Resources and Development
What makes a resource
Classify resources and explain sustainable development.
When is something a resource? Anything around us that can meet a need is a resource, but only if three things are true:
- we can reach it (technologically accessible): aluminium was always in the ground, but it became a resource only when people learnt to get it out of bauxite;
- it is worth the cost (economically feasible): if you spend ₹100 to get something worth ₹20, it is not yet a resource;
- people accept using it (culturally acceptable): a society must be willing to use it.
Nature is not enough on its own. Many people think resources are 'free gifts of nature'. The book says no. Nature, technology and institutions work together, and people turn materials into resources. People themselves are part of the resources.
Four ways to sort resources.
- Origin: biotic (living: plants, animals, fish, people) or abiotic (non-living: rocks, metals, soil).
- Exhaustibility: renewable (sunlight, wind, water) or non-renewable (coal, petroleum).
- Ownership: individual (your own house or field), community (the village pond, the public park), national (rivers, minerals, roads of the country) and international (the open ocean).
- Status of development: potential (found but not used yet, like Rajasthan's sun and wind), developed (surveyed and in use), stock (there, but we lack the technology to use it), reserves (we can use it, but keep it for the future).
Three problems from careless use.
- Resources are used up to feed the greed of a few people.
- They pile up in a few hands, so society splits into rich and poor.
- Using them without thinking has caused global warming, ozone layer depletion, pollution and land degradation.
Sustainable development. Growth that does not damage the environment and does not take away what future generations will need. A test: a metro that runs on coal power is development, but the coal will run out and it pollutes. The same metro on solar power is development that can last.
Rio de Janeiro, June 1992. More than 100 heads of state met in Brazil at the first International Earth Summit. They signed the Declaration on Global Climatic Change and Biological Diversity, endorsed the Forest Principles and adopted Agenda 21. The '21' means the 21st century: Agenda 21 is a plan to fight environmental damage, poverty and disease by working together. One aim: every local government should make its own local Agenda 21.
Practise this lesson
Questions that get harder as you improve, a Tutor that helps without giving the answer away, and progress you can see. Free for every learner.
No account, no email address. Opens the real product.