JOSIAH KIBIRA UNIVERSITY COLLAGE OF TUMAINI
UNIVERSITY MAKUMIRA
NATURAL RESOURCES
Bugado Louis, 2014
Natural Resource – anything occurring in nature that is used by people. Nearly all community activities interact with natural resources in some way. Housing, transportation, utilities and community facilities, economic development, and land use elements all have direct or indirect relationships to a community’s natural resource base. Therefore, it is virtually impossible for a community to plan for its future without considering the opportunities, constraints, and impacts associated with its natural resources.
•Natural resources are vital to all forms of wildlife and the ecosystems in which they live.
•Humans use natural resources for such modern conveniences as electricity, transportation, and industrial production, as well as basic survival.
•Rapid population growth, a higher standard of living, and technology all contribute to increased use of natural resources
A natural resource is a technological concept. I. e. the resources due to technological advancement may be valued today but not tomorrow. Natural resources become valuable to man through combination of three things 1. Increasing knowledge
2. Expansion of technology i.e. from low technology to high 3. Changing the goals in the society.
TYPES OF RESOURCES A/ Renewable resources
B/Non Renewable resources
Time frame that makes it useful for human consumption or use. (Examples include: cotton,
wood, solar energy, water)
Non-renewable Resource – a resource that is replaced slowly by natural earth processes in
such a way that once used by people, it will not be available again within a useful time frame.
(Examples include: oil, coal, rocks, minerals)
. Most scientists and resource managers define a “useful time frame” as within an
average human lifespan.
CHARACTERISTICS OF NATURAL RESOURCES
A resource is a spatial phenomenon. some societies may use and regards them as natural resources while the same thing can be rejected in other society as a resource.
The natural resources are unevenly distributed. Some areas are much supplied with resources, while other areas resources are not enough. or resources are not homogeneous distributed in some areas.
Exhaustibility. Resources are either non renewable or renewable, but even
renewable resources can be exhausted if they are mismanaged. in some instances, trade may contribute to the exhaustion of resources by accelerating over utilization hence depletion.
Volatility (instability).certain resources. Particularly fuels and mining products, can be subject to extreme price volatility (instability).this is a source of uncertainty that adversely affects investment and production decision.
NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT/CONSERVATION
Natural resources management refers to those activities directed towards
maintenance of biotic and a biotic resource in order to achieve certain objectives.
-managing the way in which people and natural landscapes interact.
-it brings together land use planning, water management, biodiversity conservation, and the future sustainability of industries like agriculture,mining,tourism,fisheries and forestry .
- it recognizes that people and their livelihoods rely on the health and productivity of our landscapes and their actions as stewards of the land play a critical role in maintaining this health and productivity.
Natural resources management is also congruent with the concept of sustainable development, a scientific principle that forms a basis for sustainable global land management and environmental governance to conserve and preserve natural resources.
Natural resources management specifically focuses on a scientific and technical understanding of resources and ecology and the life-supporting capacity of those resources.
-Natural resource management issues are inherently complex as they involve the ecological cycles, hydrological cycles, climate, animals, plants and geography etc. All these are dynamic and inter-related.
-A change in one of them may have far reaching and/or long term impacts which may even be irreversible
In addition to the natural systems, natural resource management also has to manage various stakeholders and their interests, policies, politics, geographical boundaries, economic implications and the list goes on. It is very difficult to satisfy all aspects at the same time. This results in conflicting situations.
United Nations Conference for the Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, most nations subscribed to new principles for the integrated management of land, water, and forests. Although program names vary from nation to nation, all express similar aims
various approaches applied to natural resource management include:
-Top-down or Command and control
-Bottom-Up (regional or community based NRM)
-Adaptive management
-Precautionary approach
Regional or Community Based NRM
-The community based NRM approach combines conservation objectives with the generation of economic benefits for rural communities. The three key assumptions being that: locals are better placed to conserve natural resources, people will conserve a resource only if benefits exceed the costs of conservation, and people will conserve a resource that is linked directly to their quality of life.
-A problem of community based NRM is the difficulty of reconciling and harmonizing the objectives of socioeconomic development, biodiversity protection and
sustainable resource utilization. Locals may be reluctant to challenge government recommendations for fear of losing promised benefits.
Adaptive Management
This approach includes recognition that adaption occurs through a process of ‘plan-do-review-act’. It also recognizes seven key components that should be considered for quality natural resource management practice
1.Determination of scale 2.Collection and use of knowledge 3.Information management 4.Monitoring and evaluation 5.Risk management 6.Community engagement 7.Opportunities for collaboration
Top down command and control management
Top down command and control management or authoritarian management is highly de-motivating because it works against the way human beings function naturally in groups. This factor explains why bureaucracies are inherently incompetent and working in a bureaucratic environment is dehumanizing.
The resultant stress experienced by the participants has an adverse impact on both individual and organizational performance.
The precautionary principle precautionary approach states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action.
In some legal systems, as in the law of the European Union, the application of the precautionary principle has been made a statutory requirement in some areas of law.
- the first endorsement of the principle was in 1982 when the World Charter for Nature was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, while its first
international implementation was in 1987 through the Montreal Protocol. Soon after, the principle integrated with many other legally binding international treaties such as the Rio Declaration and Kyoto Protocol.
Integrated natural resource management (INRM)
A process of managing natural resources in a systematic way, which includes
multiple aspects of natural resource use (biophysical, socio-political, and economic) meet production goals of producers and other direct users (e.g., food security, profitability, risk aversion) as well as goals of the wider community (e.g., poverty alleviation, welfare of future generations, environmental conservation). It focuses on sustainability and at the same time tries to incorporate all possible stakeholders from the planning level itself, reducing possible future conflicts.
