Chapter 1 — ସମ୍ବଳ

In everyday speech we call many things resources: money, coal, a good teacher, the rain. In geography the word has a precise meaning. A resource is anything in our environment that can be used to satisfy a human need, provided it is technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally acceptable. Each of the three conditions matters. Petroleum lying five kilometres below the sea floor is not a resource for a community that has no drilling technology. Gold that would cost more to dig out than it would fetch in the market is not an economically feasible resource. Beef cattle may be an accepted food resource in one society and unacceptable in another; the culture decides.

This means that a resource is not a thing that exists by itself. Nothing in nature is a resource until people give it a function. The river Mahanadi flowed through Odisha for millions of years, but it became a resource for hydro-electricity and irrigation only when engineers built the Hirakud dam in the 1950s. Bauxite in the Koraput hills was ordinary red earth to the people who lived there until the technology to turn it into aluminium arrived. Because of this, geographers say that resources are not, they become.

The value of a resource also changes with time and knowledge. Uranium had no use before the twentieth century; today it is a precious energy resource. Wind has been used to drive sailing boats for thousands of years, but it has become an important electricity resource only in the last few decades. On the other hand, some resources lose their importance: whale oil, once a major fuel for lamps, is now hardly used.

Human beings themselves are a resource, and the most important one. A population with skill, education and health can create resources out of ordinary material, while a large but unskilled population may remain poor in the middle of plenty. Japan has very few minerals yet is one of the richest countries; several mineral-rich regions of Africa and of India remain poor. The difference lies in the human resource, in technology and in institutions.

So the study of resources in this course is really the study of the relationship between people and their environment: what the earth offers, what people are able to take from it, and how wisely they take it. Every later unit in this book, on land, soil, forest, wildlife, water, minerals, energy, agriculture, industry and transport, applies this single idea to one kind of resource.

Resources come into existence through the interaction of three things: nature, technology and institutions. A good way to picture this is a triangle. At one corner stands nature, which provides the raw material: rocks, soil, water, plants, animals, sunlight, wind. At the second corner stands technology, the knowledge and tools by which people convert natural material into useful goods. At the third corner stand institutions, the rules, laws, customs, organisations and markets through which a society decides who may use what and how.

Human beings are at the centre of this triangle. They are part of nature, they invent technology and they build institutions. When people use technology on nature within a framework of institutions, resources appear. Take a hill of iron ore. Nature has placed it there. Technology in the form of surveys, mining machinery, railways and blast furnaces makes it possible to turn the ore into steel. Institutions such as the Mines and Minerals Act, the state government that grants a lease, the company that operates the mine and the market that buys the steel decide whether and how the ore is actually used. Remove any one corner and the hill remains a hill.

This explains why the same natural material is a resource in one place and not in another. The Gangetic plain and the Mahanadi delta both have fertile alluvial soil, but the level of development of the two depends on the technology of farming and the institutions of land ownership, credit and irrigation. It also explains why the list of resources keeps growing. Each new technology, whether the steam engine, the electric motor or the silicon chip, has added new items to the list.

The triangle also warns us. Technology can create resources but it can also destroy them. Powerful machines can strip a forest in a week that took two centuries to grow. Institutions can protect resources through laws and community rules, or waste them through corruption and short-sighted policies. The way a society organises itself therefore matters as much as what nature has given it.

In India the institutional side has been shaped by the Constitution, which places most natural resources under the control of the states, by the Five Year Plans that directed investment, and by laws on forests, wildlife, water and mines. In Odisha, tribal communities have their own long-standing institutions for sharing forest produce, and village committees today manage forests under joint forest management. These are all part of the institutional corner of the resource triangle.

Resources are grouped in several ways depending on what we want to study. The first and simplest classification is by origin, that is, whether the resource is living or non-living.

