NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

Everything that surrounds us - the earth, the air, food chains, plants, animals, other humans,
water, sky and so forth - makes our natural environment. The natural environment affects our
lives, the lives of all living beings.
The natural environment has two sub-categories: the living environment and the non-living
environment. The plants, animals, human beings and other living organisms together form the
living environment. The non-living components such as oil/rock, air, water and sun together
form the non-living environment.

TYPES OF RESOURCES
We are surrounded by resources all around us. In fact, the resources available around us can be
categorized into many categories, such as:

• Natural Resources
• Renewable/Non-renewable Resources
• Exhaustible/non-exhaustible Resources

• Natural Resources
Resource word basically means a source of supply of something. Since the beginning, we
humans have depended on the naturally available things that are freely available to us such as
water (rivers and oceans), forests, animals, rocks, sun, the air, the land, minerals around us and
so forth. All these freely available resources are our natural resources; these form the basis of
life on the Earth.
Humans have been using the natural resources for its survival and to live on the planet well.
We depend on the natural resources for our survival and also the natural resources are
dependent on one another. For example, if the water dries up in an area, then the people living
in that area have to struggle for their survival. The struggle for survival will be even more as
all the vegetation, plants; forests also depend upon water for their survival. Removal of one
natural resource may lead to the removal of other natural resources and in turn, we the human
beings.
 • Renewable/Non-renewable Resources
Natural resources can be further categorised into renewable and non-renewable resources:
(a) Renewable resources. These are the resources whose used up quantity is replaced on its
own as nature is producing them constantly. For example, wood, timber, solar energy, water
and so forth, these are some natural resources that we have regularly been consuming and
nature has continuously been producing them and thus these are getting renewed always. The
renewable resources are also sometimes called the infinite resources. Some examples of
renewable resources are Solar energy, water, timber/wood, biomass and so forth.

(b) Non-renewable resources. A natural resource that takes time for its regeneration and
cannot be replaced or re-grown at a scale comparable to its consumption, is a non-renewable
resource. In other words, its renewal rate is far slower than its consumption. For example, it
takes millions of years to produce certain Earth ores whereas these are consumed at very fast
rates.

Some examples of non-renewable natural resources are petroleum, coal, natural oil and gas,
earth minerals, metal ores, nuclear power and so forth.
 • Exhaustible/non-exhaustible Resources
Exhaustible/Non-Exhaustible Resources This is another way of categorising natural resources.

Exhaustible resources:
Exhaustible resources are the resources that are present in limited quantity and when used over
the limit, they get exhausted. Exhaustible resources. Natural resources that are finite in quantity
and recurring use of these, is reducing their quantities at a fast rate. Since these have finite
quantity, they will exhaust one day. Such resources are called exhaustible resources.

Examples: Coal and petrol are of exhaustible resources.

Inexhaustible resources:
Inexhaustible resources are the resources that are present in abundant quantity, and they keep
replenishing. Non-Exhaustible resources. Infinitely available natural resources that the living
being of Earth can never consume to finish them are known as non-exhaustible or inexhaustible
resources. For example, no matter how much we consume the solar we can never exhaust it.
So solar energy is an example of inexhaustible resource.
Examples: Water and solar energy are of inexhaustible resources.