ABSTRACT
The scarcity fears which erupted during the late 1960s and early 1970s were merely the latest manifestation of a recurrent concern that shortages of essential mineral and energy inputs would threaten the economic base of the 'modern' growth process. The notions that LDC producers can 'hold the consumer nations to ransom' or 'employ their commodity power to create a new economic and social order' depend upon the assumption that growth in the advanced capitalist states is dependent on mineral imports from the south. The developed nations are the chief mineral producers and the chief source of their own collective mineral consumption, a feature which considerably weakens the cards held by the LDCs. In all countries there are some regions prepared to accept local environmental degradation in order to attract the employment and economic development advantages which mineral projects are thought to bring.
