Natural Resources and
Their Use
— Complete Solutions

A — By the use we put them to

• Resources essential for life: Air, water and soil/food — we cannot manufacture these, and life is impossible without them.
• Resources for materials: Wood, marble, coal, gold — converted into useful or beautiful objects (e.g., wood → chair or statuette).
• Resources for energy: Coal, water, petroleum, natural gas, sunlight, wind — power electricity, transport and industry.

B — By whether they can be replenished (renewability)

• Renewable resources: Sunlight, wind, flowing water, forests, soil — regenerated by Nature if we do not disturb its rhythms.
• Non-renewable resources: Fossil fuels (coal, petroleum) and minerals/metals (iron, copper, gold) — took millions of years to form; cannot be replenished at the rate we use them.

Natural resources are not evenly distributed across the planet or within countries. This uneven spread shapes nearly every aspect of human life:

• Settlements & employment: Industries near resource deposits create townships, jobs and better facilities for local communities.
• Trade: National and international trade is built around the geographical location of resources. Combined with human skill, resources create unique products (e.g., Wootz steel) and historically fuelled the rise of empires.
• Conflict & diplomacy: Resources cross political boundaries (e.g., Kaveri River shared by four states; Brahmaputra flowing through China, India and Bangladesh), requiring careful negotiation — and sometimes causing wars.
• Displacement & inequality: Communities in resource-rich regions are sometimes displaced for extraction projects; access to basic resources like clean water and air is often unequal across society.

• Depletion of renewables: Over-pumping groundwater (Punjab — 80% area “over-exploited”) makes a renewable resource effectively unavailable; over-fishing collapses species like tuna.
• Pollution & health hazards: Industrial effluents in rivers; pesticide/fertiliser chemicals dissolving into groundwater cause disease.
• Climate change: Fossil-fuel combustion and deforestation raise temperatures, melting Himalayan glaciers faster than precipitation can replace them, threatening water for hundreds of millions.
• Biodiversity loss: Disturbed ecosystems lose species and the ecosystem services (clean water, pollination, fertile soil) that humans depend on.
• The “resource curse”: Short-term extraction gain can come at the cost of long-term sustainability — future generations inherit a degraded environment.

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• Tulasi puja (India): Many Hindu households worship and water the Tulasi (holy basil) plant daily — it has strong medicinal properties and the act keeps a living, oxygen-producing plant thriving. It embeds ecological care into daily ritual.
• Arghyam to Surya: Offering water to the sun-god at dawn expresses gratitude to Nature's primary energy source. It reminds us of our dependence on the sun for all food and life.
• Sacred groves (Dev vans / Orans): Village communities across India protect patches of forest as sacred spaces — cutting trees or hunting within them is considered sinful. These groves preserve biodiversity and protect watershed areas naturally.
• Bishnoi community (Rajasthan): The Bishnoi people's 29 principles forbid cutting green trees and harming animals — an explicit environmental ethic rooted in religion. In 1730, Amrita Devi Bishnoi and 363 others gave their lives protecting trees.
• Tribal traditions: Many Adivasi communities worship rivers, hills and forests as deities (e.g., Marang Buru — the mountain god of the Santals), which institutionally discourages over-exploitation of these natural entities.
• Jainism — Ahimsa extended to nature: Non-violence towards all living beings, including plants and micro-organisms, encourages minimal consumption and waste — a sustainable lifestyle by religious design.
• Pongal / Bihu / Onam: Harvest festivals that celebrate agricultural cycles express gratitude to Nature and remind communities of their dependence on soil, water and sun.

Every manufactured object traces its origin to a natural resource. Here are examples:

Natural resources can be sorted using several different criteria depending on what aspect we focus on:

The chapter primarily uses two criteria — use and renewability — because they are most relevant to making decisions about sustainable management of resources.

