Natural conditions and natural resources. Natural resources, their classification and assessment

Natural resources- components and properties of nature, which are directly used in economic activity as means of production, objects of labor and consumption. Search, study and use of natural resources are combined into a special type of economic activity - resource use. More than 200 types of natural resources are currently being used. This required their classification according to general characteristics. Since natural resources act simultaneously as a part of nature, and as an element of economic activity, and as a component of the human environment, their classifications are used in science according to three different criteria:

• natural - by origin: mineral, water, land, biological (plant, animal), climatic, nuclear, space.
• economic - by use: fuel, energy, metallurgical, construction, agricultural, forestry, commercial, recreational, health-improving.
• ecological - in terms of renewability and exhaustion: 1) renewable inexhaustible - nuclear and solar energy, wind power and moving water, underground heat, power
  living matter - cells and genes; 2) renewable exhaustible - water, soil, vegetation and animal world; however, on separate sources, they can be destroyed and become irreplaceable here; 3) non-renewable exhaustible - mineral raw materials and fuel; they can be partially recovered by waste disposal.

Also, natural resources differ in substitution.

Sources of natural resources - deposits, lands and others - are involved in the use after the procedure of their measurement and assessment. In this case, measurement is the determination of the physical volume, stock, reproduction of a given resource, and assessment is the determination of the suitability, manufacturability, and economic efficiency of its use. Thus, the assessment is the determination of the value of a given resource for solving economic problems.

At the same time, there are:

a) technological assessment, which establishes the possibility of developing and using the resource by the adopted technologies;

b) an economic or monetary value that determines the value (price) of a given resource and the efficiency of its development.

The economic assessment can be calculated in different ways, depending on its purpose and the characteristics of the resource. It can be based on the amount of costs for the development of the resource, the possible profit in the process of its use; their ratio. In valuation, rent calculation is often used - i.e. surplus profit, which arises due to the better natural properties and the better location of the given resource source in comparison with the worse at equal to costs. The assessment also takes into account factors such as potential environmental damage and the cost of preventing or compensating for it. For resources of multipurpose use, the “lost profit” is determined, which could be obtained with a different method of resource use (for example, when a forest is cut down, the benefits of its hunting or recreational use are missed). The calculations also take into account the past costs invested in a natural land in the case of an assessment of previously developed land.

In market conditions, when the sale or lease price of a particular resource is determined by supply and demand for its product, such estimates are used to justify it more objectively. These estimates are also used for state regulation of natural resource use - to determine taxes on natural resource use and environmental fines.

When assessing resources, it is important to know their territorial combinations with each other. So, for mastering iron ore their proximity to coking coal deposits is important; smelting non-ferrous metals requires the proximity of large sources of fuel and energy, while the processing of chemical and forestry raw materials requires a large amount of water, etc. These resource combinations increase their economic efficiency and overall value.

This article will be devoted to the issues of natural conditions and natural resources. What do we mean by natural conditions? Why do we need natural resources and how do we use them? Let's try to answer them.

Natural resources

Natural resources are very important for society in general and any state in particular. After all, they include what nature gives us: these are minerals, and solar energy, and wind energy, and much more.

Thanks to their presence, we have everything that we have now and we will be able to have even more in the future if we learn to use them correctly.

On this moment all types of natural resources have already been explored, many deposits have been found, therefore, for convenience, there is a division of natural resources according to various criteria: the type of origin of resources and the method of their use.

Types of natural resources

According to the type of origin, land, biological, water and other types of resources are distinguished, and there is also an additional division into inexhaustible, renewable and non-renewable natural resources.

Inexhaustible natural resources include solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy and others. Renewable resources are biological, land and water, and not renewable - mineral natural resources.

According to the method of use, they distinguish between the resources of material production (that is, the resources of various types of industry and agriculture) and the resources of the non-production sphere.

Scientific and technological progress directly affects natural resources. The development of methods for the development of minerals has led to a sharp increase in their production. The development of prospecting methods helped to find new untouched deposits, which also increased their production.

Not all countries have a sufficient amount of natural resources, but their very thoughtful use helps to raise the country's economy to fantastic heights.

Take Japan for example: with extremely small land resources(the population is growing from year to year), she found an amazing way out - she began to build huge residential skyscrapers, place city parks right on buildings.

Nature has a sufficient amount of natural resources to provide us with them for a very long time, but how these resources will be used by us depends only on us.

Natural conditions

Even from school, we know, in every corner the globe different air temperatures, different animals live, different plants grow. Why is this happening?

The fact is that in every corner of the globe are completely different natural conditions, that is, a different climate, relief, a different amount of natural resources, different animals and plants.

All of the above affects the formation of the nature of a particular region. The population of a particular region, the development of industry and agriculture depend on natural conditions.

With the development of science and technology, man needs more and more natural resources, more and more it is necessary to somehow change the natural conditions of a particular region.

Man lives surrounded by nature and is himself a part of nature. The combination of the geographical location of the territory, natural resources and other components of the environment is called natural or natural conditions... Without them, our existence and development of society is impossible, they have a direct impact on the settlement, location of production and forms of human activity.

The set of natural conditions in which human society exists is associated natural, or geographic environment... Recently, another term has also been fixed - environment.

Geographic environment is called that part of earthly nature with which humanity directly interacts in everyday life, production activities. The concepts of "nature" and "geographic environment" are fundamentally similar. However, the first of them is broader, since nature Is a self-developing system of interconnected and interdependent natural components (climate, water, soil, relief, flora and fauna).

The geographic environment is the result of a long evolution geographic envelope under the influence of anthropogenic impact, the creation of the so-called "secondary nature", ie, cities, factories, canals, highways. It plays a huge role in the life of mankind: it serves as its habitat, is a source of resources, affects health and mood, and spiritual culture. On the one hand, a person changes nature, uses it, adapts it to his needs. On the other hand, the geographic environment has a significant impact on the development of society. As a result of human activity, nature is harmed, sometimes irreparable. The human environment is changing and the question arises about the health and survival of all mankind. Society began to withdraw more and more of its resources from nature and at the same time to return to nature more and more numerous waste products of its activities. Thus, two interrelated problems arose: rational use of natural resources; environmental protection from pollution.

Those components of nature that are used or may be used in the future in economic activities and human life are called natural (natural) resources .

The concepts of "natural conditions" and "natural resources" are very close, despite the fact that the second is part of the first. The line separating one from the other is rather arbitrary. For example, wind can be considered as a component of nature, but at the same time it is also an important resource, primarily for obtaining energy. The convergence of these concepts took place in the course of historical development and is associated with the fact that more and more natural components are used by mankind as natural resources. The use of natural resources is determined not so much by their properties as by socio-economic needs and the level of development of productive forces. In ancient Greece and Rome, 19 were used for household needs. chemical elements, at the beginning of the XX century - 59, now more than 100. At the beginning of the XX century in the fuel balance of Russia 57% were wood, 11% straw; gas was practically not used then, but now its share is close to 50%.

Thus, natural resources are part of the entire set of natural conditions for the existence of mankind and the most important components of the natural environment that surrounds it, used in the process of social production to meet the material and cultural needs of society.

Resource availability as the basis for the economic development of the territory.

The distribution of natural resources around the planet is characterized by unevenness. This is due to differences in climatic and tectonic processes on Earth and different conditions for the formation of minerals in past geological eras. The reserves of different types of individual resources are far from the same. As a result, not only between countries, but also between large regions of the modern world, there are noticeable differences in the level and nature of their endowment with natural resources. Thus, the Middle East, the Malay Archipelago, the countries of the Gulf of Mexico are allocated with large resources of oil and gas; Andean countries - copper and polymetallic ores; states with large tracts rainforest, - valuable wood; a number of countries in southwestern Indochina - with tin ores; the countries of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Guinea - bauxites; Russia has huge ocean resources; country South Africa- diamonds and gold; Zambia and Zimbabwe - copper, etc. But there are several states in the world that have practically all known types of natural resources: Russia, the USA, China. India, Brazil and Australia are also highly wealthy. Many countries possess large reserves of one or more resources of global importance. Gabon - with manganese, Kuwait - with oil, Morocco - with phosphorites.

The uneven distribution of natural resources across the planet, on the one hand, contributes to the development of the process of the international division of labor and international economic relations, on the other hand, it generates certain economic difficulties for countries deprived of some natural resources.

Thus, different countries have different reserves of a particular resource. The question arises: how long will it last. Hence the concept of resource availability.

