Demand for Resources

3 Key excerpts on "Demand for Resources"

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  eBook - ePub

  Evolving Regional Economies

  Resources, Specialization, Globalization

  • Martin Henning(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Agenda Publishing

    (Publisher)

  As inferred the previous section, most resources are linked to space. Economic activities take place in particular localities for a reason. One of these reasons is access to resources. Just from looking at a map or thinking about geography, it is apparent that the resource endowment, or resource repertoire, varies across different locations. Different regions offer very different resources. Some locations have an abundance of certain resources while they are completely absent elsewhere. In the earliest eras of economic geography that focused around empirical description, mapping the presence of resources in different places was a key disciplinary objective.

  However, looking more closely and more conceptually at this issue, one finds that resources link to space to different extents. Some resources are completely bound to a place and cannot be easily moved whereas others can. A few resources are found almost everywhere: there is no particular source. Traditional Weberian location theory developed a couple of useful stylized concepts around this (Weber 1909 ). It says that inputs (resources) are either localized (accessible at a given point on the map) or ubiquitous (accessible everywhere at the same cost).

  The fact that a resource is “localized” does not mean that it is unique to one specific place. It could actually be available from several different sites. A good example is iron ore. It is a localized resource, but there is not just one mine on earth. In reality, most resources are localized to some extent (accessible at a given point on the map), but many of them, like iron ore, can also be moved or transported to other regions, although this incurs a cost. A localized resource has a source, and there is a cost to moving it or accessing it from distant locations. Iron ore has therefore one key characteristic that it shares with other localized resources: the cost of accessing it can be assumed to vary across space.

  In this sense, we can think of space – geographical distance – as a friction that limits access to localized resources. Regions have different resource repertoires because: (1) most resources are localized (having identifiable geographical sources); and (2) there is a cost to moving most resources or accessing resources from outside their locations.

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  Green Social Work

  From Environmental Crises to Environmental Justice

  • Lena Dominelli(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Polity

    (Publisher)

  8 Scarce Natural Resources and Inter-Country Conflict Resolution

  Introduction

  The Earth’s natural resources such as land, water, energy supplies and minerals are being exhausted by the demands of agribusiness and industrialization processes that follow Western models of development, and increasing population growth. The spread across the world of the Western industrial model originally developed in the UK, a country with a small population, is clearly unsustainable for contemporary demands. It has been unable to sustain high standards of living even for the few who benefit from neoliberal capitalist development now, so it is unlikely to be capable of catering for the growing numbers of the world’s population, which the UN predicts will exceed 9 billion by 2050. Whilst I do not endorse Malthusian gloom over this issue, unless ways of raising people out of poverty, and promoting sustainable development and healthy lifestyles for all of the world’s peoples, are found, the future could be very bleak for current generations and those to come, and the Earth’s flora and fauna. Sustainable development in the environmental context has a huge agenda. It aims to: empower people, especially marginalized groups including women and children; overcome poverty and hunger; maintain environmental sustainability; reduce the spread of disease including HIV/AIDS and malaria; tackle maternal ill-health and child mortality; improve primary education; and work in partnership with a range of stakeholders globally to enhance livelihoods and protect the ecosystem.

  The growing realization that the Earth’s natural resources are scarce has intensified competition and tensions between countries. The UN has sought international agreement to bring about an orderly resolution to such disputes. Although international bodies and many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations at the international level agree that linking development, poverty eradication, livelihood protection and conserving biodiversity is essential to development, this may not be the approach taken at the national level where local policies are made. For example, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) do not focus on both poverty alleviation and environmental protection, including that of biodiversity (Pisupati, 2004). Agreements may be reached internationally while being ignored nationally and locally. While the Helsinki Rules were agreed internationally in 1966 and enshrined the principle of equality in the usage of water, they were not always adhered to as local agreements tend to favour existing usage and allocations (Anand, 2004). This is clearly demonstrated in the case of water shortages in Central Asia described below. Population movements exacerbate conflicts over resources through claims and counter-claims aimed at asserting sovereignty over disputed areas as people seek refuge when tensions erupt into violence to uphold claims over disputed resources.

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  Rural Resource Management (Routledge Revivals)

  • Paul Cloke, Chris C. Park, Paul Cloke, Chris C. Park(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  ‘include all living things that have the capacity for reproduction and growth. As long as the rate of use is less than their rate of regeneration, and as long as their environments are kept suitable, they will go on replacing themselves. However, living communities are not necessarily renewable, if the way in which we use them is destructive. No living species can survive if we crop it at a rate more rapid than it can reproduce, or if we destroy the habitat in which it depends’.

  INEXHAUSTIBLE RESOURCES

  ‘those such as sunlight, which will continue to pour onto the earth as long as humanity will be around, whether we use it in certain ways or not’. Other examples include water resources on the world scale.

  Thus developed countries can afford more readily to devote attention, resources and finances to planning the wise use of non-utilitarian resources than their less privileged developing counterparts; and it is also more convenient for the developed countries to adopt such a humanitarian approach to physical planning at the present time than it was in past times during their development process because of their better material standards of living at the present time. Whether the present period of economic recession forces a change in attitude towards non-utilitarian resources in countries such as Great Britain and the United States will only become apparent in the distant future.

  This book adopts a broader basis of designating ‘resources’ than is more commonly used, in examining both natural and human resources. People are a basic ingredient of the rural resource system and they must be considered in context. Natural resources are introduced in Chapter 3 , and human resources in Chapter 5 . Landscape resources, which represent the interface between Natural and Human Resources, are introduced in Chapter 4 .

  2.5  THE RURAL RESOURCE SYSTEM

  Ashford19

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