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• Seasonal fishing bans: Coastal communities in Kerala and Goa still observe a mandatory rest period for fishing (Chavithi or similar local names) during breeding months, allowing fish populations to recover. This is now formalised by law in several states.
• Sacred groves (Dev vans / Orans): Community-protected forest patches where no harvesting is allowed. They serve as wildlife corridors, water recharge zones and seed banks for surrounding farmland.
• Crop rotation and fallow seasons: Traditional farmers left land fallow for a season to let soil recover its nutrients — endorsed by Vrikshayurveda, the ancient Indian science of plant care (formalised around the 10th century CE by Surapala).
• Traditional water bodies: Community-managed tanks (Tamil Nadu), baoris (Rajasthan stepwells) and johads (Rajasthan earthen dams) stored rainwater and recharged groundwater — a community-scale renewable water management system.
• Honey harvesting practices: Traditional honey collectors (e.g., Kurumba community of Tamil Nadu) harvest only a portion of a hive's honey, leaving enough for the bee colony to survive and continue pollinating crops.
• Shifting cultivation (Jhum): North-east Indian tribal communities rotate their cultivation across forest patches, allowing earlier plots to regenerate naturally before being used again. Works sustainably at low population densities.
• Chipko movement (1970s): Women in Uttarakhand embraced trees to prevent commercial felling — a modern expression of an ancient belief that forests must be protected for water, soil and livelihoods.

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Human Actions That Disrupt Nature's Restorative Cycle

• Industrial effluents into rivers: Chemical waste that cannot decompose enters rivers, making water toxic. The river loses its self-purification ability and can no longer support life.
• Over-extraction of groundwater: Pumping water faster than monsoon rains can recharge the aquifer (as in Punjab) depletes what is effectively a renewable resource.
• Plastic pollution: Plastic does not decompose; it blocks soil aeration, enters food chains and prevents water infiltration into the ground.
• Deforestation: Clearing forests for agriculture, roads or housing removes vegetation cover, causing soil erosion, reducing local rainfall and eliminating wildlife habitat.
• Chemical farming: Synthetic fertilisers and pesticides destroy soil microorganisms (fungi, bacteria, earthworms) that maintain soil structure and fertility — the soil loses its living, self-renewing character.
• Urban concretisation: Covering land with concrete prevents rainwater from soaking into the ground, leading to flash floods in wet seasons and groundwater depletion in dry seasons.
• Fossil fuel burning: Greenhouse gas emissions raise global temperatures, disrupting the weather cycles that govern monsoon, glacial melt and river flow.

Interventions to Restore Nature's Cycle

• Afforestation with native species: Planting the trees that originally grew in an area restores the full ecosystem step by step — birds, insects and animals return, soil improves and water recharge resumes.
• Effluent treatment plants (ETPs): Mandating industrial waste treatment before discharge restores river health and allows aquatic life to return.
• Rainwater harvesting: Roof-top tanks, check dams, rejuvenated village ponds — returning water to the ground at the rate it is extracted.
• Organic farming and composting: As Sikkim demonstrated (100% organic by 2016), replacing chemicals with natural inputs restores soil biodiversity, raises farmer incomes and revives local wildlife.
• Wetland restoration: Wetlands naturally purify water, absorb floodwater and recharge groundwater — restoring them provides multiple ecosystem services at once.
• Renewable energy transition: Solar, wind and hydropower reduce fossil fuel combustion, slowing climate disruption — the root cause of glacier melt and disrupted rainfall.

This is a field/research activity. Below is a model report structure with sample content for the Bhopal / Madhya Pradesh region. Adapt it to your own area.

Steps to Transition to Renewables

• At home: Install solar water heaters and rooftop panels; switch to LED lighting; set up a biogas digester from kitchen/farm waste.
• Transport: Use public transport, walk or cycle for short distances; support / switch to electric vehicles as charging infrastructure grows.
• Reduce plastic: Carry reusable bags and steel water bottles; avoid single-use plastic; choose products with minimal packaging.
• Support policy: India's PM-KUSUM scheme provides solar pumps to farmers (reducing diesel); National Solar Mission targets 500 GW renewable capacity by 2030; Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme supports solar panel manufacturing.
• Community level: Set up school energy audits; start composting to reduce dependence on chemical fertilisers; hold awareness campaigns.

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Observations from the Map

• Coal is heavily concentrated in the Damodar valley belt (Jharia, Raniganj, Bokaro — Jharkhand/West Bengal) and in Korba (Chhattisgarh), Singareni (Telangana) and Neyveli (Tamil Nadu — lignite). These are ancient Gondwana geological basins.
• Oil is found mainly along the western coast (Mumbai High, Bassein, Ankleshwar, Kalol — all in the Arabian Sea sedimentary basin) and in Assam (Digboi — India's oldest oilfield, 1889; also Naharkatia, Moran, Hugrijan, Makum).
• Iron Ore is concentrated in the eastern peninsular zone: Bailadila (Chhattisgarh), Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj (Odisha), Ballari, Kudremukh and Chitradurga (Karnataka), Gua (Jharkhand). India is among the world's top 5 iron ore producers.
• Bauxite (aluminium ore) at Katni and Amarkantak (MP), Korba and Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh), and parts of Odisha.

Pattern

Mineral distribution is highly uneven — determined by ancient geological processes, not by population or political boundaries. The eastern and central peninsular zone (Jharkhand-Odisha-Chhattisgarh triangle) is extraordinarily mineral-rich, while the densely populated Indo-Gangetic plains have almost no mineral deposits.

Resource 1: Coal

Availability: Jharkhand (Jharia, Bokaro), West Bengal (Raniganj), Chhattisgarh (Korba), MP (Singrauli), Telangana (Singareni), Tamil Nadu (Neyveli-lignite).

• Economic activities: Thermal power generation; steel manufacture (coking coal); millions of mining jobs; railways built to transport coal to factories and ports.
• Current generation benefits: Cheap, abundant electricity; industrial growth; livelihoods for mining communities.
• Future generation costs: Reserves estimated to last ~50 years. Burning coal is the leading cause of air pollution and CO2 emissions. Open-cast mining destroys forests and displaces tribal communities. Underground mines cause subsidence and groundwater contamination.
• Responsible use: Accelerate transition to solar and wind; improve thermal plant efficiency to reduce coal per unit of power; rehabilitate mined areas; protect communities depending on coal for livelihoods during the transition.

Resource 2: Iron Ore

Availability: Odisha (Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj), Jharkhand (Singhbhum), Chhattisgarh (Bailadila), Karnataka (Ballari, Kudremukh), Goa.

• Economic activities: Steel manufacturing at Bhilai, Jamshedpur, Rourkela; export earnings; construction, automobiles, shipbuilding, machinery.
• Current generation benefits: India is a major steel producer; steel is essential for infrastructure, housing and industry.
• Future generation costs: Iron ore is non-renewable; reckless open-cast mining in ecologically sensitive areas (Western Ghats, tribal forests) causes severe deforestation, river siltation and displacement.
• Responsible use: Maximise scrap steel recycling to reduce reliance on fresh ore; enforce environmental clearances strictly; ensure mining royalties genuinely benefit displaced communities; restore mined areas after extraction.

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Case 1: The Brahmaputra / Yarlung Tsangpo (India – China – Bangladesh)

The river originates on the Tibetan Plateau (where China has built large dams for hydropower), flows into India's Arunachal Pradesh and Assam (where it is the Brahmaputra), and enters Bangladesh (as the Jamuna). India fears upstream dams could be used to withhold water in dry seasons or release floods in wet seasons. There is no formal water-sharing treaty between the three nations, making this a persistent source of geopolitical tension.

Case 2: The Nile (Ethiopia – Egypt – Sudan)

Ethiopia built the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile — the largest dam in Africa. Egypt, which depends on the Nile for over 90% of its fresh water and has long viewed this water as its historical right, fears the dam will severely reduce its supply. Years of negotiations brokered by the African Union have not produced a binding water-sharing agreement. Ethiopia argues it has the right to develop its natural resources; Egypt argues its survival depends on the Nile’s flow. This is one of the world’s most watched water conflicts.

Case 3: South China Sea (Fisheries + Oil + Gas)

China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan all claim parts of the South China Sea, which contains large potential oil and gas reserves and is one of the world's most productive fisheries. China has constructed artificial islands to assert territorial claims. The Philippines won a landmark international arbitration ruling in 2016 — which China refuses to recognise. This conflict shows how overlapping resource interests can challenge international law.

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Having a natural resource in a region is necessary but not sufficient. Multiple inputs are needed to actually use it:

What makes a renewable resource non-renewable?

A renewable resource remains renewable only as long as the natural rhythm of restoration and regeneration is not disturbed. When the rate of extraction or destruction exceeds the rate at which Nature can replenish the resource, it effectively becomes non-renewable — at least on human timescales.

