Lesson video

Hello, my name's Ms. Tarkin.

Today's lesson is Natural resources: The things we use.

It's taken from the unit, Natural resources: Can earth meet our needs? Today's lesson will look at lots of different natural resources, but also have a look at the fact that, weirdly, some of the poorest countries are the countries with the most resources.

Doesn't seem to make a huge amount of sense, does it? So we'll look into that.

It's a really interesting lesson and I hope you will enjoy.

Our outcome today is to explain what natural resources are and describe where they are found.

Here are three keywords that are really important within today's lesson: natural resources, renewable, and non-renewable.

Our lesson is split into two parts today: what are natural resources and where are natural resources found? First of all, what are natural resources? Natural resources are materials or substances that occur naturally in the environments and they can be used by humans to meet their needs.

Let's have a look at some examples of natural resources.

Food crops, so here we've got lettuces, forests, obviously, we can use the trees for timber, for wood, coal can be burnt for energy, fish, be eaten, solar energy can be used to power electrical items, and water, obviously used for drinking, washing, et cetera.

There are many uses for natural resources, but some of the key uses are: food, building, energy, and income.

Time for a check for understanding now.

Can you tell me, which is not a natural resource? Is it, A, fish, B, a forest, or C, a mobile phone? Well done.

It is a mobile phone.

A mobile phone is manufactured, it has been made, but there are natural resources involved that are required in order to make a mobile phone.

Many natural resources have been heavily managed, modified, or even created by humans such as: fish farms, so the fish here wouldn't naturally be here, they're being farmed, but that is still a natural resource.

Reservoirs, so again, there wouldn't be so much water naturally here.

The dam that you could see in that photograph has trapped that water there, but water is still a natural resource.

And managed forests, so trees are still a natural resource, but this forest wouldn't be here in this manner if it wasn't for people planting these trees.

Time for a check for understanding again.

True or false? Managed forests are not a natural resource as people have planted the trees.

Well done.

It's false.

So managed forest are a natural resource.

Can you tell me why? You may have said, "Many natural resources have been heavily managed, modified, or even created by humans such as managed forest, fish farms, or reservoirs." All of those still count as natural resources.

Resources can be divided into two main groups.

First of all, we have renewable resources and these will not be used up or run out.

So for example, solar energy, wind energy, forests, and fish.

Then we've got non-renewable resources.

So these cannot be replaced and will eventually run out.

For example, coal, oil, iron ore, all of these will run out eventually.

An example of a non-renewable resource is iron ore.

Iron dissolved in sea water settled to the ocean floor and formed layers of iron-rich sediment billions of years ago.

Over time, geological processes compressed and transformed the sediment into iron ore, which is a type of rock which contains a lot of iron.

You can see an image of this on right.

Today, iron ore is mined and processed to extract the iron to make products such as this frying pan that you can see here.

So this is a non-renewable resource.

Let's have a look at an example of a renewable resource.

So timber is a great example, taken from forests.

So timber is wood that's been cut from the trees.

You can see it happening here in the photograph.

Softwood trees grow fast with some growing to full height in as little as 20 years, while hardwoods can take over a hundred years.

So this shows us that trees can replenish themselves, they can regrow in that timeframe, which, actually, 20 years is nothing when we look at the billions of years it took to make the the iron ore.

Time for a check for understanding now.

Which of the following is non-renewable? Is it, A, wind, B, timber, C, fish, or, D, iron ore? Well done.

It's iron ore.

Time for our practise task now.

We have three tasks here.

First of all, can you define natural resources? Just a one-sentence definition.

The second task is to create a spider diagram of different natural resources.

I've just put an example spider diagram at the bottom before you there just to give you an idea of how this might look.

And then I would like you to circle all the renewable resources on your spider diagram.

Pause the video now to give yourself time to do this.

Well done, everyone.

Let's take a look at the answers.

So for our first task, define natural resources, your answer might look like this.

