Dependence on natural resources is often relegated to a characteristic of the rural poor, a reason for development aid to swoop in and provide other economic opportunities. However, a recent article by Guo, Zhang, and Li in PLoS ONE has demonstrated that more developed countries actually have a higher dependence on ecosystem services. Basically, we may fire up our stoves with gas from eons ago rather than wood, but we’re even more dependent on that tree in the yard. We all laughed at the “primitive”, romanticized blue natives in Avatar, but their culture really wasn’t that different than ours.
