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Resource Management (HL): Strategies, EIAs and Globalisation
IB DP ESS — Topic 7: Natural Resources (HL Extension) | HL | Paper 1 & Paper 2
🎯 Learning Intentions By the end of this note, you will be able to:
- Define resource management, environmental impact assessment (EIA), and sustainable yield using IB-aligned ESS terminology.
- Explain how different resource management strategies — including conservation, preservation, restoration, and substitution — function within socio-ecological systems and the conditions under which each is most appropriate.
- Describe the stages of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and the role of stakeholder participation in the process.
- Analyse the effectiveness of EIAs as a tool for resource management using ESS analysis parameters: scale, reliability, multiple perspectives, and trade-offs.
- Evaluate the impacts of globalisation on natural resource use, distribution, and management, considering both positive and negative consequences for environmental systems.
- Discuss contrasting worldviews — ecocentric, technocentric, and anthropocentric — in relation to resource management decisions and EIA outcomes.
- Justify the choice of a particular resource management strategy for a named real-world case, drawing on evidence of ecological, economic, and social sustainability.
Real-World Context & Relevance
In 2013, the Samarco iron ore mine in Minas Gerais, Brazil, received environmental licences following an EIA process that critics later argued had underestimated the risk of tailings dam failure. Two years later, in November 2015, the Fundão dam collapsed, releasing approximately 60 million cubic metres of toxic mining waste into the Rio Doce river system — one of the worst environmental disasters in Brazilian history. The disaster killed 19 people, contaminated 650 kilometres of river, and devastated the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people who depended on the river for water and fishing (Fernandes et al., "The Samarco Mine Collapse," Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation , 2016). The EIA had existed; it had simply failed to prevent catastrophe.
This case is not an isolated failure. Across the world, from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the rare earth mines of Inner Mongolia, China, the extraction and management of natural resources sits at the intersection of economic development, ecological integrity, and social justice. Globalisation has accelerated resource demand dramatically: between 1970 and 2017, global material extraction more than tripled, from approximately 27 billion tonnes per year to 92 billion tonnes (IPBES, Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services , 2019). How societies choose to manage these resources — and whether tools like EIAs genuinely constrain harmful extraction — is one of the defining environmental governance questions of the twenty-first century.
🌍 Why This Matters Resource management strategies and EIAs are the primary mechanisms through which human societies attempt to balance economic development with ecological sustainability. When they work well, they protect biodiversity, maintain ecosystem services, and ensure intergenerational equity. When they fail — as at Samarco, or in the deforestation of the Congo Basin — the consequences cascade through environmental systems at local, regional, and global scales.
Core Concepts & Definitions
Before any management strategy can be chosen, it is necessary to understand what is being managed and why. Natural resources are not simply commodities; they are components of living systems that provide ecosystem services — from water purification and carbon sequestration to food production and cultural value. The challenge of