THE CONCEPT OF

NATURAL RESOURCES

By: Mwakipesile A. (MSc)

 Culture and Resources
• According to Webster’s ninth edition, culture is
“the customary beliefs, social forms, and
material traits constituting a distinct complex of
tradition of a racial, religious, or social group.
• Culture is shared i.e Cultural traits like material
objects, technologies, social forms and beliefs
• Culture is learned i.e no body is born to speak a
particular language
• There is a relationship between culture and
place (culture vs environment)
 Culture and Resources cont…
• Culture is the body of knowledge passed
on through generations within any society
i.e., artifacts, institutions and cultural
values
• The cultural landscape is the visible
expression of human modification of the
earth’s surface
• Cultural change occurs as a result of
processes of innovations and diffusion
 Culture and Resources cont…
• As culture vary, so does what they view as
resources. Within any culture, the value of
a resource depends on supply and
demand
• Contact between cultures leads to
modification of one or both. Modification
following cultural contact is known as
acculturation
 Culture and Resources cont…
• The physical environment ca serve different
cultures. In particular, cultures differ in their
recognition of potentially useful environmental
substances and once recognized, in how these
substances can be converted into artifacts
• Substances that can be transformed into
artifacts are called resources 9material objects
produced and used in order to satisfy human
needs and desires.
 Culture and Resources cont…
• Resources are a cultural concept: A stock
becomes a resource when it can be of some use
to people in meeting their needs for food,
shelter, warmth, transportation and so on. E.g.,
uranium ores provide a more recent example of
the stocks-to-resource transformation

• NOTE: the transformation from a stock to a

resource is reversible, e.g. as iron axes replaced
flint around 500 B.C., the resource lost its
usefulness and rejoined the unvalued stockpile.
Stocks, resources and reserves
• Stocks: it is the sum total of all the material
components of the environment, including
both mass and energy, both things
biological and things inert.
 Stocks, resources and reserves
cont…
• In spite of its abundance, the vast
proportion of the earth’s total stock of
matter and energy is of very little interest
to human being.
• Either it is wholly inaccessible with our
existing technology (e.g., as is the iron and
nickel core of the planet) or it is in the form
of substances we have not learned to use.
 Stocks, resources and reserves
cont…
• Resources: is the portion of the total stock
which could be used under specified
technical, economic and social conditions.
Resources as such are determined by
human concepts of what is useful, and we
can expect resource estimates to change
with technology and socio-economic
conditions.
Note: price, technology and culture
 Stocks, resources and reserves
cont…
• Reserves: These are the subset of resources
available under prevailing technological and
socio-economic conditions.
• These are resources that can be extracted and
used profitably
• They form the most specific but the smallest of
the three categories and are relevant to one
period of time only, the present (e.g.
Mchuchuma and Liganga reserves for coal and
iron ore in Tanzania)
Note: Current Versus Potential reserves
 Stocks, resources and reserves
cont…
Factors affecting the conditions of reserves:
 The quality of reserves
 The size of the field to justify its capital
investment
 Accessibility of the field, both in a spatial
sense (its distance) & its depth in geological
sense
 The relative demand as indicated by the
prevailing price level
3.2 RENEWABLE AND
NON RENEWABLE
RESOURCES
Categories of Natural Resources
• Natural resources have variable
characteristics. These include quantity and
quality, rate of utilization and duration of
regeneration. They can be classified into
various categories.
 “The space ship” Earth and its Resources

The earth’s natural resources

Natural Resources

Global Renewable Non- Inexhaustible Human

commons resources renewable resources resources
resources

Air, solar Soil, vegetation, Minerals, Solar energy, Labor, skills,

energy, sea forest, wildlife fossils, wind power, ability,
salt, outer natural gas, wave energy, knowledge
space coal hydropower
 Renewable and Non-renewable
Resources
• Geographers classify natural resources in
various ways.
• The primary distinction made is between non
renewable resources which consist of finite
masses of material like coal deposits, and
renewable resources.
• Non renewable resources form so slowly that,
from a human viewpoint, the limits of supply can
be regarded as fixed. E.g., stocks of coal and
metal
 Renewable and Non-renewable
Resources cont…
• Renewable resources or flow resources are
resources that are recurrent but variable over
time; an example would be water power (H.E.P)
• Renewable resources can be separated further
into those whose levels of flow are generally
unaffected by human action and those
demonstrably affected by human action. E.g.,
ground water can be permanently reduced via
over pumping i.e allowing incursion of saline
water. Also over harvesting/cutting of forest
 Inexhaustible resources
• They never get used up
• They hardly change in quantities through
utilisation
• They continue to be available on earth as long
as human needs them
• No body can foresee the future of their change
in quantity, whether they are used or not
• They include wind power, precipitation, solar
energy and atomic energy
 Inexhaustible resources cont…
• Although Quantities of inexhaustible
resources are independent of human
activities, some forms of human actions,
such as atmospheric pollution, ozone layer
depletion and the green house effect could
interfere with them e.g., water pollution
from chemical, industrial and agricultural
activities
 Exhaustible resources
• They include all materials which depend
on human action for permanency or
continuity
 Renewable resources
• Are resources that can be maintained by
the natural process of reproduction and
growth
• They include all living things that have the
ability to reproduce and grow
• Their continuity depends upon proper
planning and management strategies
 Renewable resources cont…
• If the rate of utilization is balanced against
the rate of regeneration, then they would
be available as long as people need them
• However improper management such as
misuse, overuse or wastage could lead to
the exhaustion of resources such as soil,
forests and wildlife
 Note down
• Even renewable resources are ultimately
finite because their renewability depends
on energy from the sun and the sun is
expected to serve as an energy source for
only the next 5 or 6 billion years.
• The fact does not eliminate the need to
manage resources effectively until that
time. Furthermore, the finiteness of
renewable resources is sufficiently far into
the future to make the distinction useful
 Non-renewable resources
• These are also referred to as irreplaceable
resources
• They exist in limited quantities and have very
little chance of replacement
• Once they are depleted, they are totally lost or
destroyed
• They have taken millions of years to form and
therefore their rate of regeneration is too slow to
be balanced against the rate of utilization
 Non-renewable resources cont…
• It regeneration involves long periods of
interaction between physical, chemical and
biological processes
• Examples are oil, coal, minerals and natural
gas.
• The total quantities of non-renewable
resources are almost static due to extremely
slow rate of formation compared to the fast
rates of utilization
 Global commons or common
resources
• These are resources that are used by all but
belong to no body
• Their abundance extends beyond any national
and international boundaries
• Examples are oceans that occupy 70% of the
earth’s surface, outer space, air and solar
energy
• Major problems facing common resources are
pollution from industrial effluents, agricultural
run-offs, sewage dumping, ozone layer depletion
 Note down:
• Natural resources such as rivers, lakes
and seas are not global commons (they
are called shared resources)
• Recyclable (paper, glass) Vs non
recyclable resources (gas, uranium, oil-but
when used for other purposes, oil can be
recyclable)