Definition of Natural Resources

The technocratic evolution of humanity has depended on a single essential factor: the discovery and understanding of the various elements available in nature, to convert them into the base resources in the development of innumerable materials, products and even the tools themselves to obtain them through growing scale. From the invention of the wheel, where the stone was used modeling it in the image and likeness of what existed only in the imagination of some cave ancestor, to the creation of the most innovative polymers in advanced chemical laboratories, absolutely all the resources and the physical and chemical knowledge generated about them, has proceeded from what nature itself is composed of.

Development and lifestyles

However, the distribution of the elements and the configuration that they take when grouped to generate new forms of matter, depends in turn on various factors caused by the environment, geography and climatic conditions, producing as a consequence an inequitable distribution of each type of resource.

Said disparity in the distribution of goods throughout the planet ended up becoming the source of all evils and disputes between the various human settlements and, more currently, between all nations, revealing the supremacy and power that each type of natural resource you can confer on your creditor.

Depending on the existing resources within the limits of a State, added to the degree of use that can be made of them, a country chooses to generate its own dynamics to support its particular functions and the development of the necessary conditions that offer certain quality of life specifically for its inhabitants, hence the possession of natural resources becomes a fact of vital importance for humanity. A clear and continuous example of this throughout the last century and a half of our era is represented by oil and the methods of exploitation, with everything and its questionable consequences for nature itself.

Naturally technological

As scientific advances reveal more and more possibilities in the use of resources obtained by the grace of nature, concern about the consequences of what this represents also grows, since although it seems to be infinite resources, the reality is far from this illusion, confronting present and future generations with a growing scarcity of everything that modern human beings have become dependent on.

From this not so distant possibility, the prevailing need arises to turn the technology and scientific knowledge achieved up to now towards a new vision that allows: 1) the development of new resources based on what has already been obtained; 2) the reuse of materials, elements and substances as their initial function has been fulfilled; 3) the implementation of policies and controls towards less and less invasive mechanisms to obtain the remaining resources in nature; and 4) compensation for the consequences and environmental impacts that this human activity has had on the planet.

nature’s finances

Until just a couple of decades ago, absolutely the entire global economy was focused on the commercial dynamics between Nations, through exchanges and purchase-sale mechanisms of the various natural resources obtained in their territories – especially minerals and energy. – and although the majority of the world economy still depends on it, and will continue to do so for a long time to come, the strategy of obtaining material goods by individual people is becoming more and more frequent, based on the development of an economy based on its own intellect, seeing how knowledge is progressively and rapidly transformed into a new source of resources that could also be considered natural, since it proceeds directly from the organic medium that our brain represents.

Although this dynamic of the sale of knowledge seems to be on a small scale, it is not of great importance for the economy of the nations, adding each one of the educational contributions begins to provide a considerable weight in the financial balance of the world, increasing the possibility of not not only to generate new economic resources, but also their subsequent increase in the quality of life through them, which in turn translates into a potential increase in the acquisition of material created technologically from natural resources and their derivatives, such as part of the endless relationship that humanity has established with them.

References

Altomonte, H., & Sánchez, R. (2016). Towards a new governance of natural resources in Latin America and the Caribbean. ECLAC.

Brannlund, R., et all. (2005). Manual of environmental economics and natural resources. Paraninfo Editions, SA.

Bruckmann, M. (2012). Natural resources and the geopolitics of South American integration. Institute of Higher National Studies, State Postgraduate University.

Cordova, RR (2002). Economy and natural resources (Vol. 34). Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Origgi, L.F. (1993). Natural resources. Euned.

Owen, O. S. (1971). Conservation of natural resources. Editorial Pax Mexico.

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