Global Change and Challenge

Geography for the 1990s

Robert Bennett, Robert Estall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781134989348
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

We are now experiencing a period of unprecedented change; what amounts to a global revolution in our economy, society and awareness of the human impact on the environment. Global Change and Challenge examines some of the crucial issues facing society in the 1990s and how geography can contribute to their understanding and management. Using the broad theme of how societies adapt to change, the contributors seek to present a range of views on the `geography of change' in an accessible form for both school and university students. The general aim of the book is as much to encourage students to understand where we are and where we have some from, as to where we may be going.
Robert Bennett and Robert Estall are both Professors of Geography at the London School of Economics. The contributors were all members of the Department of Geography at the LSE at the time of writing.

1
RESOURCES AND THE
ENVIRONMENT

Scarcity and sustainability

Judith Rees¹

Change in the economy and society of the countries of the world has led inevitably to changes in the role of resources and the environment. Resources are the keystone of civilisation. The development of individual nations and, indeed, of the entire international economic and social system, is dependent on their continued availability. Given their importance, it is understandablethat fears of impending resource scarcity have periodically emerged.Among the most well known are, perhaps, the gloomy forecasts of Malthus in the late eighteenth century, and the recent studies of ‘the limits to growth’. Such fears have been based on the belief that either the physical system, or human institutions, or both, must fail in the relatively near future to deliver the extra resources needed to satisfy growing human demands. These fears provide the focus for this chapter.

Traditionally, concern has been centred on the limited capacity of the world to provide the minerals essential for economic development. However, it has long been clear that the physical adequacy of mineral stocks is in many ways the least critical part of the problem. Apart from physical scarcity, other scarcity problems exist that can be grouped together as ‘geopolitical’, ‘economic’ annd ‘environmental’ (Table 1.1). Recognition that scarcity is not one problem, but many, is crucial not only to our understanding of the issues but also to the development of resource management policies. The reality of threats of scarcity varies between problems and also over time and geographical space. In addition, given the range of concerns about scarcity, it is now clear that there is no one set of

Table 1.1 The dimensions of scarcity

Type of scarcity		Concern
Physical scarcity	1	Exhaustion of minerals and energy;
	2	Human populations exceed the food production capacity of the land;
	3	Depletion of renewable resources such as fish, soils or timber.
Geopolitical scarcity	1	Use of mineral exports as a political weapon (e.g. sales embargoes);
	2	Shift in location of low cost mineral sources to ‘hostile’ blocs of nations.
Economic scarcity	1	Demand at current price levels exceeds the quantity supplied (therefore shortages);
	2	Needs exceed the ability of individuals or countries to pay for resource supplies;
	3	Rich economies can always outbid the poor for essential resources, creating unequal patterns of resource use;
	4	Economic exhaustion of specific minerals or renewable resources causes economic and social disruption in producer regions or in nations dependent on them.
Renewable and environmental resource scarcity	1	Disruption of essential biogeographical cycles (e.g. the carbon dioxide cycle and the greenhouse effect) threatening sustainability of life on earth;
	2	Pollution loads exceeding the ‘absorptive’ capacity of the environment causing economic, health and amenity problems;
	3	Loss of plant and animal species and landscape values, with wide, but poorly understood, long-term consequences.

causes common to them all, nor is there a single appropriate policy response.

THE NATURE OF RESOURCES

We must understand the term ‘resources’ and classify them before we can discuss the various problems arising from potential scarcity and evaluate the threats they pose.

Natural resources are those products or properties of the physical environment which human beings are technically capable of utilising and which provide desired goods and services. Both these criteria must be satisfied before a particular part of the physicalworld can acquire a value as a resource. Technological innovation and improved knowledge only create the opportunities for utilisation. Whether these opportunities are taken up depends upon economic, social and political demands. Resources are, therefore, defined by human desires, needs and capacity. They are phenomena which depend greatly on the prevailing culture. This helps to explain the many disagreements over which particular elements in the environment are resources.

