Concerns with resource scarcity are not new. In 18th century it was already thought that the growth in agricultural activity and growing population the world would come to disaster. This has provided a motivation to agricultural innovation to ensure that this crisis is never reached.
What are resources?
There is number of different resources types:
Natural resources - directly available in natural environments and have not been altered by human beings. These can be further divided into:
- Biotic resources - derive from living things found in the biosphere, for example living animals and plants and the remains of dead living materials,
- Abiotic resources - derive from inorganic materials, for example water, metal, rocks etc.
Cultivated resources - these are the result of human control, for example food crops, fibre or domesticated animals.
Within these, we have further categories:
Renewable resources - these can be renewed by natural processes and can be either unaffected by human consumption (sunlight, wind) and affected by human consumption (fish stock).
Non-renewable resources - these do not renew or renew very slowly, for example metals or fossil fuels, coal, natural gas, minerals.
Renewable resources that are dependent on the state of the words ecosystems are being considered recently and the basis for eco-system services. The value of these services provides an argument for nature conservation.
The focus now is to make precise inventories of resources by quantifying the rates by which resources are being used. By these exercises still need major improvements as they are still based on assumptions. The annual global consumption of most precious metals is not known with any certainty and predicting the reserves in place is also very difficult. The scarcity is going around indium, platinum and tantalum particularly. The scarcity around those are already reflected in their price.
Raising population and standards of living put a real threat to the resources availability. Therefore urgent action is required. We need accurate estimates of global reserves and figures of consumption. We also need to set up efficient programmes, to recycle, reuse and where possible replace these elements. Governments, therefore, take this issue seriously.
Natural metals
Increasing prices of metals have driven an approach to reducing overall demand. This could be done through modifying the design of metal components so that they deliver the same performance, but use less material. Improving efficiency of manufacturing processes so that the materials can be recovered and recycled is also driving today's organisations. New processes for recovering metals for recycling at the end of their life are being developed. Businesses and organisations continuously work on substituting metals with other materials which are not subject to resource limitations. But the essential aspect of improving the efficiency is knowing exactly how materials are sourced and used.
Rare earth elements
Rare earth elements are used in range of industries, however, these are used extensively in electronics. The majority of worlds production in concentrated in China. Risk of global supplies of these rare elements becomes a headline. China announce already to restrict the export of them and prefer to use them in their own industries.
Peak energy
Peak energy is a theoretical proposition that at some point our capabilities to extract fossil fuels will reach its maximum. This idea has been widely accepted, despite any historical evidence points. Technologies have been developed to make off-shore oil production possible and governments this days play a large role in the way these technologies are utilised. It is very possible, however, that in the future technology will not be able to balance the demand and use. This would result in insufficient productions and higher prices. Although the debate is purely theoretical, it drives the global community and sustainable developments.
Water, Food and Energy
Water supply is clearly on the agenda of sustainable business. The growth of the middle class people is considered to double within the next 15-20 years. This will put a demand for resources. A paradise shift in a businesses can stat the resources efficiencies we need to enable the people in the future to enjoy life in the same way as we enjoy it now. To be able to have the food, water angry for future consumers we would use a huge amounts of energy to get that food to people, we also cannot have clean water without energy.
Businesses putting sustainable programs in place around the world talk about it so much, because there is a great positive change opportunity. Opportunity to grow their products and save money long term. Governments try to adjust their policies to encourage such changes. But conflicting policies can create challenges for businesses to hitting those targets. It is also not an individual interest for businesses, but we have shared responsibilities to meet the efficiency targets all together.
I hope the information has given you more broader look and background on why sustainable developments are driving today's economies. We need to look at the global situation of consumption of the resources to understand and able to develop effective programs and raise the change of succeeding with our efforts.
Bibliography:
Barnett and Morse, 1962, "Scarcity and growth, The Economics of Natural Resource availability"
David Cohen, 2007, "Earth's natural health: an audit", The Economist pp. 34-41
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