SAJC Cluster 1 Lecture 5 Notes (Classification of Resources)

St. Andrew’s Junior College H2 Cluster 1: Development, Economy and Environment (Topic 1.1) H2_Cluster 1_Lecture 5_2024/pg 1 Lecture 5 Environment and Resources (II): Classification of Resources KEY QUESTION: Will our supply of provisioning services ever be depleted? With the completion of this lecture, attached readings and tutorial, you should be able to discuss: - the classification of resources based on renewability - the impact on supply of resources when their regenerative capacity is exceeded - the classification of provisioning services based on availability Lecture Outline 5.1 Classification of Resources based on their Renewability (a) Renewable resources (b) Non-renewable resources 5.2 Impact on supply of renewable resources when their regenerative capacity is exceeded 5.3 Classification of Provisioning services based on their Availability (a) Proven reserves (b) Conditional reserves (c) Hypothetical reserves (d) Speculative reserves Reading 1: How overfishing threatens the world's oceans – and why it could end in catastrophe BLUEFIN TUNA, MEDITERRANEAN Fishermen haul in a bluefin tuna caught in the old Mattanza method. The giant bluefin used to surge through the Straits of Gibraltar each spring, fanning out across the Mediterranean to spawn. Over millennia, fishermen devised a method of extending nets from shore to intercept the fish and funnel them into chambers, where they were slaughtered. Today, all but a dozen or so of the trap fisheries have closed, primarily due to lack of fish, but also because of coastal development and pollution. (Source: National Geographic)

St. Andrew’s Junior College H2 Cluster 1: Development, Economy and Environment (Topic 1.1) H2_Cluster 1_Lecture 5_2024/pg 2 5.1 Classification of Resources based on their Renewability (a) Renewable resources • Resources that can be depleted in the short run but that replace themselves in the long run are called renewable resources. They naturally regenerate to provide new supplies of those resources to be of use to human society (see Fig. 1). • Forests, most groundwater, and fisheries are good examples. Although they can be depleted by harvesting in excess of the replacement rate, if given sufficient time and the right conditions, natural processes will replace them. • The key to maintaining the availability of renewable resources is keeping our rate of use at or below the rate of natural replacement (recall the Daly Rules from Lect 1). (b) Non-renewable resources • Non-renewable resources are resources that have taken millions of years to form and so exist in finite supply. They are not being generated at a significant rate in comparison to our use of them. Once they are used up, that is the end of them. • Most geologic resources, such as fossil fuels and mineral ores, are of this type (see Fig. 1). 5.2 Impact on Supply of Renewable Resources when their Regenerative Capacity is Exceeded • In reality, however, the distinction between renewable and non-renewables in Section 5.1 is not as clear cut. • Resources are increasingly being classified in terms of degree of renewability within a ‘use- renewability continuum’ (see Fig. 2). o At one extreme of the continuum (on the right) are infinitely renewable resources, irrespective of how it is used by humans, e.g. solar energy and tidal power. o At the other extreme (on the left) are resources which, as they are used, cannot be replaced, e.g. fossil fuels. o In between these two extremes are resources, the renewal of which depends on the rate at which they are used and how they are managed (including concern for the rate at which the biological ones, such as the soil and plants, regenerate) and the extent to which recycling or substitution of them can occur (e.g. metallic minerals). Fig. 1 Examples of renewable and non-renewable resources

St. Andrew’s Junior College H2 Cluster 1: Development, Economy and Environment (Topic 1.1) H2_Cluster 1_Lecture 5_2024/pg 3 • The question we need to ask is, “What would happen should the regenerative capacity of renewable resources be exceeded?” In other words, what if resources such as forests, fish populations, water etc not be able to regenerate themselves? • When the regenerative capacity of a renewable resource is exceeded, it means that the rate of consumption is greater than the rate of replenishment. o For example, when forests are harvested faster than they can regrow, the supply of timber decreases. Similarly, when fish are caught faster than they can reproduce, the supply of fish decreases. • The impact on the supply of renewable resources are: (i) In the short to medium term, scarcity, will result. We are already seeing this in the cases of: ▪ the continued loss of forests (please refer to Lect 4 Section 4.4.1(a)) ▪ the rapidly dwindling fish population (see Reading 1) ▪ the lack of sufficient available freshwater to meet the demands for it (see Fig. 3). (ii) If the trends seen in forest, fish population and freshwater are not reversed, in the long term, depletion can occur and worsen to the extent of exhaustion. Fig. 3 Natural and man-made water scarcity Fig. 2

St. Andrew’s Junior College H2 Cluster 1: Development, Economy and Environment (Topic 1.1) H2_Cluster 1_Lecture 5_2024/pg 4 5.3 Classification of Provisioning services based on their Availability • At any moment in time there is a finite stock of natural resources on the planet, the resource base. Each resource has in turn its own resource base (i.e. the total quantity of a substance or property on the planet; for example, the total amount of oil in existence today). However, that total resource base is not the amount available for human exploitation. • Fig. 4 illustrates the relationship between the resource base and the various sub-divisions of resource availability. (a) Proven reserves • The term proven reserve is applied to those deposits that have already been discovered and are known to be economically extractable under current demand, price and technological conditions. (See Lect 4 Section 4.3) Thus, the extent of the proven reserves of a particular resource is highly dynamic and dependent upon a host of partly interlinked factors. • These include the availability of the technology and skills to exploit the resource, the level of demand, the cost of production and processing, the price it can command in the marketplace, the availability and price of substitutes, and the environmental and social costs of developing the resource. • These factors determine whether or not a particular resource will be exploited in a particular place and the global level of supply of that resource. The extent to which each of these factors influences resource development also varies across space and time. Fig. 4

St. Andrew’s Junior College H2 Cluster 1: Development, Economy and Environment (Topic 1.1) H2_Cluster 1_Lecture 5_2024/pg 5 • Today we have the technological ability to recover resources in geological and environmental conditions that were previously uneconomic. For example, the exploitation of shale gas in a physically challenging environment has been made possible by advances in drilling technology, specifically hydraulic fracturing. (b) Conditional reserves • The category of conditional reserve refers to deposits that have already been discovered but that are not economic to work at present-day price levels with the currently available extraction and production technologies. Proven vs conditional reserves • The boundary between proven and conditional reserves is dynamic and bi-directional (that is, resources that change from conditional to proven reserves can, if conditions change, revert to conditional status). (c) Hypothetical reserves • Hypoth