Box 3.2 Resources within ecosystems
Conservation withdevelopment within a framework of generic sustainability acknowledges four categories of resource:
FINITE RESOURCES: those vital and non-replenishable resources of
fixed quantity; primarily fossil fuels and some short-supply minerals.
After stock depletion, and following entropic disorder (their disag-
gregation beyond recovery) that is it! At the point of individual con-
sumption of finite resources the whole of humankind is about to enjoy
the one and only opportunity it, collectively, will ever have to benefit
from that item of resource.RENEWABLE RESOURCES are those retained primarily in the earth’s
outer ‘onion-skin’ the biosphere, comprising a global platform of soils,
air, and water which, fired along by free-flow resources, maintains the
planetary complex of flora and fauna. Maintained in good health,
undegraded, unclogged and toxin free, they can be replenished and
recycled (witness the success of indigenous peoples) millennium
upon millennium.HERITAGE RESOURCES fall into a ‘not-to-be consumed’ category
under two subheadings. There is the ‘natural heritage’ comprised
mainly within the remnant primordial landscape, coastal zones and
water-covered areas, which are recognized as being of nature. The
‘cultural heritage’ comprises the artifacts and constructions put in
place over time by human agency. To most communities heritage
resources represent a spiritual underpinning for human existence.FREE-FLOW RESOURCES comprise principally the continuing solar,
wind, wave, magnetic and gravity forces: the solar input being the
driving factor and energy feed-stock for photosynthesis and all life.