Natural Resources and Their Use

About this chapter

Natural Resources and Their Use is the first chapter of Class 8 Exploring Society: India and Beyond, and the opening chapter of Theme A — Geography (Land and the People). It begins by asking when Nature becomes a 'resource' — only when an entity from Nature is technologically accessible, economically feasible to use, and culturally acceptable. The chapter then categorises natural resources two ways: by use (essential for life — air, water, soil, food; for materials — wood, marble, coal, gold; for energy — coal, water, petroleum, sunlight, wind) and by renewability (renewable like solar, wind, flowing water, forests if managed sustainably; non-renewable like coal, petroleum, iron, copper, gold). It maps the uneven distribution of coal, oil, iron ore and bauxite across India, explains the 'natural resource curse' or 'paradox of plenty', and closes with stewardship — the Punjab groundwater crisis, the cement-pollution case, the Sikkim organic-farming success of 2016, the Bhadla solar park and the International Solar Alliance launched by India and France in 2015. CTET Paper 2 Social Studies tests this chapter through definitions, renewable-vs-non-renewable classification, map-based mineral distribution, the Punjab case, Sikkim 2016, ISA 2015, ecosystem services and pedagogy of the resource curse. The four tests — Practice 15, Quiz 15, Hard 15, Mastery 30 — cover all six topics at CTET depth.