Geography of the world's natural resources. Pollution and protecting the environment

 Geography of the world's natural resources. Pollution and protecting the environment

 

Nika Chitadze

Ph.D. in Geography

Professor of the International Black Sea University

Director of the Center for International Studies

President of the George C. Marshall Alumni Union, Georgia – International and Security Research Center  

 

Introduction. Theoretical approaches to the topic

The whole history of human society is the story of its interaction with the environment, i.e. "metabolism" between them. Therefore, in many books on Geography, it is indicated that the problems connected with the geography of the world's natural resources, pollution, and the environment are one of the most important parts of geographical science. In order to understand it better, let's start with some basic theoretical approaches and first look at the "three pillars" of this issue - the concepts of the geographical environment, the environment, and nature.

The concept of the geographical environment is one of the most important in geographical science. It was proposed in the late XIX century by the French geographer Reclus and gradually deepened becoming the core of the doctrine of the geographical environment (Marshall P. 1995).

The geographic environment is called the part of earthly nature, to which the human society interacts directly in the lives and production activities at this stage of historical development (Eckersley, R. 1992).

Everything seemed to be perfectly clear. Nevertheless, this concept is linked with three issues in respect to which geographers had and still have different points of view.

The first one is the question of the degree of "occupation" of the environment. Some geographers believe that nowadays the geographic shell in its primitive and natural type does not exist, and therefore, the concept of “nature" and "geographical environment" should be regarded as synonyms. Others, however, who actually form the majority, consider that the environmental issue will be put on the agenda a bit later when humanity explores the environment fully.   

In his Dictionary on Nature Protection N.F. Reimers presents the opinions of American Scientists, which are derived from the analysis of satellite images of the earth's land surface. They suggest that on an additional 48 million km2 of the land (31%) there are no visible signs of human activity. In North America, the "wild" land accounts for 38%, on the post-soviet space – 34%, in Africa, Australia and Oceania – 28%, in Asia – 19%, in Europe - about 3%.  In addition, on 28% of the Earth's territory natural ecosystems are partially broken by a man only (A. V. Cheltsov. 1992).

The second issue is connected with what the definition of the geographical environment should include.

Supporters of broader interpretation believe that the geographical environment includes not only natural but also technological elements. So, they even offer to replace this notion with "anthroposphere", "technosphere", "socio sphere" or "noosphere." Proponents of a narrow interpretation of the argument agree to include to the geographical environment the natural elements of those natural-anthropogenic elements that are capable of self-development without human intervention (arable land, garden, forest belt, reservoir, etc.). But it is not reasonable to include purely man-made elements. 

Thirdly, it is a question of the geographic environment in the life of the society. In this respect, two types of mistakes are made while putting effort to solve the problem: an exaggeration of its role and underestimation.

Exaggeration of the role of the geographic environment is called geographical determinism. In the broad sense, determinism is the philosophical concept, which is derived from Latin. Determinate, which defines and means the natural interrelation and interdependence of various causal phenomena. However, when geographical determinism is involved, it is an exaggeration of the role of the geographical environment.

Historically, geographical determinism was born at the earliest era of geography and then for 2.5 thousand years was perhaps the dominant idea, including the period of the New Age. For example, in the XVII century, enlightener Charles Montesquieu wrote that the "power of the climate is stronger above all the authorities" (Charles-Louis de Secondat de Montesquieu. 1750). The anthropogeography school in Germany and the school of "human geography" in France were under the strong influence of geographical determinism in the XIX century. In the contemporary period, geographical determinism adopted more subtle forms, acting as a kind of neo-determinism. It's either called possibilism (from the French. Possibility - possibility) originating in the general provisions of quite a correct view that the natural environment is a prerequisite for human activity, and environmentalism, which still pretty straightforwardly puts development and deployment of the economy in a very strong dependence on nature and its resources (Preston E. James. 2006. p.194).

Underestimating the role of the geographical environment in the life of people is called geographical indeterminism and one of the leading geographers N. Baranski called it geographical nihilism (Baranski, 1928). It is also characteristic of some geographical schools in the West.

The notion of the environment was introduced in science in the 70s. and has been used widely ever since.    

Environment (or human environment) is a set of natural-anthropogenic and man-made objects, phenomena, and processes external to human nature with which they are in direct or indirect relationships.

Consequently, the environment includes natural and industrial, social and residential, cultural and informational, and other human habitats. In this context, this notion is a largely reconciled old debate about what is included and what is not included in the geographic environment. If the human environment is considered only as of the natural environment, it needs to be called the natural environment.

The concept of consumption of natural resources is also relatively new. It came to the academic community in the late 50ies of the twentieth century. The emergence of a doctrine of natural resources is coming already to 70ies, when in the "man (society) - nature" significant and often irreversible changes began to occur. In turn, the situation has led to the need for a more comprehensive and in-depth analysis of various aspects of the interaction between society and nature and ways to optimize it which actually is the most common challenge of nature. Then the scientific definition of the concept began to appear, which can be frequently found in the literature. We restrict ourselves to one of the most concise definitions:
Consumption of natural resources - a combination of all forms of exploitation of natural resources by potential and conservation measures (A. Dobson. 2000).

It is taken to distinguish between a number of species (branches) of nature: industrial, agricultural, forestry, fishing, communication, recreational, and each of them can be intensive and extensive.

These are the fundamental concepts of the topic. But for a deeper understanding of its theoretical foundations, it is necessary to consider two interrelated aspects. The first is that human society produces part of its resources from the environment, thereby impoverishing and even exhausting it. Notably, only minerals extracted annually from the Earth include more than 300 billion tons. If we calculate how much it will be per capita, you get an impressive result - more than 46 tons!

