Types of Natural Resources and Environmental Issues

Classification of Natural Resources

Natural resources are classified into:

• Renewable Natural Resources: Those that can be maintained or even increased. They are of two types:
  • Apparent Renewable Resources: Water, soil, air.
  • True Renewable Resources: Flora and fauna (with the ability to reproduce).
• Non-Renewable Natural Resources: Those that exist in specific quantities and can be depleted through overexploitation. Major non-renewable natural resources include:
  • Minerals
  • Metals
  • Oil
  • Natural gas
  • Groundwater storage
• Infinite or Inexhaustible Natural Resources: Those that are not exhausted, regardless of the number of productive activities that humans perform. These include:
  • The Sun
  • Energy of ocean waves and wind
  • Nuclear or atomic energy

Environmental Offer and Demand

Environmental Offer: All natural resources that nature offers us.

• Types or classes of resources:
  • Homogeneous
  • Heterogeneous (Diversity)
• Quantity: Abundant, deficient, sufficient.
• Potential ability (quality) to serve: Given by their tendencies and states.
• Instructions for use: Agricultural, grazing, recreation, etc.
• Management: Technologies used to exploit a natural resource.
• Distribution: Spatial, temporal.

Environmental Demands: How society acts in pursuit of its needs.

• Development proposals will depend on the development policies of countries.
• Social distribution is a function of two issues:
  • a) Rulers do as they please (underdeveloped countries).
  • b) The people command or request and are given (developed countries). This can lead to dialectical conflicts (e.g., water issues, natural resource issues).
• The demand for resources is a function of the level of knowledge, technology, and population size, as well as the forms and types of uses.
• The intensity of use of a natural resource can generate a high demand for some resources and waste the potential of others.
• The environmental demand depends on the spatial and temporal distribution of the population.

Remarks on Environmental Problems

(Conflict, diseases, injury, damage)

1. Resource Exhaustion: Can occur in two ways:
   • a) Processes: Exploitation of minerals, oil, gas, and others.
   • b) Degradation: Loss of potential use.
2. Natural Disasters: Various imbalances and changes that occur in nature, such as droughts, pests, landslides, etc.
3. Psycho-social Predation: Depends on the areas where species live or develop.
4. Pollution: Negative alterations of the biological, chemical, and physical geographical space, ecosystem, and so on. It can be partial, temporal, or reversible.