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: