Classifying resources by origin and exhaustibility

Detail

What a resource is, and the four ways to classify it

• Resource: anything in our surroundings that meets a human need, can be reached with the technology we have, costs a reasonable amount to use, and is accepted by society.
• NCERT Class 10 (Fig. 1.2) sorts resources on four bases:

Basis	Question it asks	Classes
Origin	Is it living or non-living?	Biotic / Abiotic
Exhaustibility	Can it be renewed, or will it run out?	Renewable / Non-renewable
Ownership	Who owns it?	Individual, community, national, international
Status of development	How far has it been surveyed and used?	Potential, developed, stock, reserves

• This section covers the first two bases. Ownership and status of development come in the next section.
• One resource can belong to several classes at once. A forest is biotic (by origin), renewable (by exhaustibility), often national (by ownership) and developed (by status).

Basis 1 — Origin: biotic and abiotic

• Biotic resource: a resource that comes from the biosphere (the zone of Earth where life exists) and has life.

• Examples: human beings, flora (plants), fauna (animals), fisheries and livestock.

• Abiotic resource: a resource made of non-living things.

• Examples: rocks, metals, minerals, water, air.

Feature	Biotic	Abiotic
Life	Living	Non-living
Source	Biosphere	Lithosphere (rock), hydrosphere (water), atmosphere (air)
Examples	Forests, fish, cattle, humans	Iron ore, bauxite, coal, water, air
Can it grow back?	Yes, by reproduction, if not overused	No reproduction; some are recycled by natural cycles (water, air)

• Trap: coal and petroleum are abiotic.
• They formed from dead plants and animals, so their origin is organic (from living things).
• Over millions of years these remains were buried, pressed and heated until they became coal, oil and gas.
• They are no longer alive, so they count as abiotic.

• The test is "is it living now?", not "was it ever living?"

• Humans as a biotic resource: people are counted as a resource because their skills, labour and knowledge turn other materials into resources. This is the idea behind "human resource".

Basis 2 — Exhaustibility: renewable and non-renewable

• Renewable resource: a resource that can be renewed or reproduced by physical, chemical or mechanical processes.

• Examples: solar energy, wind energy, water, forests, wildlife.

• Non-renewable resource: a resource that took a very long geological time (millions of years) to form. Once used up, it cannot be replaced on a human time scale.

• Examples: minerals and fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, natural gas).

Two kinds of renewable resources

Sub-type	Meaning	Examples
Continuous or flow resources	Supplied all the time by nature; using them today does not reduce tomorrow's supply	Wind, water (flowing), solar energy
Biological resources	Living things that reproduce and grow back	Forests, wildlife

Two kinds of non-renewable resources

Sub-type	Meaning	Examples
Recyclable	Can be collected and used again after use	Metals: iron, copper, aluminium
Used up once used (non-recyclable)	Gone forever once used	Fossil fuels: coal and petroleum are destroyed once burnt

• Why fossil fuels cannot be recycled:
• Burning breaks the fuel down into carbon dioxide, water vapour and heat.
• The heat is used, and the gases go into the air.

• Nothing is left to collect and reuse.

• Why metals can be recycled:

• A metal keeps its chemical nature after use.
• Scrap can be melted and shaped again.
• This is why scrap recycling matters for a country with limited ores.

Renewability is conditional: restoration and regeneration

• Class 8 NCERT adds an important point. "Renewable" does not mean "endless".
• Nature renews resources in two ways:
• Restoration: nature brings a damaged system back to a healthy state. Example: a river cleans itself when the pollution stops.

• Regeneration: nature creates new life. Examples: seeds grow into trees, and fish breed.

• Nature works in cycles with no waste. The waste of one living thing becomes food for another. Fallen leaves, for example, rot and feed the soil.

• Rule: a renewable resource stays renewable only if we use it more slowly than nature restores and regenerates it.
• Use < regeneration → the resource lasts.
• Use > regeneration → the stock shrinks → a "renewable" resource behaves like a non-renewable one.

Cases of overuse

• Timber: trees are cut faster than new trees can grow. The forest shrinks even though trees are a renewable resource.
• Himalayan glaciers, the "water tower" of Asia:
• The glaciers store snow as ice and release meltwater slowly into rivers such as the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra.
• Warming melts the ice faster than snowfall and rainfall replace it.
• As a result, the glaciers shrink, and river flow will drop over the long term.
• The average retreat of Hindu Kush–Himalayan glaciers is about 14.9 ± 15.1 m a year. Retreat is fastest in the Brahmaputra basin (about 20.2 m a year), then the Ganga basin (about 15.5 m a year) and the Indus basin (about 12.7 m a year) (as reported to Parliament, 2022) [3].

• Melting glaciers also form and enlarge glacial lakes. This raises the risk of a GLOF (Glacial Lake Outburst Flood: a sudden flood when the wall of ice or loose rock holding back a glacial lake breaks) [3].

