Resource Inequality

Two different things

Almost every mistake in this topic comes from treating resource inequality as one idea when it is really two, and the two do not move together. Supply is what a place has: what it can grow, collect or generate. Consumption is what a place uses. A place with plenty can still use more than it has. A place with very little may use very little, so the shortage never shows up as a shortfall on paper even though people are going without. The useful question is never just how much does this place have, and never just how much does it use. It is what is the gap between them, and which way does it run. Hold on to that and food, water and energy all behave the same way.

Everyone studies this bit

A planning point that costs marks every year, and it is about what you revise rather than what you know. Later in this topic you study ONE resource in depth: food, or water, or energy. Your teacher chooses, and it is genuinely a choice. This overview is not. Every student is examined on the global picture and on the UK picture for all three resources, whichever one they go on to study in depth. Students who assume this section is part of the choice skip two thirds of it and meet questions in the exam they have never revised. If you are unsure what your class studied in depth, that is worth asking. What is not in doubt is that this overview applies to you.

Supply, consumption and the gap

Five words that let you describe any resource situation precisely, without needing a single figure.

Match the term to the situation

What high consumption tells you

A place is known to have very high total consumption of energy. What does that fact on its own tell you about its supply?

• Nothing at all, because supply and consumption are separate quantities
• That its supply must also be high, or it could not use that much
• That its supply must be low, since heavy users run their resources down
• That it is resource secure, since it clearly has enough to use

Plot the widening gap

This is a SCHEMATIC diagram, not data about any real place: the vertical scale simply means more of the resource, and the horizontal steps simply mean later. Supply is already plotted across all five steps, rising slowly. Consumption is plotted at steps 1, 2 and 3, rising much faster. Plot consumption at step 4, continuing the steep rise it has shown so far.

Reading the gap

On the diagram you have just completed, the two lines start close together and move apart. What is the gap between them at the later steps showing?

• A growing deficit: the place is using more than it produces, by an increasing amount
• That supply is falling
• A growing surplus, since both lines are going up
• That the population has stopped growing

One gap, three resources

The same gap appears in all three resources this overview covers, but what closes it differs, and that is what makes each one a different problem.

Which are consumption gaps

Select the TWO statements that describe an inequality in CONSUMPTION rather than in supply.

• People in one part of the world use far more energy each than people in another
• Diets in some places include much more processed and imported food than in others
• Some regions have reliable rainfall and others have very little
• Some countries have large reserves of fossil fuels and others have none

The gap in a sentence

Resource inequality is best described as a gap between what a place _____ and what a place _____. When the first is larger, the place has a _____. When the second is larger, it has a _____. Knowing only one of the two quantities tells you _____ about the other.

Arguing without numbers

You will not always remember a figure in the exam, and an invented one is worse than none because a marker can see straight through it. Here is a comparison argued entirely from pattern, with no statistics in it at all. Global consumption of all three resources is unevenly distributed, and the unevenness does not simply follow where the resources are. Wealthier regions tend to consume more per person than the amount they produce themselves, and close the difference by importing, which makes their security depend on trade rather than on geography. Poorer regions may consume far less per person, so their deficit is smaller on paper, yet they can be the less secure of the two, because they have fewer means of covering a shortfall when one comes. It follows that a small gap is not automatically a safe one, and that resource security is about the ability to close a gap as much as about its size. Notice what did the work there. Direction, comparison and consequence. If you do know a genuine figure from a case study you have studied, drop it in and the paragraph gets stronger. If you do not, it still stands up.

From gap to response

Put the stages of the reasoning in order, as you would need them in an answer about a place facing a resource shortfall.

• Establish what the place supplies for itself
• Establish what the place consumes
• Identify the gap between them and which way it runs
• Ask how the gap is currently being closed, and how reliably
• Judge how secure the place is, and what would change if the gap widened

The claim that needs a figure

Three of these sentences can be defended from the pattern alone. Select the ONE that has smuggled in a specific claim it cannot support without evidence.

• Consumption per person tends to be higher in wealthier regions than in poorer ones.
• Water is harder to import over long distances than food or fuel, so a water deficit is usually met locally.
• Exactly two thirds of the world energy shortfall is met by imports from three countries.
• A place can have a small gap between supply and consumption and still be insecure, if it has few ways of covering a shortfall.

Advising a country

You are asked to summarise the resource position of a country for a report. Take the decisions in order.

• You are told the country consumes a very large amount of food in total. What do you need before you can say anything useful?
• You find it produces much less than it uses. Where does the difference come from?
• The same country has a water deficit as well. Why is that a different kind of problem?
• You want to judge how secure the country is overall. What matters most?

Write the comparison

Write a comparison of resource inequality between wealthier and poorer parts of the world. Use figures only if they come from a case study you have genuinely studied; the answer must stand up without them.

• Define supply and consumption, and say why the difference between them matters
• Describe how consumption per person tends to differ between wealthier and poorer regions
• Explain why a large gap and a small gap can both mean insecurity, for different reasons
• Explain why a water deficit is harder to solve than a food or energy deficit
• Give one consequence for a country that closes its gap mainly by importing
• Finish with a judgement about what resource security really depends on