Biotic resources are those obtained from the biosphere, the zone of life. They have life or are derived from living things. Forests and their products such as timber, fuelwood, bamboo, lac, honey and medicinal plants are biotic. So are crops, grasses, animals, birds, fish and even micro-organisms such as the yeast used in baking. Human beings themselves are counted among biotic resources. Fossil fuels, coal and petroleum, are also usually placed in the biotic group because they were formed from the remains of plants and animals buried millions of years ago, although they behave like minerals today.

Abiotic resources are those made up of non-living things. Land, water, air, sunlight, rocks and minerals such as iron ore, bauxite, limestone and manganese are all abiotic. They come from the lithosphere, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere.

Why does this classification matter? Because biotic and abiotic resources behave differently when they are used. Most biotic resources can reproduce themselves. A forest regrows if it is cut carefully; fish stocks recover if fishing is controlled; a crop is harvested every season. Their supply can therefore be kept up indefinitely by wise management, but it can also collapse completely if they are used faster than they can reproduce. Many abiotic resources such as minerals do not regenerate at all on a human time scale, so every tonne removed is gone forever, though some abiotic resources like solar energy, wind and flowing water are inexhaustible.

The classification is also useful for understanding an economy. Odisha earns a large part of its income from abiotic resources, chiefly iron ore, bauxite, coal and chromite, while a large part of its population depends directly on biotic resources, on farming, forest produce and fishing. Both need to be planned, but the planning is different. Mineral planning asks how long a deposit will last and what to do when it is exhausted; biotic planning asks how much can be harvested each year without harming the stock.

Notice that the two groups are linked. Soil, which is abiotic in its mineral part, contains living organisms and decayed plant matter, and its fertility depends on both. Water is abiotic but supports every biotic resource. In nature no resource exists alone.

The most important classification for planning is by exhaustibility, that is, whether a resource is used up or can be renewed.

Renewable resources are those that can be renewed or reproduced by physical, chemical or mechanical processes. Solar energy, wind energy, water, forests and wildlife are renewable. Some of them are truly inexhaustible: the sun will shine and the wind will blow whatever we do, so they are called flow or continuous resources. Others are renewable only if used carefully. A forest is renewable because trees grow back, but if a forest is cleared faster than it regenerates, it becomes exhausted. Groundwater is renewed by rainfall, but if pumping exceeds recharge the water table falls year after year. Such resources are called biological or conditionally renewable resources; their renewal takes time and depends on human behaviour.

Non-renewable resources are those that take millions of years to form and cannot be replaced once used. Minerals and fossil fuels are the chief examples. The coal of Talcher was laid down about 250 million years ago; the iron ore of the Bonai-Keonjhar belt is older still. Each tonne taken out of the ground reduces the total that remains. Some non-renewable resources, such as metals, can be recycled: scrap iron can be melted and used again, aluminium cans can be re-formed. Others, such as coal and petroleum, are destroyed in use; once burnt they cannot be recovered. Hence non-renewable resources are subdivided into recyclable (metals) and non-recyclable (fossil fuels).

This classification determines how a resource should be used. For a renewable resource the rule is simple: use no more each year than nature replaces. For a non-renewable resource the questions are how long the reserve will last at the present rate of use, how it can be used more efficiently, how much can be recycled, and what substitute can be developed before it runs out. For example, India is developing solar and wind power partly because its coal and oil are limited.

The problem of the modern world is that we treat renewable resources as if they were inexhaustible and non-renewable resources as if they were renewable. Forests are felled without replanting; groundwater is pumped without recharge; petroleum is burnt as if the supply were endless. A thoughtful student should be able to place any resource in this scheme and say what kind of care it requires.

Resources may also be classified according to who owns them. Ownership decides who has the right to use a resource, who is responsible for its care and who benefits from it. Four classes are recognised.

Individual resources are owned privately by persons or families. A farmer's field, the well in a house compound, a plantation of cashew trees, a pond dug by a family, a house and the plot on which it stands are individual resources. In villages many people own agricultural land; in towns people own house plots. The owner decides how the resource is used, within the limits of the law, and enjoys the returns from it.