The second one implies that human society constantly pollutes the environment (V. Neidze. 2004).

In geography, including socio-economic, geography of natural resources is also involved while considering the problem of rational use of natural resources and resource supply.

Natural resources are regarded by us as environmental components which are used in the process of production for meeting the material and cultural needs of society.

As for the issue of classification of natural resources, the most important ones need to be addressed here.

First, it is the classification of natural resources according to the natural source of their origin or genesis, according to which they are divided into lithosphere resources (mineral, land, soil), hydrosphere (water, land and oceans, energy rivers, and tides), atmosphere (climate, wind) and biosphere (flora and fauna). Natural resources divided into minerals, water, land, soil, flora, fauna, solar radiation, moving water, etc. serve as the variation of this classification.

Secondly, it is a classification of natural resources according to their possible use in human activities. This involves resources for industrial production (mineral, water, forest, etc.), agricultural production (agro-climatic, land, soil, water, etc.), transport, recreation, tourism, etc. They can be considered as a fractional - such as resources for the fuel and energy industry, metallurgy, chemical, timber, textile industry, for construction.

Third, the classification of natural resources according to their degree of depletion. Obviously, they are divided into two large groups - exhaustible and inexhaustible resources. In the group of exhaustible resources, non-renewable resources are considered the economic exploitation which could ultimately lead to their exhaustion, and renewable resources are located within the Biosphere cycle of matter and with the ability to heal themselves in terms of being commensurate with human activities. Inexhaustible resources belong to such types of resources the lack of which does not represent the threat for the future generations of the people. For example, in terms of solar energy resources, it is estimated that they exceed the current needs of humanity by 20 thousand times! (Maksakovsky V. 2009). Additionally, to be classified into natural resources according to their degree of exploration, they are subdivided into traditional and nontraditional.

Fig. 1. Classification of natural resources in the degree of depletion

Source: http://greenenergyhomedesign.tk/tag/green-energy/page/237/

 

Geography of the world's natural resources: mineral and land resources

In socio-economic geography familiarity with natural resources usually starts with mineral resources (minerals) - the main "building blocks" of production. The fact is that people have learned to use minerals in ancient times, according to the names of these epochs of human development, such as stone, bronze, iron centuries. If in the Middle Ages from the Earth's crust were extracted only 18 types of minerals, in the XIX century the number amounted to 47. In our days, according to the figurative expression of the geologist – A. Fersman "at the feet of humanity is composed all of the Periodic System of Mendeleev," or rather – more than 200 different kinds of mineral resources are used (Science Encyclopedia. 2005). They can be subdivided into three groups: 1) fuel, 2) ore (metal), and 3) non-metallic.

We will not be wrong if we say that – It is reasonable to state that fuel resources have big importance. Their characteristic usually begins with a quantitative assessment, but you have to consider that we can talk about a wide variety of categories of such assessment. As for the geological data of the fuel resources of the world, now they are estimated at 5.5 trillion tons of fuel (in tons) and proven reserves, which we will continue to deal with - at 1.2 trillion tons. But it is more important to know exact figures of proven reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas. Coal is one trillion tons, oil - 192 billion tons, and gas - 175 trillion m³ (V. Maksakovsky, 2009).

According to the quantitative importance, consideration of geography of fuel resources is of particular interest to us. From the global analysis point of view, in general, these resources are widely distributed in the earth's crust. So, coal basins and deposits amount to 3.6 thousand and together they occupy 15% of the total land area, being located in more than 80 countries (V. Neidze. 2004). Oil and gas basins in the world amount to at least 600 and deposits - up to 50 thousand (V. Neidze. 2004) whereas prospective oil and gas areas exist in more than 100 countries (N. Chitadze. 2004) and collectively occupy more territory than coal.

At the same time placing of fuel resources can not be considered equal. To understand its laws, you have to remember the geology and, in particular, the fact that deposits of fossil fuels are always associated with sediments and tectonics. So, maps of minerals should be of the tectonic framework which does not always take place. It is also important that fuel resources are typically spread waist, forming a vast belt of coal accumulation of oil and gas that formed in those geological eras when there were peaks of coal, oil, and gas.

For example, the major coal basins of Europe form a latitudinal belt stretching from the UK via Belgium, northern France, and western Germany, the southern part of Poland, and the northern part of the Czech Republic to the Donets Basin. The emergence of this belt coal accumulation took place because the Carboniferous geological period was the one when the majority of geopolitical processes got reflected on the farthest north arch of the  Epihercynian platform.  Therefore, this belt and pools - the Ruhr, Upper Silesia, Donetsk, etc. - exhibit certain geological similarities.

From the global, let’s now proceed to the consideration of the regional level, using the data in Table 1.

Region	Coal. Billion Tones	Oil, Billion Tones	Natural Gas, Trillion M3
Post-Soviet Space	230	20,3	56,0
Europe	125	2,7	6,0
Asia	215	106,2	82,5
Africa	55	15,1	13,0
North America	260	31,1	7,0
Latin America	30	16,7	7,5
Australia and Pacific	85	0,2	3,0
Whole World	1000	192,5	175,0

 

Table.1.
Source: Distribution of the proven energy reserves in major regions of the world at the beginning of XXI Century (V. Maksakovsky. 2009)

The following is concluded from Table 8: Proven reserves of the coal in the world are highlighted in North America (26%), post-soviet space (23%) and Asia (21.5%), oil reserves in Asia (55%), and natural gas reserves in Asia (47%) and the post-soviet space (32%) (V. Maksakovsky. 2009). Therefore, during geological history best conditions for coal and oil and gas production evolved in these three regions of the world.

As for the third, country level, it can be assumed a priori that in these three regions the richest countries in the world possess fuel resources. They are considered in detail during laboratory exercises, based on the principle of "top ten.”

Table.2.
Source: Distribution of the proven energy reserves by countries at the beginning of XXI Century (V. Maksakovsky. 2009)

Country	Coal. Billion Tones	Country	Oil, Billion Tones	Country	Natural Gas, Trillion M3
USA	250	Saudi Arabia	35	Russia	48
Russia	195	Canada	28	Iran	27
China	115	Iran	18	Qatar	26
India	85	Iraq	16	Saudi Arabia	7
Australia	82	Russia	15	United Arab Emirates	6

 The first five countries in proven reserves of fuel resources (V. Maksakovsky. 2009).

Analyzing Table 2, we can be limited by the first three countries.  A simple calculation shows that the share of the United States,  Russia, and China accounted for more than half of all the world's known coal reserves whereas that of Saudi Arabia, Canada, and Iran to about 2/5 of the world's oil and Russia, Iran, and Qatar - almost half of the natural gas reserves. Those countries that occupy the first three places are - the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia should be especially singled out (V. Maksakovsky. 2009. P. 103).

There are a number of advantages of the above–mentioned countries. The most important one is the special richness of their fuel resources. Thus, the largest explored reserves of coal basins of the world are found in the United States (Illinois, Appalachia mountains), Russia (Kan -Achinsk, Kuznetsk), and China (Ordos) (Keaton Energy. 2010). The same applies to the richest petroleum provinces of the Persian Gulf. But in the case of oil and gas, a crucial role is not played by the total number of fields and the presence of these fields with the giant and more unique stocks.

The number of unique non-competitive oil fields in the world occupy the Gulf countries, where they are genetically related to the sediments of the Arabian plate and the Mesopotamian basin. It is here that the major oil Ghawar (Saudi Arabia), Agha Jari (Iran), and the Greater Burgan (Kuwait) with initial reserves of more than 10 billion tons each appear (Ivanhoe, L. F, and G G. Leckie. 1993). According to a number of unique natural gas fields worldwide, the leader in the Russian northern part of Western Siberia. Qatar recently opened a unique gas field, Qatar -Nord, which immediately put forward this tiny country in the top four countries in the world according to the largest proven reserves (International Energy Agency. Paris, 2012).

With regard to metal reserves, they are more common in the earth's crust than fuel. This is explained by the fact that they are genetically linked not only with sediments but also crystalline rocks (remember Baltic shields or Canadian). For ore resources, it is a much typical zonal distribution. We should be aware of two major metallogenic belts of the earth - the Alpine- Himalayan and Pacific, stretching huge arc at 30 thousand km (William J. Collins, Anthony I. S. Kemp, J. Brendan Murphy. 2011). Both of these zones are associated with deep crustal faults, originated in the Alpine orogeny and that within them should first seek many ore minerals - whether iron ore in India, tin - in Malaysia or copper in Chile.

In assessing the ferrous and nonferrous metals it is the need to consider some of their features. First, the fact that they have rarely explored reserves the amount to hundreds and tens of billions of tons and, usually, they are considered to be billions, tens of millions, and millions of tons. Secondly, this is due to the content of the useful component of the ores varying from less than 1% and up to 60-70 % (Science Encyclopedia. 2005). It is clear that the low composition of the metal in ore leads to assessing their deposits according to useful components rather than ore and, therefore, their amount is further reduced. Third, the collection of ore resources itself is much broader than that of fuel – their amount is about 35. We should think at least about ferrous metals - iron, manganese, chrome, alloy metals - titanium, vanadium, nickel, cobalt, ferrous and light metals - magnesium, copper, lead, zinc, bismuth, precious metals - gold, silver, platinum. Therefore, we can meet with them only on the separate examples – we can just discuss separate examples.

As a first example, consider iron ore widely distributed in the earth's crust. Their resources amount to 350 billion tons in the world and are mainly concentrated in the post-soviet space, North and Latin America, and Asia. Explored reserves are estimated at 165 billion tons and they are known in some 100 countries with a strong predominance of just a few of them. Here, the first five are Russia, Brazil, Australia, Ukraine, China. At the same time, Russia has a non-competitive first place - 33 billion tons or 20 % of world reserves (Maksakovsky V. 2009) which are concentrated primarily in the Kursk magnetic anomaly and several other unique and large-sized swimming pools. Pool Hammersley dominates in the stocks of Australia in the northwest of the country whereas in Ukraine - Kryvyi Rih.

Bauxite - the main raw material for aluminum production serves as a second example, which is also very widespread in the earth's crust. Explored reserves of bauxite amount to 20 billion tons (Maksakovsky V. 2009). To understand the main pattern of their placement on the globe, we must remember that bauxite deposits are genetically related to primarily weathering crust sections located within the tropical and subtropical climatic zones.

That's why, one of the main provinces of the bauxite world includes Guinea in Africa (more than one-third of all proven reserves), North Australia, Caribbean Central America, Mediterranean Europe.

Uranium resources are widely distributed in the earth's crust. However, it is cost-effective to develop only those fields that contain at least 0.1% of the useful component: in this case, 1 kg of uranium concentrates cost is less than $ 80 of the explored reserves of uranium available for retrieval at a price of 3.5 million tons and Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, and South Africa are included in the top five countries in this case. In Canada, the uranium content in the ore is 10%, in Australia - 0.5% (V. Maksakovsky. 2009).

The third group, as already mentioned, is non-metal resources. We will not consider them in detail. We note only that, according to the volume of those resources, among them are sodium and potassium salts, phosphorus, and sulfur.

To conclude the description of mineral resources, two other issues need to be considered.