Just as it is difficult to define what resources are, so the task of assessing whether future supplies will be adequate is also highly complex. We have not only to evaluate the capacity of the world to sustain adequate resource supplies over time, but we must also assess the extent to which human intervention (intended or unintended) will act to change those supplies. In addition we must try to predict which particular resources will be judged to have value by future generations.

As human societies have evolved so has the definition of otentially usable resources. Today's list vastly exceeds that of Stone Age economies. Inevitably, too, reappraisal will continue in the future. Innovations and changes in life style will continue to change natural substances or environmental properties from ‘neutral stuff’ into valued resources. It must be stressed that this transfer process is not one-way. Just as flint lost value when metal tools were developed, so copper, coal, tin or uranium could all lose value, or revert to neutral stuff, if more effective or lower cost substitutes are found, or if consumer tastes change. It may be, for example, that the risks of radiation could eventually become so politically unacceptable that nuclear power generation will be phased out and uranium will lose the resource value it acquired in the 1940s, when atomic energy was first harnessed.

Since the value of resources is determined by the culture that uses them, it follows that the value of particular resources varies not only over time but also over space. But the geographical diversity of the value given to metals and fuels has been reduced by modern communication systems and expanding world trade. Generally the global value of such resources is determined by the demands and technologies of the advanced nations. However, there is much less international consensus over the assessment of environmental resources such as air, landscapes, wilderness areas or plant species. To a Brazilian peasant farmer, for example, the tropical rain forest may simply be an impediment which must be removed before thevalued resource, land, can be utilised. The notion that the forest itself is a vital resource, either through its contribution to the global carbon cycle or because of the diversity of tropical forest species, is unlikely to mean much to the farmer. Similarly, the long term possibilities of global warming of the climate are of little concern to those living on the edge of starvation.

Conflicting assessments of environmental resources can exist even among individuals sharing a common cultural heritage and living in the same small community. What for a local farmer is a weed-strewn piece of unproductive wasteland could be a rich aesthetic and ecological resource to others. Such differences in valuations and priorities lie at the heart of many of the current conflicts over environmental protection.

THE RESOURCE CONTINUUM

It has been conventional to split resources into two types—non-renewable (stocks) and renewable (flows). This terminology is misleading, however, and it has limited value in the debate over future resource availability. All resources are renewable on some time scale—new oil, coal, natural gas and metal deposits are being formed today. What matters for the sustainability of future supplies is the relative rates of replenishment and use. Moreover, replenishment cannot simply be regarded as a natural process. In some cases, human intervention can significantly alter the rate of replenishment. It seems better, then, to think in terms of a resource ‘continuum’ rather than of stocks and flows (Figure 1.1).

At one end of the continuum are the fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, which are being formed too slowly for the replenishment process to be relevant to human needs. They are consumed by use and cannot, as yet, be replenished artificially (at least, not at reasonable price levels and in significant quantities). Heavy use of such resources cannot be sustained indefinitely and scarcity will ultimately occur unless substitutes are found. At the other end of the spectrum is a group of resources which should be infinitely renewable and the supplies of which are unrelated to current uselevels. This group includes solar, tidal and wind energies and the global system of water circulation. However, the word ‘should’ needs to be emphasised. Evidence is accumulating which suggests that inadvertent human intervention can affect levels of incoming and outgoing solar radiation and, in so doing, can also alter precipitation

Figure 1.1 The resource continuum

patterns. If this is the case, then such resource flows will no longer be naturally but partly affected by human activity.

Most resources lie between the extremes of the resource continuum. Hence their future availability depends to a large degree on human choices. The supply of those resources that reproduce biologically, for example, can be sustained only by ensuring that use rates remain below natural replenishment rates, or by investing in planting or breeding programmes. Unless the use/investment balance is maintained such biological resources can be ‘mined’ to extinction. Likewise the continued supply of minerals such as iron, lead or copper, will depend on the willingness and ability of society to invest in recycling. However, unlike the fossil fuels and biological resources, the element minerals cannot be destroyed by use; human beings therefore, retain the option to collect and recycle them, if necessary, in the future. The future availability of acceptable air and water quality will also be determined by the levels of investment in pollution abatement and the development of technologies to increase the natural assimilative capacity of the environment. River water quality, for example, can be improved by adding oxygen, which increases the speed with which natural processes break down pollutants.