Community-owned resources are accessible to all members of a community. The village grazing ground, the village pond or tank, the burial ground, the common threshing floor and the public park or playground of a town belong to this class. Nobody owns them individually; everybody in the community may use them. Because the responsibility is shared, such resources are easily neglected or over-used, a situation often called the tragedy of the commons. In Odisha, the tradition of village forests protected by the community is a good example of community resources being well managed.

National resources belong to the nation. Technically all resources within the political boundary of a country belong to it. The state has the legal power to acquire even private property for the public good, and it does so when land is needed for roads, railways, canals or dams. Minerals, water in rivers, forests, wildlife and the land within the territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles from the coast are national resources. The Hirakud reservoir, the Similipal forest and the coal fields of Talcher are all national resources.

International resources are those regulated by international institutions. The oceanic resources beyond 200 nautical miles of the Exclusive Economic Zone belong to the open ocean and no single country can use them without the consent of international institutions. Antarctica and the resources of outer space are similar. The area between 12 and 200 nautical miles is the Exclusive Economic Zone, where the coastal country has the right to use the resources of the sea, the sea floor and the sub-soil, though it is not part of the country's territory.

This classification is important for governance. The rules for a private field, a village tank, a national forest and the deep sea are all different, and conflicts often arise where ownership is unclear, for example over water shared by two states.

The fourth classification looks at how far a resource has actually been developed. A material may exist in a region without being used at all, or it may be fully surveyed and in use. Four terms describe these situations.

Potential resources are those that are found in a region but have not been utilised. Their quantity may be known roughly or not at all. The wind and solar energy of Rajasthan and Gujarat were potential resources for a long time before wind farms and solar parks were built. The tidal energy of the Gulf of Kutch is still largely potential. Many minerals in remote hills are potential resources waiting for surveys, roads and demand.

Developed resources are those that have been surveyed, whose quantity and quality have been determined, and which are being used. The degree of development depends on technology and on the feasibility of use. The iron ore mines of Keonjhar, the coal fields of Talcher, the Hirakud reservoir and the cultivated land of the Mahanadi delta are developed resources of Odisha.

Stock refers to materials in the environment that could satisfy human needs but which people do not have the technology to use. The commonest example is water. Water is made of hydrogen and oxygen, both of which are rich sources of energy, but we do not yet have the technology to split water cheaply and use the hydrogen as a fuel on a large scale. So water as an energy source is a stock. Similarly, the heat of the earth's interior at great depths is a stock.

Reserves are a part of the stock that can be used with present technology, but whose use has not yet started. They are kept aside for future requirements. The water in a dam is a reserve for irrigation and power; forests are a reserve of timber; the known but unmined coal seams of the Ib valley are a reserve. A reserve becomes a developed resource when its use begins.

These terms are used carefully in mineral statistics. Total geological occurrence is the stock; the part that is proved and economically mineable is the reserve; the part being mined is developed. When you read that India has so many million tonnes of a mineral, ask whether the figure is stock, reserve or production.

The status of a resource changes with time and technology. Stock turns into reserve when a technology is found; reserve turns into developed resource when investment is made; and a developed resource can be exhausted and disappear altogether. Good planning tries to convert potential resources into developed ones while conserving reserves for the future.

Resources are not spread evenly over the earth or over a country. This unevenness is one of the basic facts of geography and the starting point of resource planning.

At the world scale, petroleum is concentrated in West Asia, Russia, the United States and a few other regions; iron ore in Australia, Brazil, Russia, China and India; fertile plains in the great river valleys of Asia and the mid-latitudes; and dense forests in the equatorial belt and the northern coniferous zone. Some countries such as Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia and Brazil are rich in almost every resource; many others have little.