"Natural resources are materials or substances that occur naturally in the environment and can be used by humans to meet their needs such as water, minerals, forests, soil, air, and sunlight." Task two is to create a spider diagram of different natural resources, yours may include what I have here.

So solar, energy, food, crops, forest, fish, iron ore, oil and coal.

So you take a look at your own answers.

If there's any that you could steal from mine to add to yours, that's great.

You do not have to list every natural resource in the world.

That would be pretty impossible during this lesson time.

So as soon as you'd done that, I wanted you to circle all the renewable resources.

So from my example, that included solar, energy, food crops, forests, and fish.

Well done, everyone.

Let's move on to the second part of our lesson.

Where are natural resources found? Natural resources are distributed unevenly around the world.

This map shows in blue the countries where it's generally safe to drink tap water.

And what shocks me about this map is there aren't that many blue countries, are there? Access to clean water is not evenly distributed across the world, and that's the same with most natural resources.

We'll have a look at a few more in a minute.

Aisha says, "What about countries where you can't drink tap water? Where do they get their water?" Any ideas? Yes.

So in many countries, people rely on water deliveries, bottled water, or filtering and sterilising their own rain or pumped water.

In some places people have no choice but to drink dirty water.

That can obviously lead to disease.

If you're having to buy bottled water, that could be quite expensive, more expensive than paying for water that comes out of the tap.

So there are lots of problems associated with this.

Now let's have a look at some other natural resources.

So Lucas says here, "More than 50% of farmed food is produced by just five countries." So all of the farmed food, over half of it is produced by China, the U.

S.

, India, Brazil, and Indonesia.

That's a lot, isn't it? Just by five countries.

Wow.

"Only 10 countries control over 80% of the world's oil reserves," says Andeep.

That's an even bigger chunk of that natural resource, oil.

"Democratic Republic of the Congo," which we can shorten to DRC, "supplies over 70% of global cobalt, and that's a key component in the battery and electronics manufacturing." So for example, it'll probably be in most mobile phones.

So 70% of that natural resource is found in one country.

That's pretty massive, isn't it? So what would happen if DRC stops supplying cobalt? Let's take a look.

When resources are found in fewer countries, this means that the availability and price of those resources can change dramatically due to the politics or natural disasters, for example.

So if there was conflict in a country and the access to that resource was cut off or there was a natural disaster and that destroyed all the crops or prevented people from accessing that resource, that could actually have quite a big impact on the global availability of that resource.

So when there's less of a resource, the price will rise.

That's that whole supply-and-demand thing, isn't it? If there's more demand for a resource than there is the supply of a resource, people are willing to spend more and more money to get the little amount that is available.

For example, if coltan became difficult to buy, buying electronic items with batteries, such as a phone, would become more expensive.

Time for a check for understanding now.

Which fact is incorrect? Is it, A, natural resources are distributed unevenly around the world? B, DRC supplies over 70% of global cobalt? C, less than 4% of farmed food is produced by just five countries? Or D, only 10 countries control over 80% of the world's oil reserves? Well done.

Yes.

So it is C.

It's not less than 4%, it's actually more than 50% of farmed food is produced by just five countries.

Many countries have to import resources such as food and minerals as the demand is higher than supply.

Have a think now, why might supermarkets in the UK have to import pineapples from abroad rather than just buying them from farmers in the UK? Yeah, so we can't grow pineapples in the UK because of the climate we have here.

So we do have to import them.

And there's some other reasons for importing as well.

I'm going to take a look at them now.

So when the supply doesn't meet the demand, then importing has to happen.

So if we can't supply within our own country enough of that product, that means we have to import.

So that can happen because maybe there's less farming, fishing, mining in the country.

These are all the ways that we access natural resources.

And that might be because the physical geography of the country limits the natural resources that can be gathered.

For example, colder climates make farming more difficult.

So it might be that actually farming in general is really quite hard in some really quite cold countries.

Or it could be that certain crops, like we've just discussed, like a pineapple, can't be grown within the climate that is in that country.

