**1. Classification of Natural Resources:**
– Biotic resources (flora, fauna, fisheries, fossil fuels)
– Abiotic resources (land, water, air, rare-earth elements, metals)
– Potential resources (known but not utilized yet)
– Actual resources (surveyed, quantified, currently used)
– Reserves (profitable future developments)
– Stocks (lack technology for use)
**2. Renewability and Exhaustibility:**
– Renewable resources (solar energy, wind)
– Non-renewable resources (minerals, fossil fuels)
– Non-renewable when consumption exceeds replenishment
– Depletion of radio-active elements, coal, and petroleum
**3. Ownership and Extraction of Resources:**
– Individual, community, national, and international ownership
– Resource extraction from nature (hunting, mining, forestry)
– Extractive industries as the basis of the primary sector
– Social issues like inflation and corruption (resource curse)
– Impact of extractive industries on less-developed countries
**4. Depletion, Protection, and Management of Natural Resources:**
– Depletion focus for governments and organizations
– Sustainable development balancing current needs with future generations
– Protection measures at national and international levels
– Natural resource management for quality of life
– Civil society engagement and monitoring resource utilization
**5. Impact of Natural Resources and Related Concepts:**
– Resource impact on civil wars and social unrest
– Importance of rainforest protection for biodiversity
– Drivers contributing to resource depletion (direct and indirect)
– Concept of asteroid mining for rare metals
– Aspects like citizens dividend, conservation ethic, cultural resources, and environmental movement
Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest, and cultural value. On Earth, it includes sunlight, atmosphere, water, land, all minerals along with all vegetation, and wildlife.
Natural resources are part of humanity's natural heritage or protected in nature reserves. Particular areas (such as the rainforest in Fatu-Hiva) often feature biodiversity and geodiversity in their ecosystems. Natural resources may be classified in different ways. Natural resources are materials and components (something that can be used) found within the environment. Every man-made product is composed of natural resources (at its fundamental level).
A natural resource may exist as a separate entity such as freshwater, air, or any living organism such as a fish, or it may be transformed by extractivist industries into an economically useful form that must be processed to obtain the resource such as metal ores, rare-earth elements, petroleum, timber and most forms of energy. Some resources are renewable, which means that they can be used at a certain rate and natural processes will restore them. In contrast, many extractive industries rely heavily on non-renewable resources that can only be extracted once.
Natural resource allocations can be at the centre of many economic and political confrontations both within and between countries. This is particularly true during periods of increasing scarcity and shortages (depletion and overconsumption of resources). Resource extraction is also a major source of human rights violations and environmental damage. The Sustainable Development Goals and other international development agendas frequently focus on creating more sustainable resource extraction, with some scholars and researchers focused on creating economic models, such as circular economy, that rely less on resource extraction, and more on reuse, recycling and renewable resources that can be sustainably managed.