Within India the picture is the same. Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh hold most of the country's minerals, but they are among the states with the highest poverty. Punjab and Haryana have no minerals but have highly developed land and water resources and prosperous farming. Rajasthan has a great deal of solar and wind energy but very little water. Arunachal Pradesh and the north-eastern states have abundant water and forests but poor infrastructure. Ladakh has a rich cultural heritage and scenic beauty but is deficient in water, farm land and minerals.

Within Odisha too the distribution is uneven. The coastal plain has fertile alluvial soil, plentiful rain and dense population, but hardly any minerals. The northern plateau of Keonjhar, Sundargarh and Mayurbhanj has iron ore, manganese, chromite and forests. The Eastern Ghats region of Koraput, Rayagada and Kalahandi has bauxite, forests and tribal population but poor soil for farming. Angul, Dhenkanal and Jharsuguda have the coal.

This unevenness has several consequences. First, the availability of a resource does not guarantee development: what matters is the technology and the institutions to use it. Regions rich in a resource may be poor because the benefit flows elsewhere, a situation called the resource curse. Second, uneven distribution creates trade and movement: iron ore travels from Odisha to Japan and China, wheat from Punjab to Kerala, coal from Talcher to power stations in the south. Third, it creates conflict, for example between states sharing a river. Fourth, it means that planning must be regional, tailored to what each region has and lacks, rather than one plan for all.

Understanding the map of resources is therefore the first step. A planner must know where a resource is, in what quantity, and whether the people of that region have the means to use it.

Resources are vital to human survival and to the quality of life, and for a long time people believed that nature was an inexhaustible gift. That belief has led to serious problems, which this section sets out.

Depletion. Resources have been used indiscriminately to satisfy the greed of a few individuals and a few nations. Forests have been cut for timber and farm land, fish stocks have been over-harvested, groundwater has been pumped beyond recharge, and mineral deposits have been mined without thought for the future. Many resources that once seemed unlimited are now scarce. Several species of plants and animals have become extinct, and many more are endangered.

Concentration in a few hands. The accumulation of resources by a few has divided society into rich and poor. Within a country a small number of people control large tracts of land, mines and industries, while millions have no productive resources at all. Between countries, the developed nations consume far more than their share: a citizen of the United States uses many times the energy of a citizen of India. The gap between the resource-rich and the resource-poor has grown.

Environmental crisis. Careless exploitation has produced global problems: global warming from the burning of fossil fuels, the thinning of the ozone layer, pollution of air and water, and the degradation of land through erosion, salinity and desertification. In Odisha the clearing of forests for mining and the run-off from mine dumps have polluted rivers such as the Brahmani and the Baitarani; the coastal belt suffers from saline intrusion; and mine dust affects the health of people in Sukinda, Joda and Barbil.

Loss of livelihoods. When forests are cut or land is taken for mines and dams, the people who depended on them, often tribal communities, lose their means of living and are displaced. Hirakud displaced more than a lakh people; mining in Sundargarh and Keonjhar and industries in Kalinganagar have displaced many more.

The lesson is that an equitable distribution of resources has become essential for a sustained quality of life and for global peace. If the present trend of resource depletion continues, the future of the planet is in danger. The way out is not to stop using resources, since that is impossible, but to plan their use. That is the subject of the next section.

Resource planning is the technique or skill of the proper and judicious use of resources. It means deciding, on the basis of surveys and information, how the resources of a region should be used so that present needs are met without exhausting what future generations will need, and so that the benefits are shared fairly.

Planning is needed for several reasons that follow directly from what we have learnt. First, resources are limited while human wants are unlimited; without planning, a resource is used up by the first comers and nothing remains. Second, resources are unevenly distributed; some regions are self-sufficient, some are rich in one resource and poor in others, and some are poor in all. A plan is needed to match resource with need, moving surplus to deficit regions and developing what each region has. Third, many resources are non-renewable; their use must be spread over time and substitutes must be prepared. Fourth, uncontrolled use damages the environment, so planning must set limits on pollution and degradation. Fifth, development needs a sequence: minerals cannot be mined without roads and power, farms cannot be irrigated without dams and canals, and none of these can be built without trained people; a plan orders these steps.

