Unit 3: Contested Planet (A2)

The use and management of resources is a key issue for Geography and today's world. Consumption patterns highlight stark inequalities between regions, countries and groups of people.

Many resources are finite, and rising consumption means that difficult decisions over the use of resources will have to be taken more frequently. There are six compulsory topics:

Had some materials sent to me produced by Cameron Dunn: "Getting Switched on to Energy" (not that I can find them at the moment)

What are the main themes of "the geography of energy"

World Map: can identify a number of different areas which are involved in energy in different ways:

RESERVES

DEPENDENCY

SURPLUS

POVERTY / DEFICIT

SUPPLY SECURITY

CHANGING DEMAND

Water is likely to cause an increasing issue in the future. This unit looks at the conflicts.

I have started a new WATER page which looks at the issues related to bottled water and water supply.

Also check out the TEAR FUND site: http://www.turnonthetap.org/

A superb resource is the WATERWORLDS site: http://waterworlds.wordpress.com/ This has 20 postings at the moment on themes such as "water miles" and selling properties on floodplains.

Exploring the culture, politics and geography of water.

Here's a sample from one of the postings:

ebruary 2008 has seen both Britain’s media and its politicians declaring war on the bottled water industry and the excessive distances that bottled water is travelling to reach the UK.  Stunning facts have been presented by newspapers, including the news that one in five people are apparently “too scared” to ask for tap water in restaurants.  Other choice data  are as follows: 

• Britons drink three billion bottles of bottled water every year.  Half a billion are flown or shipped in from overseas, leaving a huge carbon footprint.
• Transporting bottled water in the UK is estimated to produce about 33,200 tons of carbon dioxide emissions - equivalent to the annual energy use of 6,000 homes). 
• A bottle of Waiwera water (from New Zealand) travels 18,000 km to reach the UK. 

Additional facts that may help explain why many environmentalists view the mass consumption of bottled water as normalised insanity include: 

• Tap water is on average 500 times cheaper than bottled. 
• An adult drinking eight glasses a day would pay just £1 a year through their tap water charges, and £500 a year if they drank a mid-range mineral water. 
• Collectively we spend five times more on bottled water each year than it would cost to end the annual 1.8 million deaths of children from waterborne illness. 
• It takes 162g of oil and seven litres of water (including power plant cooling water) just to manufacture a one-litre bottle, creating over 100g of greenhouse gas emissions (10 balloons full of CO2) per empty bottle. 
• To make the 29bn plastic bottles used annually in the US, the world’s biggest consumer of bottled water, requires more than 17m barrels of oil a year, enough to fuel more than a million cars for a year. 
• Americans throw 30m water bottles into landfill every day. 

   

  Also check out the http://www.visualvendetta.com/videos/controversial/environment/a-world-without-water/viewlink.html page, which allows you to see the Discovery Channel's film "A WORLD WITHOUT WATER"

Check out the BIOMES page as a starting point.

This topic also has a focus on inequalities of resource use.

Overlap with the proposed AS Environmental Science unit. I have lots of materials for this produced by Alistair McNaught which will come in handy ! It's currently being uploaded to a secret location...

Check out the existing SUPERPOWER page. This will provide some bare bones but plenty more to come.

Keep an eye out for BRIC: another BRIC in the wall: Brazil, Russia, India and China...

Also check out the RICs

Also existing A2 GLOBALISATION page...

Defining what we mean by the resource gap.

What is the resource gap ?

The role of technology in overcoming resource scarcity.

How do we solve some of our global issues ?

 Is technology the answer ?

Keep an eye out for some of these....

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