Resource availability - this is relationship between the size of (explored) natural resources and the size of their use. It is expressed either by the number of years for which the resource should be sufficient, or by its reserves per capita at the current rates of extraction or use. According to experts, general geological reserves of mineral fuel should be sufficient for more than 1000 years.

There are two ways to assess the provision of a country with a certain type of natural resources. The first is to divide the size of the reserves of a given resource by the current production volume per year and get the number of years for which this resource should be sufficient. The second is to divide the amount of reserves of a given resource by the population of the country and find out how much of this resource is per capita. By quantitatively assessing the country's resource availability, one can draw conclusions about the degree of its provision with this resource.

Of course, the indicator of resource availability is primarily influenced by the wealth or poverty of the territory with natural resources. But since resource availability also depends on the scale of their extraction (consumption), this concept itself is not natural, but socio-economic.

Of course, resource availability is the basis for the economic development of the territory, but this is not always a determining factor in the level of its economic development... So, for example, Japan, possessing very modest reserves of natural resources, has achieved high indicators of its economic development.

Scientifically grounded economic assessment of natural resources is of great importance in the process of nature management. Its constituent elements are exploration, identification, inventory, as well as quantitative and qualitative assessment of natural resources.

35-40 billion tons of various substances are extracted annually from the natural environment. The problem of providing mankind with natural resources is one of the most pressing.

Resource availability around the world, taking into account the current level of production:

coal - over 3000 years old;

iron ore - 460 years;

gas - 50 years;

oil - 36 years.

Classification of natural resources.

There are different approaches to the classification of natural resources. To classify the natural resources of the world as a whole, the criteria of exhaustion, method of use and natural origin are most often used.

By exhaustion, they stand out exhaustible and inexhaustible.

The inexhaustible includes a quantitatively inexhaustible part of natural resources, such as the energy of the Sun, wind, ebb and flow, etc.

The use of inexhaustible resources is of great importance for human economic activity. The volume and variety of ways to use these resources are growing every year.

Examples of the use of inexhaustible natural resources:

use of the energy of flowing waters (the world's largest hydroelectric power plants: "Guri" in Venezuela with a capacity of 10 million kW, "Itaipu" in Brazil - 12 million kW, under construction in the PRC "Three rapids on the Yangtze River" - projected capacity - 17.6 million kW);

the use of the energy of the ebb and flow (the tidal station on the Rance River in France has been operating for 25 years and has a capacity of 240 MW);

the use of wind energy resources of the surface layer of the atmosphere (wind energy is the most profitable of alternative sources; the number of wind installations in the world is about 20 thousand; the largest region for the development of wind energy is California);

the use of solar energy (although today the efficiency of solar plants does not exceed 30%, but one such power plant can have a capacity of over 30 thousand kW and supply up to 10 thousand houses with energy);

use of the energy of the internal heat of the Earth (geothermal) (the use of such energy is constantly growing; there are more than 400 blocks of geothermal power plants in the world; it is in the lead here Latin America, but so far the share of such energy even in this region is about 1%);

TO exhaustible resources include renewable and non-renewable.

Renewable resources- these are the resources that can be replenished in the production process, i.e. under favorable conditions, they recover themselves or with the assistance of a person. These primarily include biological resources of the organic world: plant and animal and forest resources.

Non-renewable resources Are those resources that cannot be replenished in the production process.

The atmospheric air and waters of the hydrosphere are often referred to as inexhaustible natural resources, but in the conditions of their ever-increasing pollution by anthropogenic toxic substances, these resources should be more correctly classified as exhaustible, albeit renewable.

According to the method of use, agro-climatic, energy, recreational, etc.

The main criterion for the classification of natural resources is their origin. By origin, there are five main types of resources: mineral (fossil), land, water, climatic, biological. In addition, in the classification of recent years, space resources are often allocated. However, it is more correct to classify space resources in one group with climatic ones.

Mineral resources.

Mineral resources are understood as a set of minerals identified in the bowels of the earth as a result of geological exploration and available for industrial use. Mineral resources are non-renewable types of natural resources. The mineral raw materials extracted from the bowels and the products of its processing provide the overwhelming majority of energy, 90% of the production of heavy industry, about ... ../ ... from all consumer goods. Mineral resources are the mineral resource base of industrial potential, provide the economic and defense security of the country. Mineral resource base industries of the country (ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, energy, fuel, chemical, construction) is a set of deposits with explored and preliminary estimated reserves . Explored reserves – These are mineral reserves identified in the bowels of the earth as a result of a complex of geological exploration work and assessed with a completeness sufficient for their development, design and economic assessment of the feasibility of building a mining enterprise . TO estimated reserves includes mineral reserves identified by individual workings and estimated by geologically grounded interpolation of the parameters used in the calculation of proven reserves. They are the primary reserve for the reproduction of proven reserves.

