Question

conclusion for How to save natural resources

Answer 1

My degrees are in “Conservation and Resource Planning” from the School of Natural Resources and Environment. Fifty years ago they prepared me for an amazing career of environmental applications using new satellite imaging technologies and in helping to design resource monitoring facilities in countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. I’ve seen first hand how in a generation our world has gone from a “wild-west” of resource exploitation to opportunities for sustainable management today.

We know that non-renewable stock resources such as petroleum and metals and minerals are available in finite quantities and will run out some day. Renewable resources, such as forests, fisheries, freshwater, can be sustainable forever if attention is give to their protection and careful management. We know how to do it.

Sadly short-sighted exploitation companies are still in a “cutout and get-out” mode that assumes natural resources to be limitless. Many rich and beautiful ecosystems around the world continue to be despoiled and abandoned — with losses to the livelihoods of natives. Many freshwater sources are failing, e.g. aquifers in the western U.S. and great lakes once rich with fisheries, e.g. Lake Chad in African and the Aral Sea in Asia. Clearly, nations must learn to work together in the conservation of natural resources if future generations are to enjoy the same life-sustaining environments that we have today.