Q1.
What might be the different criteria we can use to categorise natural resources?
Answer
A criterion is simply the shared characteristic you sort by. Change the criterion and you get a different, equally valid set of categories.
| Criterion | Categories it produces | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| What we use it for (the chapter's first criterion) | Essential for life · for materials · for energy | Air and water · timber and marble · coal and sunlight |
| Whether Nature renews it (the chapter's second criterion) | Renewable · non-renewable | Wind, flowing water, forest timber · coal, petroleum, gold |
| Living or non-living origin | Biotic · abiotic | Forests, fisheries, livestock · minerals, metals, rock |
| Where it is found | Atmospheric · water · land and soil · sub-surface (mineral) | Air · rivers and groundwater · farmland · iron ore, bauxite |
| Stage of development | Known but unused · in use | Petroleum under deep ocean we cannot yet reach · Mumbai High, in production |
| Who it belongs to | Individual · community · national · international | A farmer's well · a village pond or grove · a coal field · the open ocean |
Why more than one criterion is useful: each answers a different question. ‘Biotic or abiotic' tells you whether the stock can reproduce itself. ‘Renewable or not' tells you whether you may keep drawing on it. ‘Who owns it' tells you who must agree before it is used — which is precisely why the Kaveri needed an agreement between four States (page 10). No single categorisation is the ‘right' one; you pick the criterion that fits the decision you have to make.
Tip: a good criterion has to sort every resource, and put each one in only one box. Test yours on an awkward case — groundwater. It renews, but slowly; that is what makes it easy to over-draw, and why Punjab appears later in the chapter.