Principles of Natural Resources Management

PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL
RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
Muktar Mohammed (PhD)
1.Types of Natural Resources
The enormous variety of natural resources on this planet provide
everything for the survival of all forms of life including man.
Nature has been so kind to man since ancient times.

In the initial stages of the history of economic development man
identified these natural gifts available around him and learnt to use
them.
Everything that comes from nature has some utility for man but its
utilization is possible on the availability of appropriate technology.
What are resources?
Any material which can be transformed in a way that it becomes
more valuable and useful, can be termed a resource. In other words it
is possible to obtain valuable items from any resource.
Thus land, water, minerals, forests, wildlife as well as human beings
are resources.
Any material may be termed as resource provided that an appropriate
technology is available to transform that into more valuable goods.
There are different types of resources.
From a continual utility viewpoint, some resources are exhausted
soon, whereas others last for a long period.
Thus depending upon the availability of resources, during our
continuous use, a resource may be renewable (inexhaustible), non-
renewable (exhaustible) or cyclic.
Resources which can be renewed along with their exploitation are
always available for use. Hence they are called renewable resources.
Eg. Forest, livestock
Formation of some resources like iron ore, coal, mineral oil etc. has
taken several thousand years. Once they are used in unlimited way
they can not be easily replaced. Such resources are called non-
renewable.
For certain resources there is no final use as they can be used
continuously. For example, water use in industry and domestic way
can be cleaned and used again for similar or other purposes. Such
resources that can be used again and again are called cyclic resources.
On the basis of their origin resources may be biotic (organic) or
abiotic (inorganic).
Biotic resources are obtained from the biosphere.
Forest and forest products, crops, birds, animal, fish, and other
marine life forms are examples of biotic resources. Coal and mineral
oil also belongs to this category since they originate from organic
matter.
Some biotic resources like forest and livestock are renewable,
whereas coal and oil are non-renewable.
Resources composed of non-living inorganic matter are called abiotic

resources. Land, water and minerals like iron, copper, lead and gold
are abiotic resources.
Every resource has some utility. Some are used as food, some as raw
materials and others as sources of energy.
Expanding human population resulted into expanding needs of man.
With scientific progress and technological advancement man started
utilizing natural resources at a much larger scale.
Continuous increase in population caused an increasing demand for
resources. This created a situation when the non-renewable
resources may come to an end after some time.
In order to have maximum production, we have started even Taking
loans from the resources meant for future generation or deplete
resource base.
There must be some sort of balance between the population growth
and the utilization of natural resources.
2. Ecosystems
Living organisms and their non-living environment are inseparably
interrelated and interact with each other.
Any ecological unit that includes all the organisms in a given area,
interact with the physical environment so that a flow of energy leads
to clearly defined tropic structure, biotic diversity and material cycle
within the system is known as ecosystem.
Eco implies the environment and system implies an interacting,
inter-dependent complex.
It represent the highest level of ecological integration.
We may think the earth as a giant ecosystem where abiotic and biotic
components are constantly acting and interacting upon each other.
This giant ecosystem is, however, difficult to handle and thus for
convenience we generally study nature by making its artificial
subdivisions into units of smaller ecosystems (terrestrial-forest,
desert, grassland; man engineered as a cropland; aquatic- freshwater,
marine, etc.) of different sizes.
An ecosystem can be as small as a pond, a cropland, or as large as an
ocean, desert or forest.
Kinds of ecosystem
Natural ecosystems
These operate by themselves under natural conditions without any major
interference by man. Based on the particular kind of habitat, these are
further divided as:
Terrestrial- forest, grassland, desert, etc.
Aquatic which may be further distinguished as:
I. freshwater, which may be lotic (running-water as spring, stream, or
rivers) or lentic (standing-water as lake, pond, pools, puddles,
ditch, swamp etc.
II. Marine, such deep bodies as an ocean or shallow ones as a sea or estuary
etc.
Artificial ecosystems
These are maintained artificially by man where, by addition of energy
and planned manipulations, natural balance is disturbed regularly.
For example croplands like maize, wheat, rice-fields etc., where man
tries to control the biotic community as well as the physico-chemical
environment, are artificial ecosystems.

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PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL

Nature has been so kind to man since ancient times.

Resources composed of non-living inorganic matter are called abiotic

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