Natural resources and mineral resources

Natural resources are gifts of nature used directly in human life and the economy. They fall into two big groups: exhaustible (mineral, land, water, biological) and inexhaustible (energy of the Sun, wind, sea currents and tides, the Earth’s internal heat, and agro-climatic resources). Among the exhaustible ones, land, water and biological resources renew themselves, while minerals do not. When several resources lie side by side in a small area, this is a territorial combination of resources; for example, iron ore and coal together create ferrous-metallurgy regions. Resources are unevenly spread because they depend on the structure of the Earth’s crust, climate and living conditions. Availability is the relation between a reserve and its yearly extraction: reserve divided by yearly extraction gives how many years the resource will last; reserve divided by population gives the amount per person. By availability, countries fall into three groups: well supplied with many types (Russia, China, the USA, Canada, Brazil, Australia and others), supplied with some types (the Gulf states rich in oil and gas, Finland in forest) and almost without resources (“micro” states).