resources 2

• ·         In 1900 40% of employment in the USA was in the primary sector. However, the mechanisation of farming, mining, forestry and fishing drastically reduced the demand for labour in these industries. Less than 4% of employment in the USA is now in the primary sector. People then moved to urban areas where secondary and tertiary jobs are located making it the world’s biggest manufacturer in the 20^th century.
•   Human labour steadily being replaced by robots- deindustrialisation
• Globalisation saw the loss of heavy industry in MEDC’S and these industries have filtered down into NIC
• Improvement in education – more people taking part in tertiary/quaternary jobs
•  Population affects demand for resources e.g. Brazil demands a lot of pre-industrial resources. E.g. growth of urban slum demands more land
•  2/3rds of our income is disposable
•  Black death lead to a decline in resource
•  China has a lot of raw materials
•   America alone uses 33% of the world’s resources

The measure of natural resource consumption

-          In 2001 the total human ecological footprint exceeded global hectares per person of 21 percent- this proves Malthus’s theory

Global biocapacity- the capacity of global ecosystems to produce useful biological materials and to absorb waste materials generated by humans using current management schemes and extraction technology

Global hectares- on hectare is equivalent to one hoctare of biologically productive space with the world average productivity.

-          Substitution- use more common and therefore less available resources in place of more expensive ones e.g. use copper for aluminium

-          Beneficiation- the upgrading of a resource that was previously too costly to develop. This process usually depends on technological advances.

-          Recycling

-          Quotas may change on an annual or longer time period basis

-          Rationioning