Global Resource Management

We can divide resources into three main categories: food, water, and energy. We will focus on these three, but there are others as well. Plants, for example, provide us fiber (like cotton), dyes, medicines (aspirin, for example, comes from willow tree bark), and you can probably think of many others.

For more specifics, please read our articles on Energy Management, Water Management, and Global Food Consumption.

What is "global"?

When we talk about global resource management, we are referring to the entirety of planet Earth, since our economy focuses on providing us resources from anywhere and everywhere, and this is connected to where we can get them, how much they cost, and other factors.

What is management?

When we manage something, this means that we care for it and we control it. Any type of resource management requires planning and coordination so that you can control the results. If you don't, all sorts of problems happen.

Putting it all together

Now that we know what the components of global resource management mean, what does the whole term signify? It means that we as individuals and societies, and humanity as a whole, need to plan and coordinate how we use resources at the global level.

Global resource management importance

Let's look at why it is crucially important for us, as 21st-century humans, to manage the resources of the Earth efficiently.

There is great inequality of resource access and use in the world between people in different countries and regions of the world.

People in highly developed places like the US, UK, and Western Europe, have much larger ecological footprints than people living in developing places such as Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia and the Pacific.

One of the goals of global resource management is to improve the standards of living in places with little to no access to resources, guaranteeing them better wages, goods, and services- without hurting those who already have quality living standards.

Another goal is to reduce the high ecological footprint of some countries.

These are tricky but not impossible tasks, and they are very important, as you will see in the next section. You can also learn about many more details in our article on Inequality in Resources.

Political instability

Resource mismanagement leads to a struggle between the rich and the poor. In a lot of countries, there are wealthy people who have privileged access to resources. In those places, the many have-nots suffer in poverty. Wars and revolutions start over this: the poor rise up and overthrow the rich to take control of their country's resources. This is one part of political instability.

Another part is that poor countries often have the greatest natural resource wealth, but they don't get to enjoy it. Oil-rich countries like Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria see the lion's share of their oil wealth going to fuel the economies of rich countries like the US and Japan, with few benefits for their own people.

Wars can start between countries that don't share their resources. For example, the government of 'Country A' can cut off the supply of its oil to 'Country B,' plunging Country B into chaos.

Many wars are resource wars- over access to water, sources of energy, and food. Global resource management can stop these from happening in the first place, by making access to resources more equitable (more fair).

Fig. 2 - Aswan, a city in Egypt, relies on water from the Nile River, which comes from many countries upstream

Stresses from climate change

In essence, global resource mismanagement is responsible for climate change. We have burned nonrenewable fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) unsustainably for over 250 years, sending carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We have burned forests and grasslands, releasing more carbon dioxide. We have destroyed forests faster than they can grow back, thanks to our global demand for beef, palm oil, sugar, and many other products, so there are fewer places for carbon to be stored.

Examples like these show that it is important for the world to take coordinated action to reduce the harms we are causing.

Advantages of resource management

There are many advantages to resource management. An essential point to remember is that humans have always managed natural resources because they can see that mismanagement can cause scarcity, hunger, and other problems. For example, farmers have preserved their soil from erosion and kept their water sources from becoming polluted or drying up, while hunters knew not to kill too many of the animals they relied on, and fishers knew not to overfish their supply.

People who live in cities, however, may not see or even know whether the resources they depend on are becoming depleted (running low). They can't see the damage their Demand for Resources is causing.

Political stability

Global resource management means coordination of resource protection and use inside countries and between countries. It means that the profits from natural resource extraction are shared widely by the populations of resource-rich countries and that resources such as rivers are managed for the benefit of the countries that use them. This leads to political stability within countries and between countries.

The ethical thing to do

People in rich countries who learn the facts about how their bananas and coffee were grown often become concerned that they, the consumers, are the cause of the damage to ecosystems, biodiversity, and human societies that such unsustainable resource use creates.

What is the ethical thing for them- for us- to do? if we stop using those products altogether, then the people receiving the low wages will receive no wages.

What we can do is demand that companies supply us with products that do not harm the environment or people. We can even purchase 'ethical' products that benefit the producers and the environments where they are grown, fished, mined, etc. We can choose to pay more for better products- better for the environment, better for the producers, and better for the consumers.

Equality and higher standards of living

Another advantage of global resource management is that it lessens global inequalities and leads to better living standards.

Winning the battle against climate change

By making global climate agreements effective, we are managing how we use the air. We are limiting what we put into the air, which means switching to renewable energy use from sources that don't emit carbon dioxide. We are also protecting, restoring, and creating more carbon sinks- places like forests where carbon is stored instead of released into the atmosphere. We are protecting and restoring the oceans, coral reefs, grasslands, soil, water, and so on.

All of our actions to create better global resource management systems will help us win the battle against climate change.

Sustainability

The key concept for global resource management is sustainability. The push toward sustainability is called sustainable development.

Think of the Earth as your house. Would you destroy the house you live in on purpose? Probably not. The Earth is humanity's home, and as mentioned above, its resources are finite. We have to use them sustainably, not taking away more than can be put back in a short span of time. Otherwise, we run out.The key is sustainability because we simply cannot use up more than we put back.

Is sustainability easy to achieve? Certainly not- in fact, it is an enormous challenge for humanity. But don't lose hope. There are plenty of examples of sustainability in global resource management. You can read about one below.

Global resource management example

Let's return to that cup of coffee. Consider the whole picture. We will pick the Central American country of Honduras this time. First, let's learn what an inequitable, unsustainable, environmentally-damaging, climate-change-causing cup of coffee looks like from its source to your table.

Fig. 3 - locations where varieties of coffee are grown (r=robusta, a=arabica, m=mixed)

Unsustainable coffee

At the source is a Honduran farm that grows coffee in the sun to increase profits. The farm owners first cut down the rainforest on a Honduran mountain, causing great damage to the water supplies of people in the valley below as streams are filled with eroded soil or dry up. Then they plant the coffee and apply pesticides and other chemicals.

This unsustainable coffee farm pays its workers the equivalent of £1 or less a day, and some of the workers are children. They live without electricity, running water, or indoor plumbing and they don't go to school. With what they earn, they barely survive.

In this example, huge damage is done to human lives and the environment, and this is happening all over the world. The advantage to you, the consumer? Cheaper coffee. The advantage to Honduras? The owners of the farm, likely wealthy Hondurans, benefit.

Sustainable coffee

Now let's look at a sustainable example.

First, is the coffee farm. No forest was cut down, and no harmful chemicals were used. A variety of coffee that needs shade was planted, along with trees to provide the shade, in an area that had been deforested. Water supplies for people in the valley are protected again. Birds can live in the trees that the 'shade coffee' grows under.

The shade-grown coffee is owned and harvested by local farmers who once worked on a large coffee plantation. Now, they own their own coffee, and as a result, they receive higher prices for it because the company that buys it pays premium prices for it. The coffee is marketed as "bird-friendly," "sustainable," "organic," "ethically sourced," and so forth.

The consumer in the UK can go onto a website and see photos and videos of the organic Honduran coffee farm. They learn about how their coffee is grown, and they find out that child labor is not used. The environment is protected.

This is how one small component of the global resource management system of coffee is becoming sustainable.