General stocks mineral resources on Earth are great, but it is necessary to take into account the constantly growing human needs for them. The annual growth of their consumption is 5%. According to the calculations of scientists for the entire history of mankind, about 200 billion tons of coal, about 100 billion tons of oil, 50 billion tons of iron ore, 2 billion tons of baxites, 300 million tons of copper ore, 100 thousand tons gold. Of this amount, over the past 30 years (with the exception of gold), from 50% to 85% of all production has been accounted for. According to the estimates of the largest specialist in global modeling D.Medouz, with the existing constant average annual consumption of mineral resources, their reserves will be exhausted by 2250, and if the annual growth rate of 5% is maintained, by 2040. In this regard, the problem of rational use of mineral resources is acute. In addition, it must be borne in mind that of the huge amount of natural resources that are withdrawn for production purposes, only 1.5-2% are converted into the final product. Therefore, the main principles of the rational use of mineral resources should be the completeness of extraction, comprehensive and economical, and, if possible, their secondary use.

Mineral resources, depending on their use, are usually divided into:

fuel and energy (fuel) or combustible (coal, peat, oil, gas, shale);

ore (rock ores, including metal useful components and non-metallic)

non-metallic (building materials, salts, etc.).

Precious and ornamental stones are usually distinguished into a special group.

The distribution of mineral resources over the territory of our planet is subject to geological laws.

Fuel minerals concluded, first of all, in coal and oil and gas basins. They are of sedimentary origin and usually accompany the sedimentary cover of platforms (platform plates) and their inner and marginal troughs.

Among the resources of mineral fuels, the first place belongs to coal. More than 3.6 thousand coal basins are known on the globe, which together occupy 15% of the earth's land area. Of the total coal reserves, 40% falls on brown coal and 60% - on hard coal. Explored reserves account for 8% of the total. More than 90% of all coal resources are located in the Northern Hemisphere - Asia, North America, Europe. An analysis of the geography of coal reserves makes it possible to establish that a significant part of the world's coal resources is concentrated in only 10 of the largest basins.

In addition to these countries, India, Botswana, China, Australia, Poland, Kazakhstan, and Great Britain have significant coal reserves. There are reserves of brown coal in such countries as Spain, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czech Republic. In total, coal resources have been explored in more than 75 countries of the world.

Oil and gas more than 600 basins have been debunked, 450 are being developed. The main reserves are located in the Northern Hemisphere in Asia, North America, Africa, mainly in the Mesozoic sediments. Scientists believe that sedimentary basins, within which oil and gas deposits can potentially be contained, occupy 77 million km 2, and 2/3 of them are located on land.

Like coal reserves, the main oil and gas reserves are concentrated in a small number of the largest oil and gas basins. An important place belongs to the so-called giant fields with reserves of over 500 million tons and even over 1 billion tons of oil and 1 trillion cubic meters of gas each. There are 50 giant oil fields (more than half are located in the countries of the Near and Middle East), gas - 20 (they contain over 70% of all reserves, such deposits are most typical for the CIS countries).

The largest oil and gas basins:

Uranus(nuclear raw material) is very widespread in earth crust, but it is economically profitable to develop only deposits containing at least 0.1% uranium (1 kg - $ 80). According to the IAEA, Australia, South Africa, and Niger stand out in terms of uranium reserves.

Ore minerals usually accompany foundations and ledges of ancient platforms, as well as folded areas. In such areas, they often form vast ore (metallogenic) belts

Countries located within such belts usually have favorable preconditions for the development of the mining industry.

Large reserves of long-developed iron ore raw materials are concentrated in the USA (Messabi Range), China, India (Singhbum district), Russia. There are also reserves of iron ore in the CIS (Krivoy Rog basin, KMA), Brazil (Iron Ore Triangle, Karajas, Urukum), South Africa (Simen basin), Liberia, Guinea, Algeria, Libya, Mauritania , Canada (Carol Lake basin), Australia, Sweden (Kirunavaare district), France (Lorraine basin).

