The State of the World’s Natural Resources

Abstract

This chapter examines the historical and current state of the world’s natural resources. It starts with a definition of the term, and then critically examines the different ways humans can utilize natural resources: by exploiting them, conserving them, or preserving them. The chapter goes on to broadly scrutinize global natural resource patterns. It then analyzes key resources at both the individual and global level, including global biodiversity loss and efforts to protect biodiversity, as well as the exploitation and consumption of global fish stocks. While much of the focus in the area of natural resources has been on individual species loss, the depletion of ecosystems is equally, if not more, troubling, so it is considered in detail here. Specifically, the chapter critically examines the essential global ecosystems including forests and the issue of deforestation with a particular emphasis on tropical forest loss, global wetland shrinkage, and the loss of arable land. Doing so reveals that significant changes to terrestrial and marine resources, biodiversity, and arable land over time are mainly attributable to anthropogenic factors, including land/sea use change and continued direct human exploitation of natural resources. Existing (and past) attempts to address these changes globally and nationally by seeking to embed conservationist norms have largely failed. Treaties designed to entrench conservationist practices towards natural resources have proven largely ineffective leaving resource exploitation as the prevailing governing norm, much to the detriment of the planet.