What do you mean by natural resources? Is it new to you to say that some of them are scarce?
Natural resources are raw materials extracted from the nature that profit our activities. They can be of two types: renewable and nonrenewable. The first ones are inexhaustible sources able to regenerate in a small period of time, in other words, at a human life scale. The nonrenewable recourses, when consumed, can’t be replaced by the nature at a human scale, meaning, they exhaust faster than the time needed for them to renew.
Today’s problem is that even the renewable resources are being wasted at a superior rate than the capacity to replace them. We are compromising the future generations’ and our well being. The mineral, metal and energy reservations are getting, day by day, more at risk and the same is happening to fish, wood and water reservations.
Have you any idea of how much time there is left with the use of natural resources if we don’t change our behavior?
It’s believed that silver and iron will exhaust in 10 and 15 years respectively. If we continue with this consuming behavior we’ll run out of petroleum by 2045, coal in 2050 and natural gas five years later than that.
The United Nations (UN) has warned that in 2025 two thirds of the planet’s population (5,5 billions of people) might have trouble accessing to drinkable water.
Also, to be able to feed the human population, about 9.1 billions of human beings, in 2050 it’s estimated to be necessary to increase 70% of the production. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), hand of the UN, despite the difficulties of the world we live in (ex: global warming) these numbers are possible to achieve. The FAO even exhibits data which shows that one in six inhabitants of our planet(approximately 1 billion of people) starves.
All these numbers are terrifying. It’s very important to assure our life quality in the present and in the future. We are talking about a sustainable development, which is a policy where we should try to satisfy our needs without compromising the future generations of doing the same. It’s important and urgent to preserve the Earth’s resources and that will only be possible if each and everyone of us contribute!
Mélanie Rodrigues
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Natural Resources resources
Human use of Earth's Resourses