First, these resources are distributed between economically highly developed and developing countries. Economically advanced countries are ahead in proven reserves of coal, iron, manganese and chrome ores, poly-metallic, uranium, and gold. Developing countries lead in oil resources (more than 4 /5 of the total reserves), natural gas, bauxite, copper ore, tin, tungsten, Diamond  (Conklin Xu. Laura Bell. 2013).

Secondly, to what extent humanity is provided by critical - mineral resources. If we consider only the proven reserves, many kinds of minerals will not be enough for a long time. For example, oil, natural gas, copper, zinc, lead, tin, tungsten will disappear in about 60 years (Conglin Xu. Laura Bell. 2013). Notably, this happens taking into consideration the volume of their extraction at present. Another added factor is that the "appetite" of humanity is continuously growing!

Of course, differences between regions and countries according to mineral resources can be very large. For example, proven oil reserves are more provided in Canada (which will be enough for 230 years), wherein the Alberta region there are the world's largest deposits of tar sands and scientists have only recently begun to consider those reserves in international statistics. This country is followed by Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela where reserves will be kept for about 100 to 150 years. But in Europe and Australia oil wealth is enough for only 9 years whereas in the U.S. - 11 years. In Russia, this figure amounts to 32 years (V. Maksakovski. 2009).

Turning to the characteristics of the land (soil) resources, several scientists call them territorial resources and we must first note that the earth is a kind of universal resource without which neither man's economic activity nor his life will be possible. However, with this multi-purpose land use at any given time, one or another piece of land can only be used for one to several purposes - granting, plowing, etc. It is important to note that although the land (soil) resources we are belonging to the category of exhaustible, renewable resources and renewal of them really requires a lot of time.

During the discussion about land resources, a fundamental concept represents the land fund. To get an idea of the size of the land fund of the planet, we should take into account a total of Earth's land area (149 million km2 or 14.9 billion hectares) subtract the area of Antarctica and Greenland. The final result is 134 million km2 or 13.4 billion hectares, and it is the total amount of the land fund (Pidwirny, Michael. 2007).  This is a tremendous resource that is admittedly very encouraging. However, familiarity with the structure of the land fund (Fig. 2) leads to somewhat different conclusions.

 

 Fig. 2. Types of the global land fund

Source:  https://www.ufz.de/export/data/global/54001_LSA_Map.jpg

It turns out that the less or unproductive lands are wholly or partially unfit for the life and carrying out business activities of people, occupy the first place in this structure. Forests and shrubs take second place. As for two types of agricultural land, arable and mowing ones, they share third and fourth positions, occupying only 1/3 of the total land fund, including, mainly cultivated ones, which yield in nearly 9/10 of all necessary food products for people, accounting for only 11% (V. Neidze. 2004).

Admittedly, at the regional level, all these figures can vary greatly. The share of arable land is much higher in Europe and Asia, that of meadows and pastures - in Australia and Africa, the proportion of forests - in South America and in Russia, and the share of marginal and unproductive land - in Asia, North America, Africa. Of course, there are even more differences between individual countries. For example, in Denmark, India, and Bangladesh plowed land prevails and amounts to  55%, in Mongolia 75 % of the land is occupied by pastures, and in Libya, located mainly within the Sahara desert, over 90 % of the land is less productive and unproductive (V. Maksakovsky. 2009). Table 3 represents individual countries with the largest area of arable land.

Table 3. The first five countries according to the size of arable land at the beginning of XXI Century

Source: V. Maksakovsky. 2009. P. 107

Country	Area of the Land. Million Hectares	% to the Land Fund
USA	186	20,3
India	166	55,9
Russia	117	6,8
China	93	9,9
Australia	47	6,1

 

Of course, historically the land fund structure does not remain unchanged. Two opposite processes Thus influence the structure of the land.

On the one hand, for hundreds, even thousands of years, people have sought to increase the area of ​​land suitable for habitation and agriculture. Primarily, this means the offensive field on forest landscapes. It is not by accident, that XIV c. entered into the history of Europe as the "age of uprooting." Of course, the fields began to attack the landscapes and pastures. As a result, only in the twentieth century, the area of cultivated lands in the world has more than doubled. Remember though epic virgin lands that have been mastered in Canada, USA, Australia, Brazil, China.

On the other hand, it was going on all the time and in the second half of the twentieth century, the process of the degradation of the land (soil) resources accelerated. Now, in the world, the high and moderate degradation exposed 2/3 of all the arable land. The main cause of this degradation is the development of erosion due to which each year 6-7 million hectares of land falls from the agricultural turnover (V. Neidze. 2004).

As for the vast arid zone, anthropogenic desertification became the main reason for land degradation, which has already covered about 10 million km2, which is comparable with the territory of such giant countries as Canada, China, or the U.S. More than 1 billion people from about 100 countries around the world live under the conditions of anthropogenic desertification and soil degradation (V. Maksakovsky, 2009).

Fig. 3. Areas for concern for soil degradation

Source: http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/land_deg/land_deg.html

Despite the importance of the specific indicator of providing the land resources, the more important index represents the availability of the most valuable cropland. Worldwide, it has declined from 0.5 hectares in the middle of the twentieth century to 0.2 ha in the early XXI century. Australia (2.6 hectares) and North America (0.6 ha) appear again the most successful in this regard and the lowest index is reported in East Asia (0.1 ha), South Asia, and Western Europe (0.2 hectares). From selected countries (besides Australia) Kazakhstan and Canada (1.5 hectares), Russia, Ukraine, and the United States (0.6-0.8 ha) occupy the leading positions, and the Netherlands, Japan, Egypt, Vietnam, Bangladesh, China are at the end of the list with exponents from 0.03 to 0.07 hectares per person (V. Maksakovsky. 2009).