Resource planning is especially important for a country like India, which has enormous diversity in the availability of resources. There are regions rich in certain types of resources but deficient in others. Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have minerals and coal but lack water and infrastructure; Arunachal Pradesh has water but poor infrastructure; Rajasthan has solar and wind energy but little water. Each calls for its own kind of plan.

In a developing country planning also serves social justice. The Constitution directs the state to ensure that the ownership and control of material resources are distributed to serve the common good and that wealth is not concentrated in a few hands. Resource planning is one of the instruments for this. Land reforms, the reservation of forest produce for tribal communities, and the allocation of mining royalties to the districts from which minerals are taken are examples.

Finally, planning is needed at every level, from the nation to the village. A national plan decides where to build a steel plant; a state plan decides which river to dam; a district plan decides which watershed to treat; a village plan decides how to share the tank water among fields. Odisha has district mineral foundations that spend mining revenue on local development, an example of resource planning at the district level.

Resource planning is a complex process that runs through three stages. Each stage builds on the one before it, and a weakness at any stage weakens the whole plan.

Stage one: identification and inventory of resources. Before anything can be planned, the planner must know what resources exist, where, in what quantity and quality. This involves surveying, mapping and the qualitative and quantitative estimation and measurement of the resources. In India this work is done by specialised agencies: the Survey of India prepares topographical maps; the Geological Survey of India surveys minerals; the Forest Survey of India estimates forest cover every two years; the Central Ground Water Board measures groundwater; the National Bureau of Soil Survey maps soils; the Census counts the human resource; and satellite images from the Indian Space Research Organisation cover the whole country. In Odisha the Directorate of Mines and Geology and the Odisha Space Applications Centre carry out similar work at the state level.

Stage two: evolving a planning structure. Once the inventory is ready, a planning structure must be developed, endowed with appropriate technology, skill and institutional set-up, for implementing the plans. This means deciding which technology to use, training the people who will run it, and creating the organisations, whether a public sector corporation, a cooperative, a panchayat committee or a private company, and the laws under which they will act. For example, once the Mahanadi's flow was measured, engineers designed the Hirakud dam, the state created an irrigation department to run the canals, and cooperatives were set up to distribute the water.

Stage three: matching the resource development plans with overall national development plans. The resource plan must fit into the larger economic and social plan of the country. There is no point in developing a coal field if there is no railway to carry the coal or no power station to burn it. A steel plant must be matched with iron ore, coking coal, water, power, transport and a market. A resource plan that ignores the national plan wastes money; a national plan that ignores resources fails.

India has made concerted efforts at resource planning since the First Five Year Plan (1951-56). The early plans built the great multipurpose dams and steel plants, including Rourkela in Odisha; later plans stressed agriculture and the green revolution; the most recent stress renewable energy, water conservation and sustainable use. Odisha's own plans have moved from mining and heavy industry towards a balance with agriculture, irrigation and forest protection.

Notice that the availability of resources alone is not enough. Many regions rich in resources remain backward because the second and third stages were never properly carried out: no technology, no institutions, no link to the wider economy.

Resources are vital for any development activity, but irrational consumption and over-utilisation may lead to socio-economic and environmental problems. To overcome these problems, resource conservation at various levels is important. Conservation means the wise use of resources so that they last as long as possible, are not wasted, and are available to future generations.

The idea has been advocated by many thinkers. Mahatma Gandhi expressed it most clearly: there is enough for everybody's need but not for anybody's greed. He placed the responsibility for resource depletion on greedy and selfish individuals and on the exploitative nature of modern technology. He was against mass production and wanted to replace it with production by the masses, so that the benefits of resources would be spread widely and their use would be gentle.

