Resources and Development

Why This Matters

Look around the room you are sitting in. There is wood in the door. There is iron in the window grille. There is cotton in your shirt. There is plastic in your pen. There is water in your glass. There is even electricity lighting up this page. Every one of these things began as something lying in nature. But none of it was useful on its own.

Think about a lump of iron ore lying in the ground. By itself, it does nothing for you. It became a window only because someone knew how to dig it out, melt it and shape it. That “knowing how” is called technology. And it happened only because there was a society organised enough to make all this effort worth it.

This is the quiet secret of the whole chapter: a “resource” is not just any thing in nature. It is a thing in nature that we have learned to use. Coal was just useless rock until the steam engine made it precious. Uranium was just a heavy stone until we understood the atom. So resources are really a story about us — about our skills, our needs and our choices — as much as a story about the Earth.

And that story comes with a warning. For a long time, people treated nature’s gifts as free and endless. So they used them carelessly. They drained them, kept them in the hands of a few, and damaged the planet along the way. So we must learn to plan our resources and conserve (save) them. That way there is enough for everyone today, and enough for the children who are not yet born. This is one of the most important ideas you will ever study. And this chapter is where it begins.

The Big Idea

A resource is anything in our environment that we can use to meet our needs. But it counts as a resource only if three things are true: we are able to reach and use it (technologically accessible), it is worth the cost (economically feasible), and our society agrees to use it (culturally acceptable). Resources are not free gifts of nature. Human beings turn raw materials into resources by using technology and by setting up the right systems. We can sort every resource in four ways: by origin, by exhaustibility (whether it runs out), by ownership, and by status of development (how far we have started using it). Resources are limited, and they are not spread evenly across the world. So we must use them through careful planning and conservation (saving), so that what we use today does not leave nothing for the future. That last idea has a name: sustainable development.

Let’s Break It Down

What exactly is a resource?

Anything in our environment that we can use to meet our needs is a resource. But it becomes a resource only if three conditions are met. First, it must be technologically accessible — that means we are able to reach it and use it. Second, it must be economically feasible — that means it is worth the cost. Third, it must be culturally acceptable — that means our society agrees to use it.

Here is the key idea. Resources are a result of human activity. We do not just find resources lying ready. Human beings are an important part of resources, because we are the ones who turn raw material into something useful. Three things work together to make this happen. The first is nature, which gives us the raw material. The second is technology, which is the skill and tools to use that material. The third is institutions, which are the rules and organisations that make development happen (for example, a government, a company, or a law). So people use technology to work with nature, and they build institutions to grow their economy faster.

Here is a quick puzzle to test whether you have really got this idea:

Classifying resources — four different ways to sort them

There are so many kinds of resources that geographers sort them in four ways. Here is the most important thing to understand. These four ways are four separate questions about the same resource. A single resource gets a label under each heading at the same time. So one resource is not put into just one box — it gets four labels at once.

The tree diagram in Figure 1.1 below lays out all four bases on one page so you can see them together:

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(a) On the basis of origin — this asks: does the resource come from living things or non-living things? “Biotic” means it comes from living things. “Abiotic” means it comes from non-living things. Here are the two side by side, with examples:

(b) On the basis of exhaustibility — this asks: does the resource run out or not? “Renewable” means it keeps coming back. “Non-renewable” means once it is used up, it is gone. Compare the two in the table below:

Figure 1.2 below makes the difference stick — one type loops back, the other runs out:

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(c) On the basis of ownership — this asks: who does the resource belong to? The ownership table uses two terms about the sea that you may not have met yet, so here is a quick reminder before you read it:

With that cleared up, here are the four kinds of ownership, from a single person all the way up to the whole world:

(d) On the basis of status of development — this asks: how far have we explored the resource and started using it? There are four steps along this path, and the table sorts them out:

Development of resources — and why it went wrong

For a long time, people believed that resources were free gifts of nature. So they used them without any control. This careless attitude caused three big problems:

• Depletion of resources — that means resources were used up — just to satisfy the greed of a few people.
• Accumulation of resources in a few hands — that means a small group hoarded most of them. This split society into the “haves” and “have-nots”, that is, the rich and the poor.
• Indiscriminate exploitation — that means using up resources without any care. This led to big problems for the whole planet, such as global warming, damage to the ozone layer, pollution of the environment, and land degradation (land becoming spoiled and less useful).