Geography of the world's natural resources: water and biological resources of the land

Water, like the earth, is an indispensable condition of human life, which satisfies their physiological and sanitary needs. Admittedly, people can stand much longer without food than without water. From this, by the way, comes some fundamentally new concept in medicine – This is where the new concept of medicine originates from. An almost equal amount of water is needed for a variety of businesses of the people, which is largely based on the "wet" technology. It refers to the production of food, energy, and industrial products.

Let's start with the introduction of land water resources according to their nature.

Although freshwater resources in the world amount to only 2.5 % of the entire hydrosphere, this corresponds to 35 million km3 (Neidze V. 2004). But the reason for optimism related to this fact is not so much – This does not quite give any reason for optimism. The fact is that almost 70% of this volume, is admittedly conserved in the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, the Arctic ice and mountain glaciers. Groundwater accounts for another 30% but they are used in relatively small quantities. It turns out that free freshwater is available in rivers, lakes, wetlands, atmosphere - it is only 0.3% of all fresh water on the Earth (V. Maksakovsky. 2009).

But even with this approach, the most reasonably available resources are considered to be the most dynamic part of freshwater - the river (river bed) water flowing into the oceans. Their lump sum amount in rivers is negligible - only 2.1 km3. But since this volume is renewed during the year on average for 23 times, in fact, available resources of the river waters rise to 48 km3 (V. Maksakovsky. 2009. P. 110). Apparently, this number characterizes the "water ration" of humanity that can (to some extent) withdraw for economic activity.

Now from the quantitative assessment of the freshwater resources of the world, let`s turn to the consideration of their geography. If we keep in mind the major regions of the world, according to common freshwater resources leading positions to have Russia (1/5 of the World`s supply), Latin, and North America (V. Maksakovsky. 2009). If we consider only the resources of river flow, then go forward to Asia and Latin America, It is clear that here we have in mind first the all river systems, the leading positions have Yangtze, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Mekong, and the second - the Amazon, Orinoco, Paraná. There are several changes and the order of the leading countries (Table 4).

 

Country	Resources, km3
Brazil	6950
Russia	4300
Canada	2900
China	2800
USA	2500

 

Table 4. The first five countries in the world in size resources streamflow in the beginning of the XXI Century
Source:  V. Maksakovsky. 2009. P. 111

This is the situation related to the freshwater resources that nature made available to mankind. However, from the standpoint of socio-economic geography that is not enough – the principles of water consumption should also be taken into account, which is constantly increasing. It is enough to say that only in the twentieth-century global water consumption has increased several times and now amounts to almost 3000 km3 per year (Nitti, Gianfranco. 2011p. 8). Some experts believe almost half of the total available amount of fresh water has been used on our planet. Moreover, almost 70% of it goes to agriculture and is lost forever (Nitti, Gianfranco. 2011). With regard to the industry and utilities, where the water recycling principle is intensively used, those fields of economy are respectively at the second and third places.

Undoubtedly, for large regions of the world, the water consumption rate also varies greatly. As expected, the Eastern part of Asia is leading with first place. In this part of the world water consumption in agriculture predominates. Although, in some countries (China, Japan) an appreciable proportion of the industry is reported (The Water Footprint Network. 2014). Agricultural use is also prevalent in Africa, Australia, and Oceania, a large part of Latin America, and industrial and municipal - in North America, Europe.

The main point to be noted in this regard is the characterization of provision with freshwater resources, which is calculated on the basis of per capita. The average per capita freshwater availability is constantly decreasing as though these resources are growing and, in any case, slower than the population. If this indicator is put at stake, the differences will be clear

(Fig. 4).

 

Fig. 4. Consumption of freshwater per capita. M3 Annually

Source: http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-freshwater-resources.htm 

It was immediately struck by the presence of two well-defined zones of sufficient and excess moisture. The first of these is in the range of temperate and subtropical climate zones of the Northern Hemisphere and includes Canada, the United States, the Nordic countries, Russia. However, countries of Europe, located in this zone, are already experiencing a lack of freshwater. The second zone extends within the equatorial and tropical climatic zones, mainly in the Southern Hemisphere. Between them extends the arid belt with the biggest shortage of freshwater.

Interestingly, if during the analysis of this indicator to apply to the principle of "most-most", it would appear that provision of renewable freshwater resources in a number of countries, and in this case, champions are French Guiana (over 800 thousand m3 per person!) and its neighboring Guyana and Suriname (300 thousand), DR of Congo (about 300 thousand) and Iceland (250 thousand), the minimum water supply indicators are in Kuwait (10 m3), the UAE and Qatar (less than 100 m3), Saudi Arabia and Libya (slightly more than 100 m3). This means that in French Guiana shower provision of such resources is higher for 8 thousand times (!) than in Kuwait (V. Maksakovsky. 2009. P. 113).

 Fig. 5.  Percentage of Population Without Reasonable Access to Safe Drinking Water
 Source: http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/human-conditions.php

Reportedly, the problem of freshwater - as farmland - in fact, has already become global. In fact, according to the UN, at the beginning of the XXI Century, about 1.2 billion people lacked access to safe drinking water (Fig. 33), and more than 2.4 billion to improved sanitation (Basic Facts about the United Nations. 2004. P. 144). In these least developed countries in Asia and Africa, such as Nepal, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Chad, Mauritania less than one-third of all residents have. secured access to drinking water. We must take into account the fact that in most developing countries there is not just a shortage of water, but also the quality of its is poor. It is the consumption of contaminated water in them that is the source of two-thirds of all diseases. According to UN projections, universal access to safe drinking water will be provided in Asia - until 2025, Latin America - up to 2040, and Africa – 2050  (The Millennium Project. 2012).

Here, we come to the important issue related to the resolution of the problem of water of humanity divided into major and minor factors.