Biotic – Biotic resources are obtained from the biosphere (living and organic
material), such as forests and animals, and the materials that can be obtained from them. Fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum are also included in this category because they are formed from decayed organic matter.
Biotic – Biotic resources are those that come from non-living, non-organic material. Examples of biotic resources include land, fresh water, air and heavy metals
including ores such as gold, iron, copper, silver, etc.
Considering their stage of development, natural resources may be referred to in the following ways:
Potential Resources – Potential resources are those that exist in a region and may be used in the future. For example, petroleum may exist in many parts of India, having sedimentary rocks but until the time it is actually drilled out and put into use, it remains a potential resource.
Reserve Resources – The part of an actual resource which can be developed profitably in the future is called a reserve resource.
Stock Resources – Stock resources are those that have been surveyed but cannot be used by organisms due to lack of technology. For example: hydrogen
NATURAL RESOURCE OWNERSHIP REGIMES
Natural resource ownership regimes can be categorized according to the kind and right of stakeholders
Ownership and control over the use of resources is in hands of the state. Individual or groups may be able to make use of the resources, but only at the permission of the state. National forest and National parks.
Private property regimes
Any property owned by a defined individual or corporate entity. both the benefit and duties to the recourses fall to the owner(s).private land is the most common
example
Common property regimes
It is a private property of a group. the group may vary in size, nature and internal structure.e.g.indigenous tribe, neighbors of village, some examples of common property are community forests and water resources.
Non property regimes (open access)
There is no definite owner of these properties. Each potential user has equal ability to use it as they wish. These areas are the most exploited. it is said that
"everybody’s property is nobody’s property 'An example is a lake fishery
Hybrid regimes.
Many ownership regimes governing natural resources will contain parts of more than one of the regimes described above; an example of such a hybrid is Lake Fishery in Lake Victoria. Natives are free to fish but there is state control on fishery industry.
Renewable resources offer a number of environmental and economic benefits over non renewable resources
1. Infinite supply of renewable resources( they cannot be depleted)
2.Self reliance.eg a country that provide its own renewable resources such as solar powered electricity need not to rely on other countries for an energy source.
3.Renewable resources offer communities relief during periods of recovery from natural disaster when communities lose standard services that require the use of natural resources(eg. electricity power or natural gas) renewable resources such as wind and solar energy system are used to provide these services until the usual methods of achieving service can be restored
CHALLENGES OF USING NATURAL RESOURCES
-Extracting, processing and using natural resources creates air, water and land pollution which can cause global environment problems for example carbon dioxide which is produced from deforestation and from burning coal, oil and natural gas , which is a critical green house gas. many scientist believe that the buildup of green house gases in the atmosphere can cause global climate change over time. this condition could pose serious dangers around the world prompting such disasters as flooding, drought and disease
-Also population growth increasing affluence technological change and urbanization are all responsible for rapidly rising resource consumption all over the world. the relationship between population growth and increased resource use varies among developed and undeveloped nations.
THREATS TO EARTH RESOURCES
-In the first decade of 21st Century, we face many threats to earth resources that
have sustained us in the past.
-Threats on a global scale such as climate change,drought,natural disasters,deforestation,competition for energy and mineral resources.
-The threats to earth’s resources today are mainly caused by climatic change and the demands of a rapid growing global population.
-To better understand the threats posed to earth resources by climatic change and a rapidly growing global population, let's look at three familiar categories of resources 1. Energy and minerals
2. Water
3. Biological resources
ENERGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES
-Modern society is increasingly dependent on non renewable minerals and fossil energy resources.
-economic and population growth of less developed countries functions as a relatively recent but quickly growing push factor on global demand.
-these two are likely to cause shortage of non renewable resources.
WATER QUALITY AND AVAILABILITY
-The combination of climate change, population growth and greater use of irrigated agriculture has resulted on increased stress on water resources around the world. -water has emerged as a global issue that requires international multi-disciplinary cooperation on assessment,research,and management, the problem is exacerbated with the expansion of population centers in water-scarce regions such as Kahama in Shinyanga region and the growing urbanization in Egypt
-in order to avoid situations where water becomes an increased threat rather than remaining a treat, an interdisciplinary and transboundry focus is required, because of that reason the UNESCO international hydrological programme (IHP) focuses activities on water research, water resources management, education,and capacity building with a recent shift to improving the management of water within the
context of environmental sustainability
BIOLOGICAL RESOURCES
-Climate change coupled with global population growth presented unprecedented threats to the world’s biological resources, here are few examples
-increased desertification, overgrazing by herd animals, wild and domestic coupled with the over-use of soil for crops results in the removal of soil nutrients which can damage soil surface stricture.
-increased floods, floods resulting from changed rainfall patterns will impact fisheries and aquatic system, their productivity and diversity
temperatures have implications for producing hurricanes with greater intensity and increased coastal vulnerability in the future.
-loss of biodiversity. Changes in climate influence the size of plant and animal populations which in turn affects the distribution and abundance of species and ultimately ecosystem structure and function.
-loss of reef building corals. the destruction of coral reef ecosystem would expose coastal populations to flooding, coastal erosion, and loss of food and income from reef-based fisheries and tourism
-the combination of the threats to the earth resources results into a disruption in the functioning of ecosystem
-ecosystem is the term for an integrated system of organisms interacting with their physical environment, resilient functioning ecosystem….
-build fertile soil
-enhance pollination of crops -purify water
-regulate the atmosphere -detoxify waste
It is very important to be noted that all of earth’s resources (energy and mineral, water and biological) are interrelated
