INSIGHT
The term natural resources means all the substances, forms of energy, environmental and biological forces of our planet which, appropriately transformed and enhanced, are able to produce wealth or value and make a significant contribution to the evolution of the system. socio-economic, thus assuming a strategic importance in the internal economic equilibrium of a state and in its relations with importing exporting foreign states. In particular, the natural resource is called raw material when there is the technical possibility and economic convenience of use.
The environmental resources of a territory can be divided as follows:
1. natural resources, ie those connected to nature (water, soil, flora-fauna, rivers);
2. cultural-resources, ie those produced by man (historic center, railway network, residential heritage, parks).
Description
Throughout its history, the natural system has been able to develop and evolve. It has increased the variety and availability of resources, creating ever greater complexity of organization, accumulation and distribution of these. In fact, at the beginning of the history of the Earth there were only mineral substances and solar energy. Later there was the formation of other important resources such as atmospheric air, seas and continental waters. With the development of plant and animal life forms, it has taken on land the formation of soil, a fundamental resource for the development of the species and the growth of new additional resources (hydrocarbons, fossil fuels).
In the economies of the ancient world the main natural resources were the fertility of the land, agricultural products, fishing, hunting. To these are added the mineral raw materials (iron, bronze, copper) used in particular for the manufacture of tools, weapons, etc.
The availability and quality of resources is an essential condition for the sustenance of all forms of animal and plant life according to a complex system of balances between use, production and accumulation. Man has also based his socio-economic development on the availability and quality of natural resources, exceptionally increasing the ability to use and modify them in a very short time, especially when compared with the growth times of natural resources. From this follows the double risk for the risk society of reducing the availability and modifying the quality of natural resources necessary for the survival of many species and of man.
Oil and coal are two classic examples of non-reproducible natural resources, that is, destined for exhaustion. It is necessary and urgent to identify different systems of development and development that can be sustained by the system of natural resources at its rhythms and times. This objective, defined as sustainable development, could be achieved if human activities structured according to closed-cycle schemes, so as to use only limited quantities of resources, providing for the modification of the quality of basic resources (air, water, soil, soil , vegetation, fauna) through the application of the criteria deriving from the identification of environmental receptivity.
The availability or not of energy resources is a factor that weighs in a capacity way on the economic wealth of a State making it more or less self-sufficient or self-sufficient in terms of supply and exploitation of these resources as well as on the possibility of selling raw materials abroad in the form of prints with direct effect on the trade balance. Much of the differences in wealth between states and part of the political tensions at a global level are caused precisely by a different distribution of natural resources, which is therefore not homogeneous.
Classification
Natural resources are divided into:
• water resources;
• energy resources;
• Mineral Resources;
• usable resources
In turn, they can then be further divided into:
• renewable resources that are constantly regenerated or do not run out with use and are therefore exploitable with a rate of use lower than or equal to the rate at which the resource itself is renewed (eg wind, solar difference, agricultural land, food and textile fibers);
• non-renewable resources such as oil, coal, natural gas, available in finite or limited quantities or destined to run out in the long term.
For millennia, man has always used resources that came from "renewable sources". But the concept of renewability is relative because it is able to regenerate many things but sometimes take a very long time therefore, a rapid use of the Earth can make these resources non-renewable. For example, fish resources are continuously generated from the Earth, but an exploitation can exceed the generation capacity.
Water resources
This term refers to the availability of fresh water on land for agricultural use and as human-industrial and animal needs through water sources, rivers, lakes, water networks and underground water reserves (aquifers). It is a vital resource for the biosphere together with oxygen, which tends to be renewable as it is strictly dependent on the water cycle and also dependent on the permeability and exploitation of soils and the level of anthropization of the territory. Freshwater is not a resource, unlike global oxygen, but a regional one, available within specific river basins and subject to limits of various kinds. These limits can be seasonal, that is linked to the capacity of the reserves in the dry season, determined by the recharge rates of the aquifers or by those of melting snow. A scarcity of water resources in relation to the emerging world population in certain areas of the globe is a debated issue, especially in relation to climate change issues. A further limit, not linked to the quantity, but to the quality of water resources, is pollution.
"Water is, of all, the least replaceable and most essential resource. Its limits constrain other necessary flows of food, energy, plants and wildlife. The extraction of other products (food, minerals and forest) can further reduce the quantity or quality of water. All over the world, in an increasing number of river basins, the limits have already certainly been exceeded "
Mineral Resources
They are part of the raw materials available on our planet through extraction from the earth's crust and oceans by means of energy resources (iron, copper, zinc, nickel, rare earths, silicon, precious metals, etc.). They therefore represent the initial source through whose processing, transformation and use in everyday goods or products allows the production of wealth or value as well as materials used in turn for the construction of machinery used for the transformation of other raw materials into finished products destined to consumption in society.
These are natural resources used intensively in modern society starting from the first industrial revolution and for which there are, in some cases, serious doubts about their sustainable exploitation, especially in a context of poor recycling at the end of the life cycle of the final product. . Their limited availability at low cost in relation to the growing demand has led, in some cases, to a significant increase in their value on the raw material market (eg copper).