To start with, the main focus should be made on principal factors. The use of water and reducing its wastage/deadweight loss of water during industrial processes serve as the key ones. In industry, it is primarily concerned with the production of synthetic fibers during which approximately 3500 tons of water are consumed per ton of the product whereas, in the case of nickel, it amounts to 800 tons and 200 for the production of iron, steel, and paper. As for agriculture, 10 000 tons account for cotton production and 7000 ones for rice growing. It is worth mentioning that in the process of cotton production the Aral Sea suffered significantly. Economical use of water is necessary for carrying out everyday activities too provided that in economically developed countries one city inhabitant does not consume less than 300-400 liters of water.  100 liters of water are used for several minutes while getting the shower.       

Sparingly, water should be consumed in everyday life. Indeed, in economically advanced countries an urban resident consumes at least 300-400 liters of water per day.  Only receiving the shower for a few minutes required 100 liters (V. Maksakovsky. 2009).

The second most important measure is the construction of reservoirs for river regulation. It is estimated that with their help the global river flow could be increased by 1/4. Over the past half a century the number of reservoirs around the globe has increased by about 5 times. Now there are more than 60 million with a total useful volume of 6600 km³. Together, they occupy 400 km² (V. Maksakovsky. 2009).

As in the case of land resources, many programs for the conservation and restoration of freshwater resources are directed by the UN, which in 2002 announced the "Decade of Water" and in 2003 proclaimed the "Year of Freshwater". This has stimulated the increased public attention to the problem of the water supply of the world, by its individual regions and countries, not only in the present but also in the future. Some politicians are already predicting the possibility of "water wars" - acute conflict over water resources (J. Simon. 2005).

To finish with water resources, they also have their hydro-energetic potential which has three grades. Potential resources of river flows and reservoirs are meant under the theoretical hydropower potential. Usually, it is estimated at 35-40 trillion kW/h.  Next comes the technical hydropower potential, which is part of the theoretical capacity, which can be technically mastered. Most often it is estimated at 15 trillion kW/h. Finally, the economic hydropower potential is the total energy resources of the rivers the use of which is the Top of the Form, including, the cost of construction of the hydroelectric power station and the cost of electricity, which is economically feasible. It is estimated at 8 trillion W • h (V. Maksakovsky. 2009).

In economic geography literature, you often come across the indicator of economic hydropower. As the volume of river flow, here ahead of the other regions are Asia and Latin America. Similar to the data in Table 5, looks and the five richest countries by hydropower resources (Table 6).

Table. 6.  The first five countries in the economic size of hydropower

Source: V. Maksakovsky. 2009. P. 117

Country	Hydro energy potential. Billion K/h	The degree of its exploitation
China	1260	16
Russia	850	19
Brazil	765	37
Canada	540	65
India	500	16

It is easy to calculate that these five countries account for almost half of all global economic hydropower. As for the extent of its development, it is the average for the world not reaching 1/3 whereas for Europe and North America it is 70% and 18% for Africa. (V. Maksakovsky. 2009).

France, Italy, and Switzerland serve as examples of countries where this potential is almost fully mastered whereas Japan and the United States are the ones with almost completely achieved potential.

Biological resources – there are resources of the Earth's biota, i.e. plants and animals, which are measured in trillions of tons. The gene pool of such organisms is distinguished by exceptional biodiversity: according to various data, it comprises from 10 to 100 million different species. However, only 1.7 million are described among them.  (Biological Resources. 2013).

The biomass of planting resources of the earth's land is about 200 times more of the biomass of wildlife. It is represented by both cultural and wild plants. Including crop species, there are almost 6 thousand, but the amount of most common crops in the world equals only 80-90 and the most common - 15-20: wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, barley, sweet potatoes, soybeans, etc. (V. Neidze. 2004).

Forest vegetation, forming forest resources plays a major role among wild plants. With their characteristic, we must first remember that the forest as a part of the biosphere on Earth forms the largest ecosystem, which significantly affects photosynthesis, the oxygen balance of the atmosphere, the preservation of the gene pool. In the same economic activity of people, wood is widely used for the production of 20 thousand different products, as well as fuel. Forest resources are exhausted as land ones but at the same time, renewable resources of the multipurpose use emerge (V. Neidze. 2004).

For the forest`s resources assessment is typically measured by the forest or the forested (which is the main part of the forest) area. As we have mentioned during the meeting with the structure of the land fund, the forest area of the world is 4.1 billion hectares, which corresponds to an average of 30.5% of the forest cover. According to various estimates, the stock of standing timber in the forests of the world reaches amounts to 330-380 billion m3 and annually rises by 5.5 billion m3.  (World Resources Institute. 2010). It would seem that it is quite a comforting figure. But they need a serious adjustment in light of two important factors.

The first is called the natural-geographic factor. It is a very uneven distribution of the forests on the land surface. If we consider the large regions of the world, it turns out that most wide areas of the forest are in Latin America. Here it is fixed at the highest percentage of forest and timber stock. The lowest rates are fixed in Australia and Oceania. But with regard to the characterization of such forests with the geographical unevenness, forests reserves can be discussed in different ways based on the fact that the world's forests actually form two huge forest belts along the strike zones - north and south. (Fig. 6).

 

Fig. 6. Schematic map of the world's forests

Source:  http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-natural-forest.htm

 
Obviously, the northern forest belt extends to broadband across North America and Eurasia, taking up about half of the total forest area in the world. It is dominated by coniferous and mixed forests of the cold temperate and subtropical climatic zones of the earth. The Southern forest belt consists of three parts - the South American, African, and Asian - Australian. By the area, it is about the same, but almost entirely consists of deciduous forests and is a much more diverse forest, richer, and most importantly, updated much faster. Therefore, there are more stocks of forests in the southern belt. And between them is an almost completely treeless arid, torrid zone, which has been continuously mentioned above.

