Being most highly developed/evolved animal, man possesses certain special characteristics. Man applies all their power and intelligence for food and development. They adopt new ways to fulfill their needs and often make improvements in old ways to derive resources and to fulfill their desire more efficiently. This is how they develop new technologies for utilization of natural resources.
As we have seen, natural resources are exhaustible and non-exhaustible the exhaustible resources are renewable and non renewable, therefore proper utilization of our natural resources is the need of today. Human beings utilize most of resources like air, water, land, minerals, flora, fauna, fuels, energy etc. for their growth and development.
Now the problem is how and up to what extent human beings should utilize various resources. Resources are valuable gift of nature. Hence use of natural resources should depend on knowledge, availability, type, quantity, value, necessity etc. The use of resources should be in limit not to exhaust them so that ecological balance within the nature should also remain undisturbed.
In the past, the man was not so advanced and was satisfied with what he received from the nature due to his limited needs. Thus, there was a complete balance among all the components of the natural environment in the past. At present, the story has become very different due to human activities of consumption and misuse of natural resources and the explosion of population. Therefore, nature has lost its capacity of tolerance.
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Fast growth in human population has led to the fast rate of consumption of natural resources and creation of wastes. Human activities of cutting trees, killing animals, damaging and mixing poisonous wastes in air and water are creating severe crisis in the environment and natural resources. To some extent nature tries to recycle some of these resources. But, because of spurt in population these are used up faster than these are replenished, leading to their depletion.
Directly or indirectly there are some problems from the over exploitation of natural resources. They are, lowering of water label, extinction of wild animals, soil erosion, siltation of rivers, floods, climatic change, interruption of water cycle, loss of aquatic plants/animals, various diseases, ozone layer depletion, global warming, acid rains, green house effects, shortage of food, problem of housing, fossil fuels etc. Using wood as fuel not only cause severe damage to earth but also produce pollution.
Oceans are also providing different types of food materials and minerals. Large quantities of petroleum and natural gas are also obtained from oceans. Thus they are valuable contributors in the development and prosperity of human beings. But due to human activities, oceans have been put under heavy conditions of serious stress.
Now the conservation of natural resources should be the priority of everyone citizen. Methods of conservation management should be followed.
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By making rules only, we cannot protect natural resources. Awareness programmes, social forestry, joint forest management, van panchayat, organisations of seminars, public programmes are some means by which we can protect and conserve natural resources. During the recent years many societies and NGO’s have come forward in this direction.
Human activities should be refined using high technology which adversely affects the natural resources and environment under environmental resource management. Population should be controlled because it is the root cause of resource exploitation. We should plan for conservation of natural resources for their long term and maximum usage. Non-renewable resources should be used in as sustainable manner i.e. they should remain available for future generations.