Of non-ferrous metals, the most common is aluminum, content which in the earth's crust is 10% by weight. Basically, deposits of aluminum ores are found in the tropical and subtropical zones. Several bauxite-bearing provinces are distinguished:

- Mediterranean - France, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania;

- Coast of the Gulf of Guinea - Guinea, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Cameroon;

- Coast of the Caribbean - Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Suriname;

- Australia. There are also reserves in the CIS and China.

« Copper»The belt stretches across the Cordillera and the Andes, covering Canada, USA, Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile and Peru. In Eurasia, the "copper" belt stretches from the shores of the Barents Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and further to the Himalayas, capturing Norway, Finland, Poland, Russia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan , China, India. On the African continent, the "copper" belt is located from Lake Tanganyika to the Orange River, covering the south of Zaire, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa. Large reserves of copper ore are found in Australia.

Lead-zinc ores - in the USA, Canada, Australia;

"Tin" the belt stretches along the Pacific coast of Eurasia and Australia and covers Russia, Korea, China , Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia. There are reserves of tin ores in Bolivia, Brazil and other countries.

Manganese ores are common in Gabon.

Nonmetallic minerals are mineral chemical raw materials (sulfur, phosphorites, potash salts), building materials, refractory raw materials; graphite, etc. They are quite widespread. For example, salts are common in Congo, Russia, Ukraine, USA, Canada; apatites and phosphorites - in the USA, Russia, Vietnam, South Africa, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Togo, Egypt, Jordan; sulfur - in Mexico, Russia, Tajikistan.

For economic development, territorial combinations of minerals are most beneficial, which facilitate the complex processing of raw materials, the formation of large territorial-production complexes.

At present, the search for minerals is going “in depth” and “in breadth”. The “inward” direction is typical for the countries of Western Europe, the USA and the European part of Russia, since here many deposits and basins located in the upper layers of the earth's crust have already been worked out. The breadth direction prevails in the Asian part of Russia, Canada, Australia, Brazil and other countries where the development of mineral resources began relatively recently.

Russia has a unique reserve of mineral resources. The mineral resource base created in the country plays an important role in the mineral resource complex of the world. About 20 thousand mineral deposits have been discovered and explored in Russia, of which more than a third have been put into commercial development. Large and unique deposits (about 5%) contain almost 70% of the reserves and provide 50% of the extraction of mineral raw materials. Deposits of Russia contain over 10% of the world's proven oil reserves, ....% - gas, 11% - coal, 26% - iron ores, a significant part of the explored reserves of non-ferrous and rare metals. In terms of explored reserves of nickel, platinoids and platinum, diamonds, and a number of other minerals, the Russian Federation ranks first or third in the world. There are large reserves of apatite, potassium salts, fluorspar and other non-metallic mineral resources.

Distinctive feature mineral resource base Russia is its complexity - it includes almost all types of minerals: fuel and energy resources (oil, natural gas, coal, uranium); ferrous metals (iron, manganese, chrome ores); non-ferrous and rare metals (copper, lead, zinc, nickel, aluminum raw materials, tin, tungsten, molybdenum, antimony, mercury, titanium, zirconium, niobium, tantalum, yttrium, rhenium, scandium, strontium, etc.); noble metals (gold, silver, platinoids) and diamonds; non-metallic minerals (apatite, phosphorite, potash and table salt, fluorspar, muscovite mica, talc, magnesium, graphite, barite, piezo-optical raw materials, precious and ornamental stones, etc.). The mineral resources potential of Russia as a whole is sufficient for an independent and effective economic policy.

Even in conditions economic crisis and the decline in minerals extraction from the subsoil of Russia annually extracted: 9 - 10% of oil, about a quarter of all gas, 5 - 7% coal, 7 - 8% of commercial iron ores, 12 - 20% of nickel and cobalt, more than 10% of tungsten, a significant part of other non-ferrous and rare metals, gold, silver, platinoids and platinum, diamonds, up to 6% of phosphorus concentrate, 12% of potash salts from the entire volume of minerals extracted by the world community.

According to the most elaborated and acceptable estimates, the gross value of explored and estimated mineral resources in world market prices is about $ 30 trillion. USD (including the recoverable value of the explored and estimated reserves of the main groups of minerals - more than 19 trillion USD). About three quarters of them are oil, gas and coal. However, this huge mineral resource potential has been studied and developed only partially.