Resource management
The global and UK supply of food, water and energy, and strategies to manage a chosen resource sustainably.
Learn
Resource management, explained point by point
Everything the GCSE specification expects you to be able to do, and how to actually do it - the same lesson a signed-in student studies from.
Describe the global inequalities in food, water and energy supply
Resources are not spread where people are: water surpluses sit in sparsely populated places while demand booms in dry, crowded ones; energy reserves cluster in a handful of countries; and food production struggles exactly where populations grow fastest. Wealth decides consumption - HICs use far more of everything per person. Being able to describe a world map pattern in two sentences ("surplus here, deficit there, because…") is the core skill.
Explain the significance of food, water and energy to well-being and development
These three underpin everything else: without clean water, disease spreads and hours are lost carrying it; without food security, health and learning suffer (undernutrition); without energy, there is no industry, no refrigerated medicine, no light to study by. The exam wants the LINK made explicit - say how the resource shortage stops development, not just that it exists.
Describe how the UK's demand for food, water and energy is changing
The UK's resource picture is shifting: demand for high-value and out-of-season food imports (with food miles and carbon costs attached, and a counter-trend towards local, organic produce); water demand rising in the drier south-east while rain falls mainly in the north and west; and an energy mix moving from coal and declining North Sea oil and gas towards renewables and imports. One good specific per resource - a named water-transfer idea, a wind farm - makes the answer concrete.
Explain strategies to increase supply of your chosen resource, using a large-scale example
For water, supply grows through dams and reservoirs, water transfer schemes moving surplus to deficit regions (China's South–North Transfer Project is a strong example), and desalination - effective but energy-hungry and expensive. Every scheme has winners, losers and environmental costs: reservoirs flood valleys, transfers take water from donor rivers. Learn one large-scale scheme with its advantages AND disadvantages.
Evaluate sustainable ways of managing the resource at a local scale
Sustainability means meeting demand without borrowing from the future: for water, that is conservation, groundwater management, recycling grey water and rainwater harvesting. A local scheme in a LIC or NEE - like hand-dug wells or sand dams that store rainy-season water - shows "appropriate technology": cheap, local materials, maintained by the community. Contrast the mega-project with the local fix; that comparison is exactly what evaluation questions reward.
Practice
Try a Resource management question
A GCSE-style original task from this topic. Sketch a quick plan of your own before you open what a strong answer covers.
Study Figure 4, a sketch map and bar chart showing how the demand for water in the UK is changing and how it varies across the country. Using Figure 4, describe the pattern of water supply and demand in the UK. [4 marks]
Show what a strong answer covers
The marking points an examiner looks for. Not a model answer - a checklist to plan against.
- AO4: describes the regional pattern - the south and east have a water deficit (demand exceeds supply)
- AO4: describes the contrasting region - the north and west have a water surplus (supply exceeds demand)
- AO4: links the pattern to the reasons shown (high population and low rainfall in the south-east; low population and high rainfall in the north-west)
- AO4: uses the bar-chart data, noting household use has risen from about 140 to about 150 litres per person per day