Natural resource
Natural resources are naturally occurring materials and substances in the environment, such as minerals, forests, water, soils, and fossil fuels, that can be extracted or harnessed to support human economic activity, provide raw materials for production, and sustain life.[1][2][3] These resources are typically classified into two main categories: renewable, which can replenish through natural processes over relatively short timescales if managed appropriately—examples include sunlight, wind, flowing water, and sustainably harvested timber—and non-renewable, which exist in finite stocks and cannot be regenerated on human timescales, such as coal, oil, natural gas, and metallic ores.[4][5][6] Natural resources underpin global economies by supplying essential inputs for energy, manufacturing, agriculture, and construction, generating trillions in annual value through industries like mining, forestry, and fisheries while supporting jobs and infrastructure development.[7][8] Their exploitation has driven technological innovation and wealth creation throughout history, yet it has also raised concerns about overextraction leading to local scarcity and environmental impacts, though long-term global depletion forecasts have frequently proven overstated due to substitutions, recycling, and efficiency gains enabled by human ingenuity.[9][10]Fundamentals
Definition and Characteristics
Natural resources are naturally occurring substances or features of the Earth's environment that exist without human intervention and can be utilized to meet human needs, including materials for production, energy, and sustenance. These encompass biotic elements derived from living organisms, such as timber and fisheries, and abiotic components like minerals, water, and soil, which serve as inputs for economic activities.[11][12] A defining trait is their inherent scarcity relative to potential demand, as global reserves of non-renewable types, such as proven oil reserves estimated at 1.7 trillion barrels in 2023, impose physical limits on extraction rates. Resources must also possess utility—providing tangible benefits like heat from coal or structural support from stone—and be technologically accessible, meaning extraction feasibility depends on available methods, as seen in deep-sea mining requiring specialized equipment developed post-2000.[7] Characteristics further include spatial heterogeneity, where deposits concentrate in specific regions—for instance, 70% of the world's bauxite reserves lie in Guinea, Australia, and Brazil as of 2022—affecting trade and geopolitical dynamics. Economic viability hinges on cost structures, including depletion risks for finite stocks, which drive market prices; for example, uranium ore's value correlates with processing yields averaging 0.1-1% uranium content. Environmental externalities, such as habitat disruption from logging, arise from exploitation but stem from causal extraction processes rather than resources themselves.Economic and Societal Importance
Natural resources constitute a cornerstone of economic activity worldwide, generating rents that directly contribute to gross domestic product (GDP) through extraction, export, and processing. In many resource-abundant countries, these rents form a substantial portion of national income; for example, in Saudi Arabia, rents from oil and natural gas accounted for 41.1% of GDP in recent assessments. Similarly, nations like Angola and Nigeria derive significant GDP shares from fossil fuels and minerals, often exceeding 20-30% depending on global commodity prices. Globally, natural resource rents averaged around 1-2% of GDP across countries in World Bank data from 2010-2020, though this metric understates broader dependencies such as supply chains for manufacturing and agriculture.[13][14][15] The value of untapped and exploited reserves underscores this economic weight, with Russia holding an estimated $75 trillion in resources dominated by coal, natural gas, oil, and rare earth metals as of 2024, enabling it to fund state budgets and geopolitical influence. Other examples include China, with $23 trillion primarily in coal and rare earths, supporting its industrial base, and Australia, where iron ore and coal exports drive trade surpluses. These assets facilitate capital accumulation for infrastructure and diversification, though empirical evidence shows outcomes vary with institutional quality—countries with strong governance, like Norway, convert resource wealth into sustained prosperity, while others face volatility from price cycles and "resource curse" dynamics, where rents crowd out non-resource sectors.[16][17][18] Societally, natural resources provide indispensable inputs for human sustenance and advancement, supplying energy for powering homes and industries, fertile land and water for food production, and materials like timber and minerals for shelter and tools. Resource availability has shaped societal evolution, from enabling early agricultural settlements to fueling modern urbanization and technological progress, with over 50% of global GDP—roughly $44 trillion as of 2022—relying on ecosystem services such as pollination, soil fertility, and raw material provision. In developing regions, access to these resources correlates with poverty reduction and health improvements via affordable energy and nutrition, though overexploitation risks depletion, as seen in historical cases of soil erosion limiting agrarian societies. Extraction industries also employ millions directly in mining, forestry, and fisheries, sustaining rural communities and migration patterns, while indirect jobs in processing amplify social stability.[19][20]Classification