At the international level, conservation was put on the world agenda by the Club of Rome, which in 1968 advocated resource conservation in a systematic way, and by its 1972 report Limits to Growth, which warned that the earth could not support endless growth in population and consumption. In 1974 the economist Schumacher published Small is Beautiful, restating the Gandhian view. The Brundtland Commission report of 1987, titled Our Common Future, introduced the concept of sustainable development. All these led to the Rio Earth Summit of 1992.

Conservation is practised in different ways for different resources. For non-renewable resources such as minerals and fossil fuels: use them efficiently, avoid waste, recycle metals, find substitutes such as solar and wind energy for coal and petroleum, and spread the use over a long period. For renewable resources: use them within the limit of their renewal, replant forests, control fishing, recharge groundwater, and protect breeding areas of wildlife. For land and soil: prevent erosion, avoid over-cropping, and reclaim degraded land. For water: harvest rainwater, reduce leakage, treat and reuse waste water.

Conservation also needs institutions: laws such as the Forest Conservation Act of 1980, the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 and the Environment Protection Act of 1986; agencies to enforce them; and above all the participation of people. The Chipko movement in the Himalaya and the community forest protection groups of Odisha show that people who depend on a resource are its best guardians when they are given the right and the responsibility.

Every student can practise conservation: switching off lights, saving water, refusing plastic, planting trees and reusing materials. Conservation is not a sacrifice; it is intelligent use.

Sustainable development means development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It asks us to treat the earth as something borrowed from our children rather than inherited from our parents. Development should take place without damaging the environment, and the development of the present should not put the future at risk.

The idea has three pillars: economic growth, so that people can escape poverty; social equity, so that the benefits are shared fairly among people and between generations; and environmental protection, so that the natural base on which everything rests is kept intact. A project that produces wealth but destroys a forest and displaces a community is not sustainable; a project that protects a forest but leaves the people around it hungry is not sustainable either. The balance among the three is the whole art of sustainable development.

The concept became a world commitment at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, popularly called the Earth Summit, held at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992. More than a hundred heads of state attended the first international Earth Summit convened to address urgent problems of environmental protection and socio-economic development at the global level. The assembled leaders signed the Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity, endorsed the Rio Declaration on environment and development and the Forest Principles, and adopted a global plan of action called Agenda 21.

Agenda 21 is a declaration signed by the world leaders at Rio. It aims at achieving global sustainable development. It is an agenda to combat environmental damage, poverty and disease through global cooperation on common interests, mutual needs and shared responsibilities. One of its major objectives is that every local government should draw up its own Local Agenda 21, so that sustainable development is planned at the level of towns and villages, not only nations. The number 21 refers to the twenty-first century.

India has translated these commitments into national action: the National Action Plan on Climate Change, the missions on solar energy, energy efficiency, water and the Himalaya, the Biological Diversity Act of 2002, and the target of forest and tree cover on one-third of the land. Odisha's coastal management plans, its community forest management and the protection of Bhitarkanika and Chilika are local applications of the same idea.

For a Class 10 student the message is simple: development and environment are not enemies. The task of this generation is to find the path along which both can go together.

Odisha, with a geographical area of about 1,55,707 square kilometres, is one of the resource-rich states of India, and this unit ends with a survey of that wealth, which later units will study one by one.

Land. The state has four natural regions: the coastal plain, the central tableland, the northern plateau and the Eastern Ghats, each with a different land use. The coastal plain, built by the Mahanadi, Brahmani, Baitarani and other rivers, is the most fertile and densely settled. About a third of the state is under cultivation, and about a third is forest.

Soil. Red soil covers most of the interior uplands; laterite soil occurs on the plateau edges; rich alluvial soil covers the deltas; black soil is found in patches of the western districts; and saline soil fringes the coast.

