The Planet That Hasn't Grown
🌍 The Planet That Hasn't Grown
Meanwhile, a child in South Sudan is growing up in a country where 1 in 3 people are severely food insecure. A woman in rural Ethiopia walks four hours every day to collect water for her family. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 733 million people have no electricity. And in South-East England — one of the wealthiest regions on Earth — water companies are warning of supply shortfalls within decades.
Resource management is not an abstract problem for distant countries. It is a challenge that cuts across every human society, rich and poor. Understanding how resources are distributed, why demand is rising, and how the three critical resources — food, water, and energy — interact with each other is the foundation for everything that follows in this unit.
Geography glossary
- What is a resource?
- Something people use to meet needs, such as food, water or energy.
- What is resource insecurity?
- Uncertain or unequal access to an important resource.
A natural resource is anything taken from the natural environment to meet human needs. Resources can be divided into two fundamental types:
Earn the mark scheme marks
🧠 Memory Aids: PUCC and FEW
PUCC — The Four Demand Drivers
Use PUCC to remember why resource demand is rising:
Remember: PUCC looks like "puck" — the rising demand pressures are like a puck sliding across ice, with no friction to slow them down. The four forces compound each other.
FEW — The Nexus Triangle
Draw a triangle with F (Food), E (Energy), and W (Water) at each corner. Every arrow points both ways:
- F → W: Producing food uses 70% of global freshwater
- W → E: Treating and pumping water requires energy
- E → W: Generating electricity (nuclear, coal, hydro) requires large quantities of water
- E → F: Food production needs energy for fertilisers, machinery, and cold storage
- W → F: Irrigation makes food production possible in dry regions
- F → E: Biofuels use agricultural land and crops to generate energy
The exam trick: When answering any resource question, ask yourself "how does this connect to the other two resources?" That one habit separates Level 2 from Level 3.
L1 → L2 → L3 Answer Ladder
Question: "Explain why resource demand is increasing." [6 marks]
Level 1: "More people means more demand for food and water." — Basic statement, no development.
Level 2: "As the world's population grows from 8 billion to a projected 9.7 billion by 2050, more food, water and energy are needed. Economic development in NEEs like China means people can afford meat-heavy diets, which require 10× more water per calorie than plant-based diets. This greatly increases water and land demand."
Level 3: "Resource demand is rising due to interlinked factors: population growth (8 billion today, projected 9.7 billion by 2050) creates more consumers; economic development in NEEs shifts diets towards meat (requiring 10× more water per calorie); urbanisation increases energy consumption per person; and climate change paradoxically both increases demand (for cooling and irrigation) and reduces supply (glacial retreat affects 2 billion people's water). These factors compound each other — a growing, more affluent, urbanising population in a warming world creates a 'resource crunch' that individual solutions like water metering cannot alone resolve."
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 16
Which of the following is a renewable resource?
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