• Tuna overfishing:

• Fishing communities traditionally did not fish in the spawning season (the season when fish lay eggs), so stocks could recover.
• Large modern fleets ignored this restraint and caught fish faster than they could breed.
• Worldwide, overfished marine stocks rose from 35.4% (2019) to 37.7% (2021). Only 62.3% of stocks were within biologically sustainable levels in 2021 (FAO, SOFIA 2024) [4].
• Tuna as a group is doing better because of strict management. About 87% of tuna stocks are fished sustainably and 13% are overfished (mostly bluefin). FAO assesses 23 stocks of the seven main commercial tuna species through regional fisheries bodies (SOFIA 2024) [4].
• In the Western Indian Ocean, 37.5% of assessed stocks were overfished in 2021 [4].

• FAO's 2025 global stock assessment puts 35.5% of stocks as overfished. Even so, 77.2% of landings (fish brought ashore) come from sustainable stocks, because the large, well-managed stocks supply most of the catch [5].

• River pollution: industrial waste poisons rivers faster than they can clean themselves. Restoration fails, and the water stops being usable.

Ecosystem services

• Ecosystem function: the natural work an ecosystem does. Examples: a forest filtering water, holding soil in place, or making oxygen.
• Ecosystem service: an ecosystem function that benefits people. Examples: clean drinking water downstream of a forest, and less soil erosion on farms.
• NCERT figure (Class 8): a mature tree gives about 275 litres of oxygen a day, while one person needs about 350 litres a day. So more than one tree is needed for each person.
• Why this matters for classification: the value of a forest is not only its timber, which is a biotic, renewable resource. It also includes these services. Cutting the forest destroys both.

Non-renewable stock: the case of Indian coal

• NCERT Class 8 says India's coal may last about 50 years at present rates of use. This figure is dated.
• India's total geological coal resource is 4,00,715.45 million tonnes (about 400.7 billion tonnes) as on 01.04.2025 (GSI inventory; seams 0.9 m thick and above) [2].
• The top states by coal resource (01.04.2025) are [2]:

Rank	State	Coal resource (million tonnes)
1	Odisha	1,00,975.78
2	Jharkhand	93,254.06
3	Chhattisgarh	85,263.22
4	West Bengal	34,386.09
5	Madhya Pradesh	33,563.62

• Lignite resource (brown coal: a low-grade coal with lower carbon content): about 47,370.54 million tonnes (01.04.2025) [2].
• Key idea: a "resource" figure counts all coal found, including coal that has not been fully explored. It is larger than the coal that can actually be mined at a profit. Coal is still abiotic and non-renewable: a large stock only delays exhaustion and does not prevent it.

Link to the era: from "limits" to "sustainable use"

• Club of Rome (founded 1968): its report The Limits to Growth (1972) warned that non-renewable resources would run out if growth continued unchecked.
• Brundtland Report (1987) defined sustainable development as development that meets present needs without harming the ability of future generations to meet theirs. This is the same rule as "use below regeneration".
• Rio Earth Summit (1992) adopted Agenda 21, an action plan for sustainable development in the 21st century.
• SDGs (2015): SDG 12 covers responsible consumption and production, SDG 14 life below water (overfishing) and SDG 15 life on land (forests).

Prelims Hooks

• Coal and petroleum are of organic origin but are classed as abiotic, because they are no longer living.
• Fisheries and livestock are biotic resources. Water and air are abiotic.
• Flow resources (wind, water) and biological resources (forests, wildlife) are the two sub-types of renewable resources.
• Metals are non-renewable but recyclable. Fossil fuels are non-renewable and used up once burnt.
• Class 10 Fig. 1.2 uses four bases: origin, exhaustibility, ownership and status of development.
• Restoration means returning to a healthy state. Regeneration means creating new life.
• The state with the largest coal resource (01.04.2025) is Odisha, followed by Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh [2].
• Among Himalayan river basins, glacier retreat is fastest in the Brahmaputra basin, then the Ganga, then the Indus [3].
• Overfished share of world marine stocks: 37.7% in 2021 (SOFIA 2024). About 87% of tuna stocks are sustainable [4].
• A mature tree gives about 275 litres of oxygen a day. A person needs about 350 litres (NCERT).

Mains Points

• "Renewable" is not "inexhaustible" (GS-III, environment):
• Timber, groundwater, fish and glacier ice all become exhaustible when use is faster than regeneration.
• Examples: global overfishing rose to 37.7% in 2021 [4], and Himalayan glaciers are retreating by about 15 m a year [3].

• Policy responses: fishing bans in the breeding season, sustainable forest harvest, and treating glaciers as a shared water stock.

• Classification shapes policy:

• Flow resources (solar, wind) can be expanded with little loss.
• Recyclable abiotic resources need recycling systems (a circular economy).
• Non-recyclable fossil fuels need efficiency and substitution.

• India's coal resource of about 400.7 billion tonnes (2025) is concentrated in Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh [2]. This gives energy security but brings regional problems: mining displacement, forest loss and air pollution.

• Ecosystem services are hidden value:

• Forests filter water, hold soil and make oxygen.
• Valuing only timber undercounts a forest's worth.

• This supports payment for ecosystem services and the SDG 15 targets.

• Himalayan "water tower" risk:

• Faster melting first raises river flow, then lowers it.
• It also increases the GLOF hazard in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Ladakh [3].
• This links resource classification to disaster management (GS-III).