But why should one careless habit cause three such different problems? It helps to trace the chain step by step, because each problem grows out of the same root. The root is the belief that resources are free and endless. Once people believe that, they take as much as they like, with no plan. Then think about what must happen next. Many resources, like coal and oil, take millions of years to form. So if we pull them out faster than nature can ever replace them, they are bound to run out — that is depletion. Next, when there is no fair plan, whoever reaches a resource first and grabs the most simply keeps it. The rest get little. So the resource piles up in a few hands, and society splits into the rich “haves” and the poor “have-nots”. And finally, taking too much from nature too fast — clearing forests, burning fuel, dumping waste — pushes nature out of balance, which is what brings on global warming, ozone damage and pollution. So the three problems are not three accidents. They are three outcomes of the very same mistake.

The flow chart in Figure 1.3 below traces that single mistake down to its three results, and shows the cure:

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If only a few people and a few countries keep draining the world’s resources, the future of the planet is in danger. So we need a fair sharing of resources (the textbook word is equitable distribution). A fair share for everyone is needed for a good quality of life and for peace in the world. This is exactly why resource planning is needed — so that all forms of life can survive in the long run.

Sustainable development and the Rio Earth Summit

Sustainable development means this: development should happen without damaging the environment, and the development we do today should not take away from the needs of future generations. In simple words: meet today’s needs, but do not steal from tomorrow.

In June 1992, more than 100 heads of state (the top leaders of countries) met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This was the first International Earth Summit. They met to deal with two big and urgent problems together: protecting the environment, and helping people develop socially and economically. The leaders signed the Declaration on Global Climatic Change and Biological Diversity. The Rio meeting also supported the global Forest Principles, and it adopted Agenda 21.

Agenda 21 is the declaration that was signed at this Rio meeting (its full name is the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, or UNCED). Its goal is to bring sustainable development to the whole world. It is a plan to fight three things — damage to the environment, poverty, and disease — by countries working together. This teamwork is built on shared interests, shared needs and shared responsibility. One important aim of Agenda 21 is this: every local government should make its own local Agenda 21.

Before moving on, see if you can sum up the whole idea in a single sentence:

Resource planning in India

Resource planning means making a careful plan for the wise use of resources. (The textbook calls this the judicious use of resources.) Planning is the method that almost everyone agrees on. It matters a lot in a country like India, because here resources are not spread evenly. Some regions have a lot of one thing but very little of another:

• Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have plenty of minerals and coal.
• Arunachal Pradesh has plenty of water, but it lacks infrastructure (things like roads, power supply and buildings).
• Rajasthan has plenty of solar and wind energy, but it is short of water.
• The cold desert of Ladakh has a rich cultural heritage, but it lacks water, infrastructure and some important minerals.

Because resources are spread so unevenly, India needs balanced resource planning — and this must be done at every level: national, state, regional and local. Resource planning in India is not simple. It is done in three stages:

The flow chart in Figure 1.4 below shows these three stages as one feeding into the next:

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India has been working towards these goals right from the First Five Year Plan, which was started after Independence.

But here is the important point: just having resources is not enough. Resources also need the right technology and the right institutions. Without them, development gets stuck. In fact, many regions in India that are rich in resources are still economically backward (poor). And some regions that are poor in resources are economically developed (well-off). History shows this too. The countries that ruled colonies were attracted by the rich resources of those colonies. But it was their better technology that let them take and use those resources. So resources help in development only when they come together with the right technology and the right institutions.

