Population and Natural Resources

Vocabulary flashcards covering key definitions, classification systems, reserve categories, and theoretical perspectives on population and natural resources.

Resource (Erich Zimmermann Definition)

"Resources are not, they become; they are not stable but expand and contract in response to human wants and actions."

Resource (General Definition)

A naturally occurring material judged to have potential value, whether or not it has been located and whether or not it is currently usable.

Reserve

The portion of a resource that is known, accessible, and economically and technically viable to extract right now.

1P Proven Reserve

A reserve categorized with approximately $90\%$ or greater confidence as reasonably certain to be recoverable under today's economic and technical conditions.

2P Probable Reserve

A reserve categorized with approximately $50\%$ confidence as more likely than not to be recoverable, calculated as Proven plus Probable reserves.

3P Possible Reserve

A reserve categorized with approximately $10\%$ confidence as less likely than not to be recoverable, but still plausible, calculated as Proven plus Probable plus Possible reserves.

McKelvey Box

A framework used to plot economic feasibility along the vertical axis against geologic certainty along the horizontal axis, distinguishing economic and well-identified reserves from total resources.

Oil in Place

The total estimated amount of oil contained in an oil reservoir, encompassing both producible and non-producible oil.

Recovery Factor

The ratio of extractable reserves to the total amount of oil in place within a given reservoir.

Reserves Growth

The phenomenon where initial conservative estimates of an oil field's reserve size tend to grow over time with technological advancement and operational development.

Ubiquitous Resource

A natural resource that is available everywhere across the earth, such as air and water.

Localized Resource

A natural resource that is only available at specific geographic locations on Earth, shaped by topography, climate, and altitude.

Non-renewable Resource

A resource with a fixed practical stock that is depletable because its rate of natural replenishment is too slow to keep pace with extraction.

Renewable Resource

A resource that grows or flows and naturally replenishes at a non-negligible, useful rate, such as forests, fish, water, wind, and solar energy.

Recyclable Resource

A resource existing in a form that allows for recovery and reuse once its original primary purpose has been fulfilled.

Scarcity-Development Cycle

A cycle in which resource exhaustion leads to scarcity and price increases, stimulating R&D and leading to innovations like substitution, reuse, and recycling that create new resources and lower prices.

Malthusian View

The theory formulated by Thomas Malthus proposing that human population grows geometrically while food production increases arithmetically, leading to resource deficits and collapse.

Pessimist View (Club of Rome, 1972)

The perspective presented in "Limits to Growth" predicting overshoot and collapse within $100$ years due to exponential growth operating under fixed environmental limits.

Marxist / Neo-Marxist View on Resources

The perspective asserting that population growth and resource scarcity are not the root problems, but rather resource distribution is, and that technological change and trade can overcome physical limits.

Wild Rubber Resource Dynamics

A case study illustrating how a natural material's status as a resource turns "on" and "off" due to human invention, market pricing, plantation substitution, and supply shocks rather than physical depletion.