Once we are aware of the cultural definition of resources and the nature of the resource continuum, there is nothing inevitable about scarcity. Any future problems of resource scarcity will not be caused by nature but by the failure of human institutions to adopt appropriate management practices and develop adequate substitutes. How likely is it, then, that scarcity problems will arise? To examine that question we return to the four types of scarcity listed in Table 1.1.

PHYSICAL SCARCITY: MINERALS

A great debate raged in the late 1960s and early 1970s over the imminent scarcity of mineral and energy supplies. It was argued that this scarcity would bring about a collapse of the global economic system. Today the debate appears remote, even irrelevant. The pressing problems now being faced, particularly in Third World nations, are of mineral surpluses and falling prices of primary products. However, continuing surpluses are no more inevitable than was imminent scarcity. Future availability depends on three key variables:

1 Investment in searching for and developing new sources.

2 Development of substitutes.

3 Levels of demand.

In an ideal free market system these variables would adjust automatically to prevent both shortages and surpluses. When any mineral is in short supply its price rises. This triggers a whole series of changes in demand, supply and technological effort. These should eventually overcome the shortage (Figure 1.2). Rises in price in the short term lead to falling demand as consumers practise greater economy in use, turn to substitutes or adopt more recycling. If prices remain high for long enough, technological innovations will be stimulated. This enables demand for the resource to fall still further in the longer term. At the same time, changes in supply will also occur. Rising prices will allow the exploitation of known, but

Figure 1.2 The idealised market response to resource scarcity

previously uneconomic, sources of supply, promote the development of more efficient extraction technologies and encourage the search for new sources. The same process works in reverse if surpluses result in falling resource prices.

Clearly, such supply responses cannot go on for ever. With rates of use of the fossil fuels, for example, far exceeding the exceptionally slow pace of natural replenishment, absolute physical limits will in time be reached. However, physical exhaustion need not mean scarcity in a functional sense. If alternative ways can be found to provide the same goods and services, then the exhaustion of a particular physical substance need not matter. Optimists thus argue that no one resource is irreplaceable; in time substitution will occur or the same mineral may be found in different geological sources. For example, if bauxite supplies fail, then aluminium could be obtained from carboniferous shales, kaolin clays or other widely available substances. Alternatively, the scarce mineral could be replaced by entirely different materials capable of fulfilling the same functions. For example, solar, nuclear or tidal energy could replace fossil fuels. It is also possible that technology will provide the required substitutes. Modern communication technologies using the silicon chip have already reduced the demand for metals such as copper. For many minerals, too, shortages of freshly mined products could be overcome by increased recycling. Finally, a kind of substitution could occur in a rather different way. Human life styles and patterns of demand may change and alter the mix of resources in demand. According to some analysts such changes are already occurring as people in ‘post-industrial’ societies shift away from demanding more material goods and purchase more services, which require fewer material resource inputs.

The scope for substitution is immense and the robustness of the market response to threats of scar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Plates
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 RESOURCES AND THE ENVIRONMENT: SCARCITY AND SUSTAINABILITY
• 2 ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS
• 3 DESERTIFICATION AND ITS MANAGEMENT
• 4 GLOBAL ECONOMIC CHANGE
• 5 NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBAL ECONOMIC CHANGE
• 6 NEW ROLES FOR OLD REGIONS
• 7 CASE STUDIES OF ECONOMIC CHANGE IN ADVANCED REGIONS
• 8 DEVELOPMENT AND THE THIRD WORLD
• 9 NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THIRD WORLD DEVELOPMENT
• 10 DRAWING THE LINE BETWEEN TOWN AND COUNTRY
• 11 MANAGING URBAN CHANGE: THE CASE OF THE BRITISH INNER CITY
• 12 THE CHALLENGE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
• Index