Such a belt approach is the "golden key" to understanding why some countries are very rich in forest resources, while others, on the contrary, are very poor. Clearly, the rich countries by the forests resources can be founded within the northern and southern forest zones. In this case, it should be mentioned that in the northern zone it is Russia (810 million hectares of forest area), Canada (310), the United States (305), and partly China (195) and in southern - Brazil (480), Australia (165), DR Congo (135) and some other countries (V. Maksakovsky. 2009).

Additionally, within these two zones you will find a country with record levels of forest coverage, which is in Finland, North Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, more than 70 % in Guyana and Papua - New Guinea - 80, and in Suriname, even 90%! The middle arid zone is distinguished from the most sparsely populated countries. Here, too Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Libya, Central African Republic are the “champions” among the countries where forests cover less than 1% of the area, excluding, Kuwait or Oman, where they are absent (Convention on Biological Diversity Secretariat. 2012).

This, again, first is the natural and geographical factor influencing the wealth of forest resources of the regions and countries. With regard to the second factor, it is only part of the natural essence. What it mainly represents is the “anthropogenic” factor, i.e. the impact of humanity on the process of reducing forest resources. 

Man-made deforestation began in the Neolithic, when, as we already know, agriculture and animal husbandry were created. It continued in the era of the ancient civilizations of antiquity, in the Middle Ages, in modern and contemporary times. Only in the last two centuries, the forest area of the world has halved and today, it continues to decline at a speed of 13 million hectares per year. But, the situation in the northern and southern forest zones is very different (FAO. 2012).

Geography of the world's natural resources: the resources of the oceans, climate, and space, recreational resources

In this part, we will finish the description of the world's natural resources. If until now we have considered the resources of the Earth's land, now we turn to the resources of the oceans, atmosphere, and space, as well as a special kind of recreational resource.

Admittedly, the World Ocean is another pantry of various resources at the disposal of mankind. Resources of the oceans can be divided into 1) water; 2) minerals; 3) energy and 4) biological (Nellemann C. and Corcoran E. 2010).

From the materials in the physical geography, we should know about the fact that the World Ocean encompasses virtually inexhaustible water resources. Indeed, the total amount of its waters is 1.37 billion km3, which corresponds to 96.4 % of the total terrestrial hydrosphere, and they occupy almost 71% of the surface of our planet (World Atlas. 2013).

Talking about the waters of the World Ocean, we must remember that they themselves have considerable economic importance since they contain about a hundred chemical elements. It's hard to imagine but one km3 of ocean water can hold a huge amount of dissolved minerals. Sodium and chlorine are the most widespread ones in the water. So, even thousands of years B.C. Chinese learned to get table salt from it. It is also possible to get magnesium, bromine, iodine, potassium, hydrogen and oxygen, and other chemicals from the marine water. Technologically, there are developed methods for recovering from there the uranium and gold even though its content is 0.0001 mg / l (Christie, A and Brathwaite, R. 2012).

The same applies to obtaining deep, the so-called heavy water (it has a slightly different combination of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes) of deuterium required for the thermonuclear fusion.

Mineral resources of the World Ocean are geological resources of raw materials and fuel, which are lying on the seabed or in the subsoil. Geographically and genetically they are usually divided into resources of the continental shelf, the continental slope zone, and deepwater areas of the ocean floor (Fig. 7). Resources of the continental shelf play a major role among them, which covers 31.2 million km2 or 8.6% of the total area of the ​​ocean (Pinet, Paul R. (1996).

 
Fig. 7. Mineral resources of the ocean floor

Source: http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/energy/marine-minerals/

In its turn, among those resources, the basins of oil and natural gas are the most important together occupying almost more territory than oil and gas basins in the Earth's land area. It can, therefore, be concluded that the Atlantic Ocean is leading among the richest hydrocarbon resources, where they have already been explored in many marine spaces. Three of them need to be focused on: the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico in Central America, the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, and the North Sea in the north-western part of Europe. Smaller deposits are discovered near the coast of Canada, Brazil, Argentina. The Indian Ocean is at the second place by those resources, where oil and gas are found on the shelves of India, Indonesia, Australia, but most of all - in the Persian Gulf, where, incidentally, some offshore fields (Saffaniya, Qatar -Nord) are of the unique size. In the Pacific, the coast of Asia, North and South America, Australia are famous for oil and gas resources, and in the Arctic Ocean - the coast of Alaska, Canada, and Russia (Barents and Kara Seas) dominate. The Caspian Sea should also be mentioned where near Baku oil production was conducted for a long time but the "big oil" was opened recently.

Besides oil and gas, many solid minerals are connected with the shelf of the oceans and related fields. Among them, there are indigenous deposits of coal, iron ore, and other salts that may be developed from the shore by means of inclined tunnels.

As for energy resources of the World Ocean, they are limitless similar to the water resources. Their main types are - tidal power, waves, temperature gradient, and ocean currents. Yet, they are mainly related to potential resources, but their use has already begun.

Speaking about tidal energy, we should note its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is its inexhaustibility, regularity, and environmental cleanliness. In fact, the energy contained in only one tidal cycle reaches 8 trillion kW • h (which is only half of the world's electricity generation in the year) (V. Maksakovsky. 2009) and such cycles are repeated twice a day and they work "on schedule" to within a few minutes. As for disadvantages, tidal energy can be effectively used only in those places where the exceeding tide height is 5 meters, and around the globe, there are approximately 25-30. Admittedly, the highest tides are off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean: in the north-western part of the Bay of Fundy they reach 18 m, and in the northeastern part, near the shores of the English Channel and the Irish Sea - 10-13 m (V. Maksakovsky. 2009). Such tides are present in the north-western Pacific (e.g. in the Okhotsk Sea) and the Arctic Ocean (e.g. in the White Sea), i.e. in most cases in very remote and sparsely populated areas.