We could also say that actually the physical geography can limit mining.

So if there is no coltan in the UK, we can't mine coltan from the UK.

Also, more people work in other employment sectors sometimes.

So if it is the case that actually there is very few people working in farming, fishing, and mining, and they're working in other industries, that can mean there aren't actually people employed in those sectors to access those resources.

Population also plays a role.

So larger population sizes can increase the demand for resources.

The wealth of people also affects the demand.

If people have more money, then they can buy more.

Izzy sums it up here now, "So countries that have more resources, are the lucky ones, right?" Not quite.

So there's something called the natural resource trap.

It's sometimes called the resource curse theory and it has a few other names as well.

The idea is that if a country has valuable resources, it sells them to other countries and makes lots of money.

This means that other sectors, for example, factories and finance, can't compete.

So it might mean that people don't want to work in the other sector.

They want to work in accessing the natural resources as that makes more money.

The government may not use the money well or fairly, and foreign companies can take over and make most of the profits.

This means that the country's development suffers.

So actually the country may not be that wealthy.

They may not have brilliant services paid for by the government and by the people.

And that means the people's quality of life in that country is not as good.

The challenges are often linked to historical factors like colonialism and exploitation, where foreign powers controlled and extracted resources without benefiting the local population.

They then left weak governments and services resulting in uneven development.

Time for a check for understanding now.

If a country has many natural resources, it will become wealthy.

Is this true or false? That's false, isn't it? Can you tell me why? The natural resource trap explains how many countries with lots of resources have struggled to develop due to range of factors.

Time for Practise Task B.

This map here shows the food imports and exports by country represented by coloured semicircles.

Let's take a look and check we fully understand the map before we move on.

So can you see the key in the bottom-left-hand corner of this map? So this key shows us the size of the semicircle represents how much money is made or spent on the imports and exports.

So it's in U.

S.

dollars.

USD stands for U.

S.

dollars and it's in billions.

So for example, the largest semicircle is 200 billion U.

S.

dollars.

Now the colours at the bottom show imports and exports.

So blue semicircles, which are shown on the right-hand side of the circles on the map, show imports, and green semicircle, which are shown on the left-hand side of the circles on the map, are representing exports.

So if we have a look for example at the USA, we can see that the blue semicircle for the USA is larger than the green semicircle.

This means that there are more imports into the USA than there are exports.

Question one.

Name three countries that import more food than they export.

And question two, why might this be? Question three, name the theory which suggests that countries with many resources don't always benefit.

Question four, complete the flow diagram by adding three reasons why the country's development suffers.

Pause the video now to give yourself time to do this.

You might need to flick back to the previous slides to make sure you can see the map resource first.

Well done, everyone.

Let's take a look at the answers.

Your answers may look like this: for question one, name three countries which import more food than they export.

I've got the USA, China, and Japan.

There was a few other examples there as well.

Question two, why might this be? So the demand could be higher than the supply and this may be because the population is large, the people are wealthy and therefore buy more food or there is less farming in the country.

This might be because people work in higher wage sectors instead or because the climate is not suited for farming.

For question three, name the theory which suggests that the countries with many resources don't always benefit.

This is called the natural resource trap, or you may have said the resource curse theory.

Question four, complete the flow diagram by adding three reasons.

So the three reasons are: other sectors, for example, factories and finance, can't compete.

The government may not use the money well or fairly, and foreign companies take over and make most of the profits.

Yours might look a little different to that, and that's absolutely fine as long as you've got the general gist and we need to make sure that we are adding any that we've forgotten now.

Well done, everyone.

Now it's time for our summary.

Natural resources are materials or substances that occur naturally in the environment and can be used by humans to meet their needs.

We rely on natural resources for food, building, and income.

Natural resources are distributed unevenly around the world.

Many countries lack certain natural resources and have to import them.

The natural resource trap can mean that a wealth of resources negatively affects a country's development.

I hope you found today's lesson interesting.

I'm looking forward to seeing you next time.