ELE - Contexts
Natural Resources
Extension Activities:
Your Mission:
- Investigative the natural resources we depend on for our modern lifestyle, and then discuss the need for sustainability
- Research particular natural resources to see how they are used, where they comes from, how they are extracted, and what concerns are associated with this extraction process.
- Consider how all types of resource extraction have impacts on the environment and, often on human cultures that live near the resources. What are industries and governments doing to address these concerns?
Resources
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Renewable sources are generally living resources (fish, coffee, and forests, for example), which can restock (renew) themselves if they are not over-harvested but used sustainably. Do you agree?
'A non-renewable resources' is always drawn down with anabolic processes that use up energy.
What is the importance of our Natural Resources?
Natural resources are natural capital converted to commodity inputs to infrastructural capital processes. They include soil, timber, oil, minerals, and other goods taken more or less from the Earth. [A nation's natural resources often determine its wealth in the world economic system and its diplomatic, military, and political influence.]Both extraction of the basic resource and refining it into a purer, directly usable form, (e.g., metals, refined oils) are generally considered natural-resource activities, even though the later may not necessarily occur near the former. [The availability of natural resources has affected human settlement patterns as well as environmental/cultural/ human rights issues associated with extraction of resources.]
The depletion of natural capital and attempts to move to sustainable development have been a major focus of development agencies. [This is of particular concern in rainforest regions, which hold most of the Earth's natural biodiversity — irreplaceable genetic natural capital]
Outcome:
To understand the depletion of natural resources as a major source of social unrest and conflicts in developing nations
Project Question:
:What defines natural resources?
Develop your own area of interest and formulate questions that you want answered and relate to your understanding of 'natural resources'. For example
1. Renewable natural resources and the ways that they are used by humans - e.g. the production of finished goods, the generation of energy, ingredients in commercial products, or
2. interactions of human populations on environments and compare the growth of two ancient cities in relation to natural resources, or
3. the effect of war on natural resources and how alternative sources were used during World War II (and other conflicts) when regular resources became scarce.
Outcome:
To explore an understanding of how natural resources value rests in the amount of the material available and the demand for it.
Project Question:
Using data collected from a variety of sources, discuss the nature of renewable and nonrenewable resources as well as ways in which they are used to benefit industries, farming and sustainability for the 21st century.
Overview:
Students will develop their own understanding of renewable resources:
- types of natural resources that are renewable,
- the need to conserve, manage and protect renewable resources,
- techniques used by conservationists to manage and protect renewable resources,
- and ways we as Humans uses renewable resources.
This unit focuses on: Conservation of natural resources being the major focus of natural capitalism, environmentalism, the ecology movement, and Green politics.
Natural Resources are:
Any property of the physical environment, such as minerals, or natural vegetation, which humans can use to survive.
Natural resources may be classified as renewable and non-renewable.
References
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