By Origin and Composition
Natural resources are classified by origin into biotic and abiotic categories, reflecting their derivation from living or non-living components of the Earth system. Biotic resources originate from the biosphere, encompassing materials and organisms produced through biological processes. These include flora such as timber from forests, fauna like fish stocks and livestock, and derived products from organic decay, notably fossil fuels including coal, petroleum, and natural gas, which formed over millions of years from compressed remains of prehistoric plants and animals.[21][22] Abiotic resources, by contrast, arise from inorganic, non-biological sources within the lithosphere, hydrosphere, or atmosphere, lacking direct ties to living matter. Key examples comprise metallic minerals such as iron ore, copper, and gold deposits formed through geological crystallization; non-metallic minerals like phosphates and salts from sedimentary processes; and elemental resources including water cycles, atmospheric air, and solar radiation harnessed for energy.[22][23] This binary distinction by origin and composition—organic versus inorganic—underpins assessments of extraction feasibility and environmental interactions, as biotic resources often involve ecological dynamics while abiotic ones engage physicochemical properties. For instance, biotic fossil fuels release stored carbon from ancient biomass upon combustion, whereas abiotic metals require metallurgical separation from host rocks based on atomic structure.[24][25]By Renewability and Exhaustibility
Renewable natural resources are those that can replenish themselves through natural processes at rates comparable to or exceeding human consumption under sustainable management practices, such as solar energy, wind, flowing water, timber from forests, and fish stocks in fisheries.[4] These resources derive from ongoing ecological or physical cycles, including photosynthesis for biomass and atmospheric circulation for wind and precipitation, allowing potential indefinite use if extraction does not exceed replenishment rates; for instance, annual global timber harvest from sustainably managed forests reached approximately 4.1 billion cubic meters in 2020 without net depletion in certified areas. However, even renewable resources can become effectively exhaustible through overexploitation, as evidenced by the collapse of Atlantic cod fisheries in the 1990s due to extraction rates surpassing biological reproduction, reducing spawning stock biomass by over 99% from historical levels. Non-renewable or exhaustible natural resources, by contrast, exist in finite geological stocks formed over millions of years and cannot replenish on human timescales, leading to inevitable depletion with continued extraction; primary examples include fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as metallic minerals such as copper, iron ore, and rare earth elements.[26] These resources' exhaustibility stems from fixed reserves—global proven oil reserves stood at about 1.7 trillion barrels as of 2023, sufficient for roughly 50 years at current consumption rates of 100 million barrels per day—necessitating substitution or technological alternatives once stocks are drawn down, as extraction follows Hotelling's rule of rising scarcity rents over time. Unlike renewables, their value derives from concentrated, non-recurring deposits, with recycling mitigating but not eliminating depletion; for copper, secondary supply from scrap met only 20-30% of demand in 2022, underscoring primary mining's dominance. This binary classification, while useful, overlooks hybrid cases where renewability hinges on management and scale; groundwater aquifers, for example, renew slowly via infiltration but function as exhaustible when pumped unsustainably, as in California's Central Valley where overdraft exceeded 2 million acre-feet annually in the 2010s, lowering water tables by hundreds of feet. Empirical assessments prioritize replenishment kinetics over origin, with non-renewables defined by geological formation timescales exceeding 10,000 years, contrasting biological or solar cycles under decades.[27]| Category | Key Characteristics | Examples | Replenishment Time Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Renewable | Replenish via natural cycles; sustainable if managed | Solar radiation, wind, forests, fisheries | Days to decades (e.g., tree regrowth: 20-100 years)[4] |
| Non-renewable (Exhaustible) | Finite stocks; no viable natural replenishment | Fossil fuels, metals, phosphates | Millions of years (geological processes)[26] |