As for the biological resources of the world’s ocean, their total biomass is often estimated at 35-40 billion tons, which is much less than the total biomass of the Earth's land (Ocean Resources. 2001).

Nevertheless, it has 180 thousand animal species and 10 thousand plant species (Ocean resources Defense Council. 2014). This means that the water of the oceans is populated by the many living organisms of the world, from microscopic bacteria to the largest animals on earth – whales; while they live throughout the thickness of oceanic waters from the surface layer to the bottom of the deepest valleys.

As for the issue of climate and space resources, they belong to the category of inexhaustible resources and practices that are not removed from nature but nonetheless can significantly affect the living conditions of people and economic activity.

Climate resources are closely related to certain features of the climate. Undoubtedly, those are primarily agro-climatic resources, i.e. light, heat, and moisture, which determine the possibility of growing all crops.

Further, there are wind energy resources. Their use has started a long time ago with windmills and sailing ships. Although this energy is different by the scattering and inconstancy, the world still has a lot of places where the average wind speed exceeds 5 m/s, which makes this energy use, which is environmentally clean with the help of using economically viable wind turbines. Examples of such places only in Europe can serve the coast of the North, Baltic, Black seas as well as mountain areas (Holttinen, Hannele. 2006).

When talking about cosmic resources, solar radiation - the largest energy source in the world is primarily meant. It forms the basic processes in the biosphere and ensures the existence of life. The power of the solar energy reaching the lower atmosphere and the earth's surface is measured by a huge quantity (1014 kW). It is by ten times superior to all of the energy contained in the proven reserves of fossil fuels and by thousand times - the current level of global energy consumption (Reference Solar Spectral Irradiance. 2013).

However, solar power is widely dispersed, so its use is appropriate only in areas with low clouds, receiving it in quantities exceeding 200 W/m² (World Meteorological Organization. 2008).

All of them are hot climate zones of the Earth, and partly subtropical, within which mainly developing countries are located. But due to its economic and technical advantages, solar energy for commercial purposes is used in the United States, Japan, Israel, and Australia to the greatest extent.

In conclusion, we should analyze one more interesting question related to recreational resources. The word ‘recreation’ in Latin means "restoration" (The Free Dictionary, 2014). Respectively, those natural resources are involved with the help of which the people's health and their ability to work are maintained and restored. But, besides this, recreational resources are an important source of aesthetic pleasure, which is also worth mentioning.

Recreational resources serve as a basis for recreation and are closely associated with tourism. In other words, there are resources of recreation and tourism, though sometimes tourist resources are allocated separately. In recreational geography, there are four main types of recreational use of the territory. The first one is therapeutic, which uses healing waters, mud, comfortable climate. The second - beaches of seas, rivers, lakes, reservoirs, forests, and parks. The third type represents sports activities, including, skiing, sailing, and mountain climbing. Fourthly, the recreational and educational type is based on natural and cultural heritage sites and cultural landscapes (Rechner. 2010).

According to another approach, all recreational resources can be grouped into two large classes.

The first of them form natural recreational resources, among which are the seashores, riverbanks and lakes, mountains and hills, forests, mineral springs outputs, therapeutic mud. Here vacationers and tourists find natural diversity, scenic, and attractiveness,  landscapes, the richness of vegetation, pleasant to the eye relief, healing climate. And often it is the combinations of the above-mentioned attractiveness.

The second class is formed by cultural and historical attractions - monuments of the history, archeology, urban planning, architecture, literature, and art, which are the main prerequisite for the organization of cultural and cognitive recreation and also largely determine the direction of recreational flows of people, in which you are involved too.

Obviously, the greatest interest among vacationers and tourists is expressed towards those countries, that possess a combination of natural, cultural, and historical attractions, such as Italy, Spain, France, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Egypt, Mexico. The same applies to certain areas of many countries that are specialized in recreation and tourism for a long time.

The World Heritage Site needs to be mentioned here. This concept has been existing since 1972 when UNESCO adopted the Convention on the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. It lists the heritage objects, which are replenished every year. At the beginning of 2007, it already included 830 sites in 138 countries. 

From the total number of heritage sites, 644 are classified as cultural. The Forum and the Colosseum in Rome, Versailles near Paris, Westminster and the Tower of London, Hradcany in Prague, the great pyramids in Cairo, the Taj Mahal in Indian Agra, the historic imperial city in Beijing and the Great Wall of China, Statue of Liberty in New York, the ancient Mayan city in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico serve as examples of the most famous of them. The category includes 162 natural objects too. Many of them are well known: Bialowieza Forest in Poland and Belarus, Mount Everest in Nepal, Lake Victoria and Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa, the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River in the United States, Galapagos Islands in South America, and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. In addition, an additional 24 mixed, natural and cultural properties are allocated. World Heritage forms a huge recreational resource of universal significance, which is an important incentive stimulus for recreational activities.

Many geographers point out that among the cities millionaires, about 4/5 of all residents are eager to spend their holidays in nature, i.e. to be engaged precisely in such activities. Forms of such activities are extremely varied.

Conclusion

In the process of producing material wealth, a man actively influences a single element of nature and changes the whole complex of natural resources. One part of the natural resources are inexhaustible because they are self-renewed in the footsteps of their proper exploitation. There are also natural resources whose supplies are gradually depleted and eventually depleted. Therefore, the rational use of natural resources is the primary concern of mankind. The modern scientific-technological revolution further expands the field of use of natural resources and allows us to identify new types of natural resources.

 

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