The Challenge of Resource ManagementDefinitions
Key Terms
Part of Resource Management Overview — GCSE Geography
This definitions covers Key Terms within Resource Management Overview for GCSE Geography. Revise Resource Management Overview in The Challenge of Resource Management for GCSE Geography with 15 exam-style questions and 22 flashcards. This is a high-frequency topic, so it is worth revising until the explanation feels precise and repeatable. It is section 11 of 16 in this topic. Make sure you can use the exact wording confidently, because definition marks are often lost through vague language.
Topic position
Section 11 of 16
Practice
15 questions
Recall
22 flashcards
📖 Key Terms
- Resource security
- Having reliable access to sufficient quantities of a resource — food, water, or energy — at an affordable price, both now and in the future. Resource security requires not just physical supply, but appropriate infrastructure, distribution systems, governance, and economic access.
- Resource insecurity
- A situation where a country or community cannot reliably access enough of a resource to meet its needs. Causes include physical shortage, inadequate infrastructure, high cost, poor governance, and political instability. Critically, resource insecurity affects both low-income countries (Sub-Saharan Africa) and regions of wealthy nations (South-East England's water stress).
- The FEW Nexus (Food-Energy-Water Nexus)
- The interconnected relationship between food, water, and energy systems. Managing one resource in isolation risks creating problems in the others. Agriculture uses 70% of global freshwater; food production requires energy for fertilisers and transport; generating energy requires water for cooling; treating water requires energy. Top-mark answers demonstrate awareness of these linkages.
- Water stress
- A condition where demand for water approaches or exceeds available supply, or where quality restricts its use. A country or region is water-stressed when it uses more than 25% of available renewable freshwater; it is severely water-stressed at over 40%. South-East England is classified as seriously water-stressed by the Environment Agency despite the UK's overall wet climate.
- Food security
- Reliable access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet dietary needs and preferences for an active and healthy life. Food insecurity can result from inadequate production, unaffordable prices, disrupted distribution systems, or conflict — not simply from a global shortage of calories.
- Energy poverty
- A lack of access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy services. Affects 733 million people globally (IEA, 2022), mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Energy poverty is strongly correlated with low human development: without electricity, healthcare, education, and economic productivity are severely limited.
- Sustainable management
- Managing resources to meet present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland Commission, 1987). Sustainable management involves using renewable resources within their rate of regeneration, reducing waste, and ensuring equitable access across current and future populations.
- Renewable resource
- A resource that can be naturally replenished at a rate sufficient to meet human demand if managed carefully — solar energy, wind, tidal power, sustainably harvested timber and fish. In contrast to non-renewable resources, renewable resources do not become permanently depleted through use.
- Non-renewable resource
- A resource that forms over geological timescales and cannot be replenished on any human timescale — coal, oil, natural gas, and mineral ores. Once consumed, non-renewable resources cannot be replaced. Fossil groundwater (ancient water stored in deep aquifers) is also effectively non-renewable.