Key Examples

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The Punjab Groundwater Crisis — Detailed

• 1960s: Green Revolution shifted farmers to high-yielding wheat and paddy varieties requiring far more water than traditional seeds.
• Free electricity supply → unlimited pumping with no incentive to conserve.
• Chemical pesticides and fertilisers dissolved into the groundwater, causing cancer and other diseases in several districts.
• Result: Almost 80% of Punjab is "over-exploited." Water table has fallen to 30+ metres — a renewable resource has become practically non-renewable on human timescales. Short-term food security was achieved at the cost of long-term water security.

Actions to Prevent Renewables Becoming Non-Renewable

Ecosystem functions are the natural processes that ecosystems carry out on their own. When these processes benefit humans, we call them ecosystem services. The function exists regardless of whether humans are present; the service is defined from a human perspective.

Three Additional Important Ecosystem Functions

• Flood and erosion control: Forest root systems hold soil in place; wetlands absorb and slow floodwater, protecting settlements from flash floods and landslides.
• Natural pest control: Predator-prey relationships keep pest populations in check. Owls and snakes control rodents in farmland; wasps parasitize crop pests. Without this, agricultural losses would be massive.
• Carbon sequestration: Forests, soils and oceans store billions of tonnes of carbon, slowing the pace of climate change and keeping the Earth's atmosphere within habitable temperature limits.

Part A: What are Renewable Resources?

Renewable resources are natural resources that are restored and regenerated by Nature over a reasonable period of time, as long as the natural rhythm of restoration is not disturbed. They exhibit Nature's restorative and regenerative principle — the ability to heal, renew and create new life.

Examples: Solar energy, wind energy, river water, forests and timber, agricultural soil (renewed by decomposition), fish populations, crops.

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Part B: Renewable vs Non-Renewable Resources

Part C: What can people do to keep renewables available? (Two examples)

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Example 1 — Managing Groundwater (a renewable resource)

Groundwater is renewed each year by monsoon rainfall soaking into the earth. But Punjab's crisis shows what happens when extraction far outpaces recharge.

What people can do:

• Rainwater harvesting: Rooftop tanks, check dams, johads and rejuvenated ponds capture monsoon rain and return it to the aquifer.
• Drip and sprinkler irrigation: Uses 30–60% less water than flood irrigation for the same crop yield — adopted rapidly under the PM Krishi Sinchayee Yojana.
• Change cropping patterns: Grow crops matched to local rainfall (not water-intensive paddy in semi-arid areas). MP example: grow lentils and sorghum instead of paddy in rain-shadow areas.
• Policy: Meter water use; price it to discourage waste; withdraw the free electricity subsidy that incentivises unlimited pumping.

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Example 2 — Managing Forests / Timber (a renewable resource)

Forests are renewable — trees grow, fall, decompose and enrich the soil for new growth in a continuous cycle. But harvesting faster than the forest regenerates destroys this cycle.

What people can do:

• Selective and limited harvesting: Take only mature trees; leave young trees; never clear-cut an entire area. Follow Vrikshayurveda principles of sustainable forest management.
• Afforestation with native species: Plant the trees that originally grew in a deforested area — not just fast-growing commercial varieties — to restore the full ecosystem (soil, water, biodiversity).
• Community forest management: Under Joint Forest Management (JFM) in India, communities have a stake in protecting and benefiting from their local forests, making conservation self-sustaining.
• Use alternatives: Bamboo (grows extremely fast), recycled wood, mud (Auroville Earth Institute), stone and plant-based composites reduce pressure on natural forests.

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Home Practices

• Tulasi puja: Worshipping and daily watering of the Tulasi (holy basil) plant keeps a medicinal, oxygen-producing, insect-repelling plant alive. It encodes ecological care into daily ritual.
• Arghyam to Surya: Offering water to the rising sun at dawn expresses gratitude to Nature's primary energy source and establishes a daily connection with the natural cycle of day and night.
• Not wasting food: The practice of finishing everything on the plate (often reinforced as a religious duty) reduces unnecessary demand on agricultural land, water and energy.
• Reuse and repair: Traditional households repaired clothes, vessels and tools rather than discarding them (old sarees → kantha quilts; broken pots mended by potters; vessels repaired by tin-smiths). This reduces raw material consumption.
• Kitchen composting: Vegetable peels and food scraps returned to a kitchen garden as compost — a closed-loop system that returns nutrients to soil and eliminates waste.
• Seasonal and local eating: Traditional cooking is built around what grows locally in season — minimising food transport and cold-storage energy. Eating local mangoes in summer; root vegetables in winter.