Energy resources
With the industrial revolution, started in the eighteenth century, the sources of conventional energy (wood) became no longer sufficient for the new development and so began the increasingly intensive exploitation of fossil fuels, first coal and then oil and gas. natural. Fossil fuel reserves, although present in large quantities, are formed exhausted and depleted of energy products such as metal ores and building products. With the oil crisis of the seventies of the twentieth century the world energy problem was born, with a new awareness on the rational use of resources, the search for new alternative energy sources to fossil fuels and the development of new technologies that favor energy saving, problems destined to worsen at the end of the millennium and in the 2000s also due to the growing 2000s also due to the climate changes underway.
The most promising forms of alternative energy are:
• nuclear energy;
• solar energy derived from the sun's radiation on the ground;
• wind energy derived from the exploitation of the winds;
• hydroelectric energy;
• geothermal energy with which the water vapor coming from the subsoil is used, especially in geologically active areas;
• energy from biomasses from natural woods and forests, cultivated plants and organic waste;
• tidal energy thanks to which large amounts of energy are generated by exploiting the wave motion of the oceans and tidal flows.
Great have had photovoltaic systems that are capable of directly transforming solar energy into electricity.
Finally, in contemporary society, the concept of natural resource has also been published to the environmental resource, such as the conservation of biodiversity, the fight against pollution, the protection of the landscape, etc. An example, in a sense, of natural resources is both marine reserves and marine areas, consisting of peculiar waters, bottoms and stretches of coast.
Biological resources
They are all that from the biosphere and the animal world in the form of arable or exploitable resources (seas, forests, pastures, agricultural land) and that give life to food products (meat, fish, fruit and vegetables) placed in human and animal food same as the primary survival requirement. Also included in this category are wood as a building material and textile materials produced from the animal and vegetable world mainly destined for clothing. A particular biological and vital natural resource is water both for agricultural and industrial use and for food use in the form of drinking water. A recurring debate exists on the availability of these resources in relation to the growing population as well as on the impact of these general living conditions (see Malthusianism).
Renewable resources
Renewable resources, both of matter and of energy, are natural resources which, due to natural characteristics or as a result of human cultivation, are renewed over time and are therefore available for human survival almost indefinitely, that is, they cannot be exhausted.
With regard to "arable" resources - such as forests, pastures and agricultural land - the maintenance of the characteristics of renewability depends on the skill and attention of the farmer.
A renewable resource is also said to be "sustainable" if its reproduction rate is equal to or greater than that of use. This concept implies the need for a rational use of renewable resources and is particularly important for those resources - such as, for example, forestry - for which the availability is not indefinite, compared to the times of evolution of human civilization on Earth, such as instead, for example, solar or wind sources.
Renewable resources have numerous advantages, of which the greatest are undoubtedly the absence of pollutants during their use (for this reason they are called "clean sources") and their inexhaustibility. The use of these sources does not jeopardize their availability in the future and they are very precious resources to create energy while minimizing the environmental impact. In this way nature is protected while respecting the generations produced and, moreover, the costs of and distribution of energy are limited.
With regard to renewable energy resources, the following are considered (more precisely):
• solar radiation (to produce thermal and electrical energy);
• the wind (wind source of electricity);
• biomass (combustion for thermal generation and cogeneration of heat and electricity);
• water jumps (hydroelectric source);
• tides and sea currents in general;
• the earth's heat, in areas with positive geothermal anomalies
In a broad sense, thermal "wells" that can be used for passive cooling of buildings can also be considered renewable "sources": air (if at a temperature lower than that of the environment to be cooled - microclimatic cooling); ground (geothermal cooling); nebulized water (evaporative cooling); night sky (radiative cooling).
The renewable energy sources associated with these resources are therefore hydroelectric, solar, wind, marine and geothermal energy, or those sources whose use does not affect their availability in the future. On the contrary, "non-renewable" energies, both for having long periods of formation, much higher than those of current consumption (in particular fossil sources such as oil, coal, natural gas), and for being present in reserves that are not inexhaustible on the scale of the times (in particular the isotope 235 of uranium, the human element most used to produce nuclear energy), are limited in the future [no source]. They are still at the hypothesis stage or in the development stage; it is therefore not always clear the cost when fully operational, as well as their real potential or weight on the world electricity needs compared to traditional energy sources such as fossil fuels and nuclear energy, or even non-programmability of some of these sources (such as photovoltaic and photovoltaic wind power).
It is important to underline that the forms of energy present on our planet almost all originate from solar radiation, with the exception of nuclear, geothermal and tidal energy. Without the Sun there would in fact be the wind, with uniform heating of the masses, and with it the wind energy. Biomass energy is solar energy stored chemically, through the process of chlorophyll photosynthesis. Hydroelectric energy, which exploits water falls, does not exist without the water cycle from evaporation to rain, triggered by the Sun. Fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) also derive from the stored energy of the sun. in biomass millions of years ago through the process of chlorophyll photosynthesis, but they are not renewable in historical times.