Causes and Effects of Depletion of Natural Resources

All the materials we are using or consuming are extracted from the forests. Of course, modernization and industrialization need more and more raw materials. But, if we can’t create the root sources for survival, we have no right to destroy it. Around 1 billion people in the U.S.A and Europe make the consumption of about 84% of energy.

Are natural resources subject to depletion?

Depletion is the method of recording the expense of extracting or using the natural resources over the estimated life. Examples of natural resources that would be depleted are petroleum, timber, and mining.

This problem is further amplified by global population increases and consequent increasing resource needs. When the resources are consumed at a rate faster than they can be replenished, it is termed as resource depletion. This includes the use of either of the renewable and non-renewable forms of resources.

Land use and soil

Problems like food and water scarcity arise when resources aren’t available. Pollution and global warming are added consequences of this problem, which need to be taken care of for the harmony of human life on Earth. Depletion accounting is complex to implement as nature is not as quantifiable as cars, houses, or bread.[4] For depletion accounting to work, appropriate units of natural resources must be established so that natural resources can be viable in the market economy. Another global problem in terms of fossil fuels is that it is not found uniformly around the planet. Coal forms in tropical regions where there are lots of vegetation and swamps. As the vegetation falls into oxygen-poor water, it is converted into a carbon-based rock over geologic time.

It was the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987) that successfully established sustainability as a critical part of economic development policy. Nonetheless, the Brundtland report has increased the awareness of the importance of the interlinkages between the economy and its dependence on natural resource systems as well https://accounting-services.net/bookkeeping-oklahoma/ as a sense of stewardship for the future and the environment. Climate change is the change in the local weather over decades, which hampers our daily life. Some two-thirds of the world’s electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants, and coal is responsible for more than a quarter of global CO2 emissions.

Effects of Depletion of Natural Resources

Many will balk at this idea but it is perhaps sounding somewhat less bizarre after the release by the United Nations of a new report which paints a scary picture of the rate at which we are gobbling up the Earth’s resources. George Monbiot, a correspondent for Britain’s The Guardian newspaper and known for his environmental and political activism, has made a surprising call for people in the United Kingdom to cut the use of cars by 90 per cent Natural Resources and Depletion over the next decade. When resources are taken from the environment quicker than they are replenished. Existing social psychological inquiries of justice are to a great extent experimentally oriented; research hypotheses are investigated under controlled conditions. Also, due to the overrepresentation of research concerned with self-reported behaviors and behavioral intentions, research featuring actual behavior observations is warranted.

  • Among the proposed solutions are switching to alternate energy such as solar power and wind power and responsible use of resources.
  • Within a century, half the original Everglades had been drained and converted to other uses.
  • Sustainability science arises from the recognition that appropriate science and technology must be utilized in pursuit of sustainable development (Clark and Dickson, 2003; Roumasset et al., 2010).
  • Where scarcity is concentrated on the non-renewable resources that play the most important role in meeting needs, the most essential element for the realisation of human rights is an adequate and equitable allocation of scarcity.
  • It also releases the most significant amount of carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas.

Yes, depletion declares that the natural resources are deteriorating, and we must be aware of saving this. Otherwise, the day is nearer when we don’t have sufficient raw materials, even for survival. While agriculture can exert significant pressure on the environment, it is itself subject to negative environmental impacts linked to air pollution and urban development.

Resource depletion

In spite of these efforts CO2 emissions are continuing to rise, with the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggesting that emissions are on track to double by 2050 (IEA, 2014). Part of the reason appears to be that the higher energy efficiency leads to rebound effects from increased energy demand, due to, for instance, “more heated space, higher temperatures, and for longer periods” (Rovers, 2014). Roumasset and Wada’s Chapter 5 reviews the principles of groundwater management, including their extension to the optimal coordination of multiple aquifers, groundwater substitutes such as desalination and wastewater recycling, and investments in watershed conservation. By providing principles of pricing and finance, they show how sustainable development can be extended to the management of resource systems instead of a single resource. Chapter 6 by Burnett et al. applies the principles of coordinated resource management to the specific example of managing an invasive tree species that interferes with groundwater recharge. At the optimum, the marginal cost of increasing recharge via watershed conservation should be equal to the shadow value of groundwater in consumption.

Natural Resources and Depletion

Not only do trees store water, but the organic matter at the base of the trees also stores water and makes it available to the broader ecosystem, which may slow down water runoff. Forest canopies disperse water during rainfall and create another layer of moisture in their leaves and branches, which either is used by other organisms or evaporates back into the atmosphere. You can also see statistics on pollution of our most valuable assets; This reveals the reality that not only we are wasting a considerable amount of our natural resources, but we are also making it unavailable for use by different types of contaminants. Both Agriculture and civilization require an enormous land area on the earth, which attracts the idea to deteriorate our forests and natural ecosystems. Soil contamination is the human-induced deposition of harmful substances which are not a product of natural accumulation or soil formation. Many human activities, ranging from mining activities, industrial and agricultural production to road transport, result in pollution that can accumulate in the soil or result in biological and chemical reactions in the soil.

Minerals depletion

The requirements for positive sustainability, reviewed in Chapter 3, provide for a solution that is optimal as well as sustainable. Efforts to implement environmental justice are further complicated by the international, national, and local scope of the concept. Pollutants not only “travel” from one place to another through multiple pathways and environmental processes, but they also traverse from one scale to another.

Because of plate tectonics, the slow movement of continents around the planet, most of the mid-latitude countries such as China, Russia, and the United States were located near the equator 250 million years ago. Petroleum and natural gas forms on the ocean floor under high pressure from overlying water and sediment. Some of these areas are still underwater, such as in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Mexico.

Environmental Science

The nation is expected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country by 2025. As the Indian population rises rapidly and over-exploitation of land and water resources continues, the natural resources are at stake. There is increasing deficiency of energy, metals, coal, non-fuel and non-metallic materials. With regard to fuels, there is great concern over the increasing use to meet human desires. In the field of economics, a consensus regarding sustainable growth has also been elusive.

They reviewed the dangerous water crisis in Iran and concluded that the result would be the destruction of many cities and, consequently, the influx of populations into the way of migration. The water crisis in Iran is making urban/regional conflicts and uncertainty for livelihoods (Shahraki, 2020). Remember that a long-standing drought and sectarian and nonspecialized management directed to large-scale internal migration and the 2011 Syria’s civil war (Smith, 2020). Therefore, it is necessary to monitor the status of water resources in every city and adjust the amount of water available and consumption with the help of software such as the hydro-social change balance program for urban water supply and consumption (Merrett, 2003).

However, in more developed nations and nations transitioning, fossil fuels have become the central source of energy. So, this is all about the causes and effects of natural resource depletion with solutions. After knowing what causes the depletion of natural resources, we are now ready to grasp the consequences we are facing and what we will face in the future. Last but not the least cause of natural resource depletion is the unintelligent use of chemicals for fulfilling the food need of the large population. As compared to the past decades, the most dangerous consequences are seen through the contamination of air and water.

What is an example of a natural resource depletion?

Examples of resource depletion include deforestation, soil degradation, and overfishing. Deforestation is when we cut down trees faster than they can grow back. This happens because of logging and land clearing for agriculture, ranching, mining, and oil prospecting.