Conservation of resources

Resources are very important for development. But if we use them carelessly and too much, it causes problems for both society and the environment. So conservation (saving resources) matters at every level. Many great thinkers worried about this:

• Mahatma Gandhi said it very clearly: “There is enough for everybody’s need and not for any body’s greed.” He blamed two things for the world losing its resources — greedy people, and modern technology that took too much from nature. He wanted “production by the masses” (many ordinary people producing things) instead of mass production (factories making huge amounts).
• At the world level, a group called the Club of Rome spoke strongly for saving resources in 1968.
• In 1974, Schumacher brought back Gandhi’s ideas in his book Small is Beautiful.
• The Brundtland Commission Report, 1987 was a turning point. It gave the world the idea of Sustainable Development, in a book called Our Common Future.
• And then came the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Land resources and land use

We live on land. We farm on it. We build on it. And we travel across it. So land is one of our most important natural resources. It supports natural vegetation (plants), wildlife, human life, economic activities, transport and communication. But there is a catch: land is limited — we cannot make more of it. (The textbook word is finite.) So land must be used with careful planning.

India has land in different shapes and forms. These shapes of land are called relief features:

Land is used in several different ways. Here are the main ones:

• Forests.
• Land not available for cultivation — this means land we cannot farm. It includes barren and waste land, and land used for non-farming purposes such as buildings, roads and factories.
• Other uncultivated land — this includes permanent pastures (grazing grounds), land with scattered tree crops, and culturable waste land. Culturable waste land is land that could be farmed, but has been left unfarmed for more than 5 agricultural years.
• Fallow lands — this is farmland that is left to rest. Current fallow is land left for one year or less. Other fallow is land left for 1 to 5 years.
• Net sown area — this is the actual land on which crops are sown and harvested.

Here is a useful pair of terms. Net sown area is the land that is sown at least once. Gross cropped area is the net sown area plus the land that is sown more than once in the same year. (So if a field grows two crops in one year, it is counted twice in the gross cropped area.)

What decides how land is used? Two kinds of factors. The first are physical factors — the shape of the land (topography), the climate, and the soil. The second are human factors — how crowded an area is (population density), the technology people have, and their culture and traditions.

Now some numbers for India. India’s total area is 3.28 million sq km. But we have land-use data for only about 93% of it. This is because most north-eastern states (except Assam) are not fully reported, and the parts of Jammu and Kashmir held by Pakistan and China have not been surveyed. The net sown area is more than 80% in Punjab and Haryana, but it is less than 10% in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Forest cover is still far below the target. The National Forest Policy (1952) wanted 33% of the country’s area to be under forest, to keep nature in balance — but we are still well below that.

Land degradation and conservation

If we keep using land without taking proper care of it, the land slowly gets spoiled. This is called land degradation — it means the land becomes less useful and less fertile. Some human activities have made this damage much faster. These are deforestation (cutting down forests), overgrazing (too many animals eating the grass), mining and quarrying (digging out minerals and stone):

Factory waste (called industrial effluents) is also dumped on the land and into water. This has become a big cause of land and water pollution. The good news is that the ways to save the land are practical and doable:

• Afforestation (planting trees) and managing grazing properly so animals do not eat the grass bare.
• In dry areas (arid areas): plant shelter belts — these are rows of plants that block the wind. Also control overgrazing, and hold the sand dunes in place by growing thorny bushes on them.
• In industrial and suburban areas (factory areas and the edges of cities): manage waste lands properly, control mining, and clean factory waste before throwing it away.

Soil — the most important natural resource

Soil is what plants grow in. It is also home to countless tiny living things. So soil is a living system, not just dead dirt. But here is the amazing part: it takes millions of years to make just a few centimetres of soil. Five things work together to form soil: the shape of the land (relief), the parent rock below (the bedrock it forms from), the climate, the plants and other life around, and time. Natural forces do the work of breaking down the rock — these include changes in temperature, running water, wind, glaciers, and tiny living things called decomposers. As the rock breaks down, dead plant and animal matter mixes in. This rich matter is called humus.

If you could slice into the ground and look sideways, you would see soil arranged in layers. The cross-section in Figure 1.5 below shows exactly that:

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But here is the part that should worry you. Soil takes millions of years to build, yet it can be lost in a single rainy season. Why such a huge difference? Think about how soil is made. There is no machine for it. Solid rock has to be broken down into tiny grains, one grain at a time. The breaking happens only when heat and cold crack the rock, or water and wind rub at it, or tiny living things slowly eat into it. This is painfully slow work. A whole human lifetime of this breaking may add only a thin dusting. That is why a few centimetres of soil can take millions of years to form.

