Accessing Non-Renewable Resources Essay Paper

Countries with access to the planet’s resources continue to grow at a great pace, placing a tremendous strain on the availability of non-renewable resources. What responsibility do these countries have with regard to the rest of the world’s access to these resources?

Accessing non-renewable resources

Non-renewable resources refer to naturally occurring materials that are used in facilitating economic activity but cannot be replaced by natural materials at the same level of consumption since they take millions or even billions of years to form. An example of a non-renewable resource is fossil fuels (such as coal, natural gas and oil) whose supply is limited, use unsustainable, and natural formation takes billions of years. The formation of non-renewable resources is typically unequal, with difficult countries providing them while others do not have natural reserves and must rely on trade to acquire these resources (Pittock, 2013). Given the unequal distribution of natural resources reserves, the question then becomes: ‘what is the responsibility of the producers with regards to the resource access by non-producing countries?’ The truth is that the producers’ responsibility to non-producers does not exceed economic and ethical duties.

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The producers have an economic responsibility of ensuring that they can present a good standard of living for its citizens through using the resources in international trade that earns money to address public projects. In addition, they have an ethical responsibility in ensuring that these resources are traded in a free market that offers equal opportunity for trade to non-producers who seek the resource. Also, they have an ethical responsibility in ensuring that supply is controlled to address the existing demand without creating artificial shortages through hoarding. These concerns are understandable since the reality is that the global population is increasing at a rate that it is difficult to maintain the distribution of non-renewable resources stock at the same size per capita. The rising population creates a situation whereby per capita resource availability is diminishing, and is being complicated by the stocks’ depletion and pollution (Chambers & Humble, 2012). In this respect, countries that produce non-renewable resources have the responsibility of availing these resources to non-producers through equitable trade that notes both the economic and ethical concerns.

References

Chambers, I. & Humble, J. (2012). Plan for the planet: a business plan for a sustainable world. Burlington, VT: Gower Publishing Company.

Pittock, B. (2013). Climate change: the science, impacts and solutions (2^nd ed.). New York, NY: Earthscan.  Accessing Non-Renewable Resources Essay Paper