accounted for about 86 percent of global energy usage, a startling figure that high-
lights the essential function such resources serve in maintaining economic stan-
dards and driving growth. Countries that lack deposits of these fuel resources
must acquire them if they are to remain competitive, and thegeopoliticsof energy
is the subject of study for many scholars. In a similar fashion, strategic metals,
many of which are found in only a handful of locations, are vital to modern indus-
trial economies, and are therefore quite valuable and sought after. The country of
South Africa, for example, controls 80 percent of the world’s production of plati-
num, a highly valuable metallic ore that has many industrial applications, as well
as being used for jewelry.
There are a number of ways of classifying natural resources. In broad terms, re-
sources may be separated into renewable and non-renewable resources. Renew-
able resources are those that are not fundamentally destroyed in their
consumption, although they may be degraded or change form to a certain extent;
or they are materials that may be reproduced by nature in a relatively short period,
even if they are consumed or destroyed by use. An example of the first type of
renewable resource is water, which may be drunk by humans or animals, used to
irrigate farmland, piped around machinery to cool it, or employed for many other
purposes, yet is not destroyed or consumed in the process. Wood is an example of
the second kind of renewable resource. It may be destroyed through use (burning
wood for heat, or to make charcoal, for example), but if managed properly, it is
renewable because new tree seedlings may be planted and new wood produced
indefinitely.
Non-renewable resources are materials that are fundamentally altered or
destroyed when they are used and cannot be reproduced readily by nature. All fos-
sil fuels are examples of non-renewable resources. When coal is burned to heat a
home, generate electricity, or used as the raw material to make more complex
and sophisticated chemicals, it is broken down at the molecular level and cannot
be recovered or reproduced. Because it requires millions of years and tremendous
pressures found below the Earth’s surface to make coal, it is considered non-
renewable. Natural gas is also classified as a non-renewable resource, because
the large, commercially valuable deposits currently exploited were the result of
natural processes, and not from human activity. On the other hand, natural gas
(methane) may be produced in small quantities for personal or local consumption
via compost piles or from other organic sources, and therefore natural gas may one
day be considered a renewable resource. Metallic ores are also non-renewable,
although they may be recycled and reused once they have been consumed.
A second way to classify natural resources is to group them as either biotic or
abiotic. Biotic resources are those that consist of living matter or are derived from
organic material that once was living. Agricultural products, wood, commercial240 Natural Resources