Now think about how soil is lost. The top layer is loose and light. It is not glued to the rock below. So one heavy downpour can lift it and carry it off in an afternoon. A strong dry wind can blow it away just as fast. So the two speeds do not match at all: building is slow as rock, but losing is quick as a flood. That mismatch is the whole reason we must protect soil. Once the fertile top layer is gone, nature cannot make a new one in our lifetime — or even our grandchildren’s.

Figure 1.6 below puts the two speeds side by side so the mismatch is clear:

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The major soil types of India

India has many different kinds of land, climate and plants. Because of this, it also has many different kinds of soil. This table is the heart of the chapter. For each soil, learn three things: where it is found, why it is the way it is, and what grows in it.

Soil erosion and conservation

When the top layer of soil gets stripped off and washed away by water or blown away by wind, this is called soil erosion. (The textbook word “denudation” just means this stripping away.) Normally, nature keeps a balance: new soil forms at about the same speed as old soil is lost. But human activities upset this balance — things like cutting forests, overgrazing, construction and mining. Natural forces like wind, glaciers and water also play a part. When erosion happens faster than soil forms, the land loses its fertile top layer.

But why should cutting trees or grazing too many animals make soil wash away faster? The answer is one small word: roots. A living plant is not just the part you see above the ground. Below the surface, its roots spread out and reach down into the top soil. They grip the loose grains and hold them together, like a net stitched through the earth. So when rain falls on land covered by trees and grass, the roots hold the soil in place, and the plants slow the water down so it soaks gently into the ground. Now take the plants away. When forests are cut, or animals eat the grass right down to bare earth, that net of roots is gone. The top soil is left loose and open to the sky. So the very next rain simply runs across the bare surface and sweeps the loose soil downhill — and a strong wind blows it away. That is the whole reason deforestation and overgrazing speed up erosion: they remove the roots that were holding the soil down.

The two slopes in Figure 1.7 below show the difference — same rain, same hill, only the roots are missing on one side:

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Erosion does not always look the same — it comes in a few different forms. Here they are side by side:

Bad farming habits also wash away soil. For example, ploughing up and down a slope makes little channels — and water then rushes down them fast, carrying soil with it. The good news is that each conservation method is designed to fix exactly one of these problems:

Common Mistakes

Quick Check

Practice Problems

Easy

Medium

Challenge

Summary

You should now be able to explain:

• A resource is anything in our environment that we can use to meet our needs — but only if it is technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally acceptable. Resources come from human activity. They are not free gifts of nature.
• Resources are sorted on four bases: origin (biotic / abiotic), exhaustibility (renewable / non-renewable), ownership (individual / community / national / international), and status of development (potential / developed / stock / reserve). One resource gets a label under each.
• Treating resources as free led to three problems: resources being used up, a few people hoarding them, and damage to the planet. The answer is fair sharing, resource planning and conservation.
• Sustainable development means developing without harming the environment, and without taking from future generations. The Rio Earth Summit (1992) adopted Agenda 21 to work towards this across the world.
• Resource planning in India has three stages — finding and listing resources, building a planning structure, and matching it with national development. It works only when resources come with the right technology and institutions.
• Land is a limited resource (plains ~43%, mountains ~30%, plateaus ~27%). It is used for forests, farming, pasture and non-farming purposes. It gets spoiled by land degradation from deforestation, overgrazing, over-irrigation and mining.
• India’s major soils are alluvial, black (regur), red and yellow, laterite, arid and forest — each with its own region, features and crops.
• Soil erosion (gully, sheet, wind) is fought with contour ploughing, terrace cultivation, strip cropping and shelter belts.

What’s Next

You now know that resources are limited, and that we must use them wisely. The next chapter, Forest and Wildlife Resources, looks closely at one of the most precious biotic resources — the forests and wildlife of India. You will learn why biodiversity (the variety of living things) is falling, how species are grouped by how much danger they are in, and how efforts like Project Tiger and community forestry are working to protect this living heritage for the future.