Neighbourhood and Community Practices

• Sacred trees: Peepal, Banyan and Neem trees are traditionally never cut — this protects old, large trees which are the most ecologically important (most oxygen, most shade, most habitat for birds and insects).
• Traditional water bodies: Village tanks, baoris (step-wells) and ponds were community-managed rainwater harvesting systems. Many communities are reviving these as part of Jal Shakti Abhiyan.
• Seasonal fishing restraint: As the chapter notes, traditional coastal communities refrained from fishing during breeding months, letting fish populations recover — now enshrined in state fishing regulations.
• Harvest festivals: Pongal, Bihu, Vaisakhi, Onam all celebrate the agricultural cycle and express gratitude to Nature — embedding seasonal awareness and a sense of dependence on natural rhythms into culture.
• Bishnoi tradition: The Bishnoi community's 29 principles explicitly prohibit cutting green trees and killing animals. In 1730, Amrita Devi Bishnoi and 363 others died defending trees — an example of ecological commitment in practice.

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When goods are produced for current use, several important considerations must guide our choices so that production is sustainable, equitable and does not compromise the well-being of future generations.

1. Pollution and Environmental Impact

Every production process creates waste and emissions. The chapter highlights cement as one of the most polluting industries: it releases fine dust (damaging lungs of humans and animals), causes air, soil and water pollution, and settles on plant leaves reducing photosynthesis and agricultural yields. The Central Pollution Control Board sets guidelines to minimise cement factory emissions. For all industries, we must ask: Can the process be made cleaner? Must waste be treated before release?

2. Sustainability of the Resources Used

Production must not deplete resources beyond their regeneration capacity. Non-renewables like coal, petroleum and iron ore should be used judiciously — extracted at rates that give humanity enough time to find sustainable alternatives. Wherever possible, shift to renewable inputs (e.g., solar energy instead of coal to power a factory).

3. Equity — Who Bears the Cost?

The benefits of production typically flow to consumers and companies, while the environmental and health costs often fall on communities near mines, factories and polluted rivers — communities that may be least able to protect themselves. Responsible production asks: Are displaced communities rehabilitated? Are mining royalties genuinely reinvested in the region? Is pollution causing disease in surrounding villages?

4. Use of Local Materials and Labour

Production using local materials and skills is preferable: it reduces transportation energy, provides local livelihoods, and designs for local climate conditions. The Auroville Earth Institute (Fig. 1.19) demonstrates this: mud buildings using traditional techniques combined with modern engineering are sustainable, locally appropriate, and provide local employment. The Jaisalmer Fort (Fig. 1.18) has stood for 800+ years built from local sandstone — a testament to sustainable, locally-sourced construction.

5. Full Lifecycle Thinking: Reduce → Reuse → Recycle

Every product has a lifecycle — raw material extraction → processing → use → disposal. Each stage has environmental costs. Responsible production considers all stages:

• Reduce: Minimise the raw material and energy input per unit of goods produced.
• Reuse: Design products that can be repaired and reused rather than thrown away after one use. (Traditional households were masters of this.)
• Recycle: Use recycled materials as inputs (e.g., recycled steel requires 74% less energy than making new steel from ore, and dramatically reduces iron ore mining demand).

6. Transition to Alternatives and Innovation

The move towards creating alternative materials that reduce pollution is actively underway — new plant-based composites, recycled plastic construction boards, bamboo products, and 3D-printed components from waste materials. Traditional methods and modern technology are being combined to create materials that are sustainable in production, locally appropriate in climate and use, and provide local employment.

7. Intergenerational Responsibility

The most fundamental consideration: production today must not foreclose options for future generations. The clean water, fertile soil, stable climate and mineral resources we use in production are, in a sense, borrowed from our children and grandchildren. The Bhagavad Gita's lokasangraha — acting for the wellbeing of all — demands we include all future generations, not just those alive today, in our calculation of "all."