Welcome to Natural Resource Issues!
Welcome to the critical world of resource security! This chapter is all about the biggest challenges facing humanity: ensuring we have enough water and energy to sustain a growing, developing world. Since these resources are not evenly distributed, their management creates massive geopolitical conflicts and massive environmental challenges.
Don't worry if this seems like a huge topic; we will break it down into four manageable areas: where resources are, how we secure water, how we secure energy, and what the future might look like. Let's get started!
3.2.2.2 Global Patterns and Geopolitics
The Uneven Global Distribution of Resources
Natural resources like oil, gas, and accessible freshwater are unevenly distributed across the planet. This geographical fact drives international trade and often creates power imbalances between countries that produce (suppliers) and countries that consume (demanders).
1. Energy: Production, Consumption, and Trade
Production: Highly concentrated in specific regions (e.g., the Middle East for oil, Russia for gas, China/USA for coal).
Consumption: Heavily dominated by highly developed economies (HDEs) and emerging major economies (EMEs) like China and India, due to their industrial bases and large populations.
Trade/Movements: Vast international movements, often via pipelines (for gas/oil) or massive container ships (for LNG and coal). This trade infrastructure becomes a key focus of political tension.
2. Water: Availability and Demand
Availability: Governed by climate, often resulting in high availability in equatorial and temperate zones, but severe scarcity in arid and semi-arid regions.
Demand: Driven by domestic needs, industry, and, most significantly, agriculture (irrigation). Global demand is constantly rising due to population growth and development.
The Geopolitics of Resources
Geopolitics means the influence of geographical factors (like resource distribution) on the relationships and power dynamics between states.
Think of it like a game of chess where the pieces are oil fields and rivers. Control over these resources grants political leverage.
• Energy Geopolitics: Control over pipelines, shipping lanes (chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz), and major fossil fuel reserves allows producer nations to exert influence (e.g., Russia using gas supply to influence European policy). Transnational Corporations (TNCs) like ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco are central actors, often aligning with national interests.
• Water Geopolitics (Hydro-politics): This occurs when two or more nations share a river basin (a transboundary resource). Upstream nations (who control the flow) hold significant power over downstream nations.
Example: The Nile River conflict between upstream Ethiopia (building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam) and downstream Sudan and Egypt.
Quick Review: Geopolitics
Resources are key to power. Uneven distribution forces global trade, which means political tension over supply routes and shared river systems.
3.2.2.3 Water Security
Water Security is ensuring that a population has reliable, sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and economic development.
A. Defining Supply, Demand, and Stress
• Sources of Water: Surface water (rivers, lakes), groundwater (aquifers), and increasingly, unconventional sources (desalinated water, recycled water).
• Components of Demand: Agriculture (largest global use), industry (cooling, manufacturing), and domestic (household use).
• Water Stress: Occurs when the annual water supplies drop below 1,700 m³ per person. Water Scarcity is even worse, below 1,000 m³ per person. Both volume and quality are essential.
B. Physical Geography and Water Supply
The amount of water available is deeply tied to the physical environment:
• Climate: Determines the volume and seasonality of precipitation and rates of evaporation. Tropical rainforests have high supply; deserts have low supply.
• Geology: Determines how water is stored. Permeable rocks (like chalk) form large underground stores called aquifers. Impermeable rocks lead to more surface runoff and less secure storage.
• Drainage: The structure of river basins controls collection and flow. Large, high-volume rivers (like the Amazon or Mekong) are major sources of supply.
C. Strategies to Increase Water Supply (The Hard Path)
These strategies involve large-scale infrastructure to capture, move, or create water.
1. Catchment: Collecting precipitation, often through cisterns or managed forests (afforestation increases infiltration).
2. Diversion/Transfers: Moving water from areas of surplus to areas of deficit. Example: China's South-to-North Water Transfer Project.
3. Storage (Dams/Barrages): Creating reservoirs to regulate flow, prevent flooding, and provide water for irrigation and hydroelectric power.
4. Desalination: Removing salt from seawater or brackish water. Highly energy-intensive but essential in water-scarce coastal regions (e.g., the Middle East).
Environmental Impacts of Major Schemes (e.g., Dams)
Major water supply schemes, such as the Three Gorges Dam (China), have huge environmental and social costs:
• Displacement: Millions of people must move as valleys are flooded.
• Ecosystem Loss: Loss of terrestrial habitats and major disruption to riverine ecosystems (fish migration).
• Sediment Flow: Sediment is trapped behind the dam, leading to the erosion of downstream river banks and coastlines, and a reduction in soil fertility.
D. Strategies to Manage Water Consumption (The Soft Path)
These focus on reducing demand and using existing supplies more efficiently.
• Reducing Demand: Increasing pricing (tariffs), education campaigns, and regulating agricultural practices (e.g., drip irrigation instead of flood irrigation).
• Conservation: Fixing leaks in infrastructure (many cities lose huge volumes of water through pipe leakage).
• Recycling and Grey Water: Treating wastewater for reuse (recycling) or using mildly used water (from sinks/showers) for non-potable uses like toilet flushing or garden irrigation (grey water).
• Groundwater Management: Regulating the extraction from aquifers to ensure the rate of recharge is not exceeded, preventing aquifer depletion and land subsidence.