Forests and wildlife. Odisha's recorded forest area is over 58,000 square kilometres, more than a third of the state, among the highest proportions in India. The forests are mainly tropical moist and dry deciduous, dominated by sal. Similipal in Mayurbhanj is a biosphere reserve and tiger reserve; Bhitarkanika in Kendrapara has India's second largest mangrove forest and the salt-water crocodile; Gahirmatha beach is the world's largest nesting ground of the olive ridley sea turtle; Chilika is Asia's largest brackish-water lagoon and a haven for migratory birds; Nandankanan near Bhubaneswar is a famous zoological park.

Water. The state receives about 150 centimetres of rain a year and is drained by the Mahanadi, Brahmani, Baitarani, Subarnarekha, Budhabalanga, Rushikulya and Vamsadhara. The Hirakud dam on the Mahanadi, one of the longest dams in the world, and the Rengali dam on the Brahmani, the Upper Indravati and Upper Kolab projects are its major multipurpose projects. A coastline of about 480 kilometres gives marine fisheries and the ports of Paradip, Dhamra and Gopalpur.

Minerals. Odisha holds a very large share of India's chromite (Sukinda), bauxite (Koraput, Kalahandi, Rayagada), iron ore (Keonjhar, Sundargarh, Mayurbhanj), manganese, nickel and coal (Talcher, Ib valley). It is the leading mineral-producing state of the country by value.

Energy. Coal supports large thermal power stations at Talcher and Ib valley; Hirakud, Balimela, Upper Kolab and Upper Indravati produce hydro-electricity; solar and wind are being developed.

Human resource. Over four crore people, with a literacy rate of about 73 per cent according to the 2011 Census, and a rich tradition of crafts, agriculture and culture.

The paradox of Odisha is that this abundance has not yet turned into prosperity for all its people. The reason, as this unit has shown, lies in technology, institutions and planning, not in nature. The state's task is sustainable use of its resources for the benefit of its own people.

This unit has moved from a definition to a world view, and it is worth gathering the threads before the lessons that follow.

First, a resource is made, not found. Nature supplies material; human technology and institutions turn it into a resource. The most valuable resource is therefore the human being, and the most valuable investment is in education, health and skill. A state like Odisha with abundant minerals and forests will prosper only when its people have the ability to use them.

Second, resources must be classified before they are planned. Ask of any resource: is it biotic or abiotic? renewable or non-renewable? who owns it? how far is it developed? The answers tell the planner what kind of care it needs. A renewable resource needs a harvest limit; a non-renewable resource needs efficiency, recycling and substitution; a community resource needs rules of sharing; a potential resource needs survey and investment.

Third, distribution is uneven, and this makes planning regional. A single scheme cannot suit the Mahanadi delta, the Keonjhar plateau and the Koraput hills. Each region must be planned for what it has and lacks, and surplus and deficit regions must be linked through transport and trade.

Fourth, careless use has already caused damage: depletion, inequality, pollution, displacement. The answer is resource planning in three stages, inventory, planning structure and integration with national goals, and conservation at every level, from the international convention to the household.

Fifth, sustainable development is the goal. Since Rio in 1992 the world has agreed that development must meet present needs without robbing the future. Agenda 21 asks every local body to plan sustainably. This is not a slogan for governments alone; it guides the choices of farmers, industries, students and consumers.

In the examination, questions on this unit take several forms: one-word answers on definitions and classifications; short notes on Agenda 21, resource planning, or the Rio Summit; distinguishing pairs such as renewable and non-renewable, stock and reserve, potential and developed; and longer answers on the need for resource planning or the problems of indiscriminate use. Practise writing each classification with two examples, at least one of them from Odisha, and always define a term before you explain it.

The units that follow take up land, soil, forests, wildlife, water, minerals, energy, agriculture, industry, and transport and trade in turn. In each, keep this framework in mind: what is the resource, how is it distributed, how is it used, what problems has its use created, and how can it be conserved and developed sustainably.