The land as a resource

• The land contains resources such as minerals, it can also be used for building and leisure.
• Using the land as a resource can have benefits, such as bringing in money, but can also bring challenges such as destruction to the environment.
• The land can be managed in a number of ways such as by protecting it using the National Parks scheme.

The land contains valuable resources such as wood, oil and stone and is itself a very valuable resource.

It provides food to eat, water to drink, the materials needed to make things and the fuel needed for electricity and heat. In addition to this it provides us with space to build and space for leisure.

These natural resources can provide opportunities to countries who have them, but they aren’t evenly distributed throughout the world. This leads countries to trade resources with each other, which can bring money into a country.

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Making use of natural resources can cause serious environmental damage. For example:

• Mining minerals often involves quarrying, which causes the landscape to be destroyed.
• Forestry, building homes and clearing land for agriculture leads to large scale deforestation in some parts of the world. Deforestation can lead to the loss of habitats for animals and even extinction.
• Burning fossil fuels causes pollution and can lead to climate change as greenhouse gases are put into the atmosphere, increasing the temperature of the Earth.

Natural resources are in greater demand than ever and the supply of some of them is running low. The global population is increasing, meaning more resources are consumed. As the world develops and the average standard of living increases around the world, there is also more demand for resources. This means that resources are being used up much faster than they can be replenished. Oil, for example, takes millions of years to form and will run out at some stage in the future.

Competition for resources can also lead to conflict as countries fight over control of these limited resources. There have been a number of wars in which the control of oil supplies has played a big role, for example the Iraq War and the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan. Disputes over waterholes between nomadic cattle herders and settled farmers have also been a source of conflict.

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Collecting and using resources can cause environmental damage, and some resources are running out. Natural resources, therefore, must be managed in a sustainable way. This means in a way that is good for people and the environment both now and in the future. This can be done in a number of ways.

Countries can protect the land from damage through conservation. This usually means having laws in place which stop, or limit, the use of the land for mining, building, deforestation or other harmful activities. By protecting the land, animals are also saved from extinction.

Rewilding

Conservation usually means maintaining the environment as it is, but it could also mean restoring habitats or even enhancing ecosystems to protect or improve biodiversity. One such method is known as rewilding. Rewilding aims to restore ecosystems to their natural state. This can sometimes involve reintroducing long-disappeared species to some areas, which can have positive and negative impacts on the local people and wildlife.

There are a number of ways of carrying out conservation.

In the UK there are areas designated as national parks. A national park is an area of the country that has been designated for conservation and is protected by the government. In the United Kingdom, there are 15 national parks where building is restricted. These are:

• The Brecon Beacons, The Pembrokeshire Coast, and Snowdonia in Wales,
• The Broads, Dartmoor, Exmoor, The Lake District, New Forest, Northumberland, The North York Moors, The Peak District, The South Downs and The Yorkshire Dales in England.
• The Cairngorms and Loch Lomond & The Trossachs in Scotland.

Other areas are given the title of Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs).

An AONB is land protected by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. This law protects the land in order to conserve and enhance its natural beauty. There are 46 AONBs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The largest of these is the Cotswolds, which covers 787 square miles and the smallest is the Isles of Scilly, at only 6.2 square miles.

There are more than 380 National Nature Reserves (NNRs) in the UK. These were established to protect some of the UK’s most important habitats, species and geology, and to provide ‘outdoor laboratories’ for research.

NNRs are very varied environments and include the high mountain summits of Snowdon in Wales; Loch Lomond in Scotland; the sand dunes at Ainsdale in Merseyside and the kettle-hole lakes of Boorin Nature Reserve in Northern Ireland.

Some areas of the countryside have special status as protected areas because of their natural and cultural importance. Protection means that these are covered by laws to make sure that the nature and wildlife are not harmed or destroyed. There are restrictions on activities and development that take place within a protected area such as building new houses or roads.

Conservation can sometimes cause conflict. For a country to develop it needs to use resources. Ending the use of these resources may hold back a country’s development. Conservation, therefore, is a balancing act between protecting the economy and protecting the environment.