Did you know? Virtual Water Trade
Virtual water trade is a brilliant concept! It refers to the water embedded in food or other products needed for their production. When a country imports a kilogram of rice, it is also virtually importing the thousands of litres of water used to grow it. This allows water-scarce countries to "save" their domestic water by importing high-water-use goods.
E. Water Conflicts
Water scarcity often leads to tension and conflict at various scales:
• Local: Farmers competing with urban areas for abstraction from the same river or aquifer.
• National: Disputes between different states or regions within a country (e.g., disagreements over river allocation in large federal states like the USA or India).
• International: Disputes over shared transboundary rivers (as seen in the Nile, Mekong, or Jordan river basins).
Key Takeaway: Water Security
Water supply is governed by physical factors (climate, geology). Solutions require a mix of large infrastructure (dams, desalination) and smart conservation (virtual water, grey water) to balance rising demand and avoid conflicts.
3.2.2.4 Energy Security
Energy Security means having reliable, affordable, and sustainable access to the energy sources required for development and daily life.
A. Sources, Demand, and Mixes
• Primary Sources: Energy found directly in nature (coal, crude oil, natural gas, wind, solar).
• Secondary Sources: Energy derived from converting a primary source (e.g., electricity generated from coal).
• Components of Demand: Industry, transport, and domestic heating/lighting.
• Energy Mixes: The proportion of different energy sources used by a nation. This mix contrasts significantly between countries (e.g., Norway relies heavily on hydropower, while Saudi Arabia relies almost entirely on oil/gas).
B. Physical Geography and Energy Supply
Physical geography influences energy security by determining which resources are naturally available:
• Geology: Determines the location of fossil fuel reserves (oil and gas fields) and geothermal sources.
• Climate: Determines the potential for renewable energy—sunny climates for solar power, windy coasts/uplands for wind power, high precipitation for hydropower.
• Drainage: High-volume rivers with steep gradients are ideal for major hydropower schemes.
C. Energy in a Globalising World
Energy supply is increasingly controlled by global market forces, TNCs, and conflicting national interests.
• Role of TNCs: Multinational energy companies (e.g., Shell, BP) drive exploration, exploitation, and distribution of energy globally, often requiring huge upfront capital that only they can provide.
• Competing National Interests: Nations compete to secure long-term supply contracts. Energy is often used as a political tool. Energy security is seen as a key component of national security.
D. Strategies to Increase Energy Supply
Strategies fall into two main categories:
1. Fossil Fuels: Continuing global oil and gas exploration, often in challenging environments (e.g., deep-sea drilling, Arctic reserves).
2. Nuclear Power: Provides consistent, low-carbon electricity, but poses significant safety risks and produces dangerous nuclear waste that must be safely stored for thousands of years.
3. Renewable Sources: Developing wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal power to reduce reliance on finite fossil fuels.
E. Environmental and Sustainability Issues
Major energy resource developments have significant environmental impacts:
• Fossil Fuels: Oil spills (maritime or pipeline), habitat destruction (from mining or drilling infrastructure), methane leaks (a potent greenhouse gas), and acid rain (caused by sulfur and nitrogen oxides released during coal burning).
• Enhanced Greenhouse Effect: The burning of all fossil fuels releases CO2, accelerating climate change.
• Energy Conservation: Managing consumption through improved efficiency (e.g., insulation in buildings) and reducing demand (e.g., promoting public transport). This is often the cheapest, most sustainable strategy for energy security.
Key Takeaway: Energy Security
Energy supply is dominated by global TNCs and geopolitics. While increasing supply involves traditional and nuclear sources, the move toward sustainability requires rapid investment in renewables and strong conservation efforts to tackle climate change impacts.
3.2.2.5 Resource Futures and Connections
Alternative Energy and Water Futures
The future of resource security will be shaped by the interplay of four major developments:
• Technological Developments: Innovations in energy storage (better batteries), smart grids, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), and more efficient renewable energy capture.
• Economic Developments: The cost of resources (e.g., is oil expensive or cheap?) and the viability of green technologies (e.g., dropping costs of solar panels). Also includes pricing external costs, such as carbon taxes.
• Environmental Developments: Increasing frequency of extreme weather events (impacting infrastructure) and the severity of climate change driving a global political will to transition away from fossil fuels.
• Political Developments: International agreements (like the Paris Agreement) and national policies (e.g., subsidies for renewables or bans on single-use plastics).
The Water-Energy Nexus
Water and energy security are fundamentally connected. This is known as the Water-Energy Nexus.
Energy needs Water:
• Hydropower generation requires water.
• Thermal power plants (coal, nuclear) need huge amounts of water for cooling.
• Fracking for gas requires large volumes of water.
Water needs Energy:
• Treating, pumping, and distributing water requires significant energy.
• The most critical connection: Desalination is a technologically advanced strategy to increase water supply, but it is extremely energy-intensive, requiring cheap and reliable energy supplies (often gas or nuclear power) to be economically viable on a large scale.
Quick Review: The Future
Resource futures depend on technology, cost, environment, and political will. The supply of clean water and clean energy are inseparable—solving one helps solve the other.