from oil companies prospecting in Colombia
    -Opium funding 20 years of war in Afghanistan
    -The Congo’s continuing civil war subsisting on the proceeds of elephant tusks and coltan, a vital mineral in the manufacture of mobile phones
    With the end of the cold war, superpowers no longer fund civil wars for their own geopolitical ends, says Renner. Their place has been taken by the market—in the form of the plunder and sale of natural resources.
    (48)"Nature’s bounty attracts groups that may claim they are driven by grievance, but which initiate violence not to overthrow a government but to gain and maintain control of lucrative resources," says Renner. Such resource wars are being fought because of "greed rather than need."
    (49)According to David Keen at the London School of Economics: "We tend to regard conflict as simply a breakdown in a particular system, rather than as the emergence of another, alternative system of profit and powers i.e. a ’conflict economy’ with the looting of natural resources at its heart."
    Renner warns that warlords in such conflicts have no interest in winning the war, because its continuance is more profitable. (50)And he says too many Western governments are happy to turn a blind eye as their own corporations reap the benefits in cheap no-questions-asked raw materials.
    Renner argues the issue of resource conflicts should be added to the agenda of the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg in August 2002.

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答案环境保护主义的美好预言已经失灵—自然资源过多,而不是过少,是21世纪战争频发的起因。

解析 此句是复合句,破折号连接两个分句组成。句架是…prediction of...has bitten the dust—too many natural resources...are the cause of...wars...。破折号后面的分句用来解释前一分句的原因。句中bite the dust做"阵亡或以失败告终"讲。又如:All hopes that we would succeed bit the dust.(我们成功的希望全部落空了)。
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