An Essay on Natural Resources

 

Human life is unimaginable without natural resources, and it is precise because of these resources that any form of life sustained on this planet with comfort. Natural resources are anything and everything obtained from nature and used by us, starting from elemental air, water, and sunlight to even organic elements like fossil fuels, minerals, timber, etc.

Natural resources that are obtained from living organisms or are eventually formed because of living organisms are called Biotic elements, like forests, birds, animals, fishes, or other marine organisms, fossil fuels (because they are formed because of the decay of organic materials), etc. Natural resources that refer to the non-living elements of nature are called Abiotic resources. Examples of abiotic resources are sunlight, wind, tide, soil, minerals, etc.

The resources like solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass are called renewable resources because they are present abundantly in the world and are self-replenishing in nature. And the resources like fossil fuels, iron, freshwater, coal, nuclear elements, etc. that took million years for the formation and can eventually perish (cannot be reproduced) are called non-renewable resources.

Hence, it is essential to preserve resources so that they can be present in the future for us and our succeeding generation’s use and benefit. Everyone needs to know natural resources because our survival depends on those. We also need to educate and make people aware of the hazardous effect of the absence of these resources.

Natural elements are present everywhere around the world but not equally distributed. Humans have learned efficient ways in which they can use the natural resources present in their region for their benefit. Like in India, a variety of soil and humid weather has allowed the prosperous growth of agriculture. The areas of the country that are surrounded by sea eventually developed advanced skills in fishing.

Some examples of how we use our natural resources are, using of water for drinking and production of hydro-electric power, sunlight is necessary for plant growth and also providing us heat and vitamins, plants are our primary source of oxygen and food, coal is used for electricity production and as a fuel for vehicles, etc.

With trade and commerce came globalization, and now we are dynamically evolving to find ways in which we can modify methods of using natural resources to create products to serve us better. But we have to remember that not all resources are unlimitedly present in our ecosystem. If we are not careful about the consumption of these resources, then they will eventually exhaust, then we might not have an alternative to survive without those.