Abstract
Conventional management of natural resources can be tough. With the world pushing for more sustainable ways of doing things, the challenges increase in number and become more real for the government and policy makers. The objective of this paper is to discuss an academic journal published in the Journal of Consumer and Social Science entitled A Natural Resource Management Framework for Sustainable Development, focusing on the methodology, research implications, significance, and the conclusions of the researchers. In summary, the authors in that paper concluded that natural resources should be treated as non-renewable assets, assets that can disappear and be rendered non-usable by the future generations if they are not properly handled or managed. This is where sustainable natural resources management would enter.
Natural resources can be an important aspect of managing an economy. For one, the raw materials that different companies that operate in different industries need to operate, or at least majority of it, come from natural resources. A case in point would be coal power plants in the energy industry. The main raw material that these plants require is coal. Coal is a specific type of natural resources. It is non-renewable, which means that its supply is only limited to the amount or volume of reserves stored in a particular site and it can only be obtained through mining. Apart from the mining operations itself, there are other expenses that may be associated with operating a single coal power plant. In a nutshell, the natural resources industry is basically a part of a large network of supply chain and it may only be safe to say that unsafe, irresponsible, and unsustainable management of natural resources would most likely lead to problems in the future, majority of which would be irreversible. The major secondary complication of this of course would be a disruption in the once smoothly functioning supply chain of natural resources and on a larger scale, disruption of major economic industries. In the example used above, a disruption in the extraction of coal from coal mines would lead to drops in productivity and output of the coal power plants and if the supply of the specific natural resource continues to be erratic, even a power outage or crisis.
In an academic journal published in the Journal of Commercial and Social Science in 2010 entitled A Natural Resource Management Framework for Sustainable Development, the authors looked over the different sustainable options how natural resources can be managed in countries. The journal used a qualitative descriptive research model. As opposed to researches that make use of a quantitative research design, the one used by the researchers in the study focused more on the discussions. Specifically, what they presented and discussed is a group of possible frameworks that may be used by governments, policymakers, and even businessmen for visualizing natural resources as assets and for developing policies for gaining the maximum economic benefits from such assets, but at the same time, taking care of those assets for the use of the next and future generations. In summary, the journal entry focused on the sustainable management and exploitation of the natural resources, something which is not so widespread across industries, especially when the additional costs that may be associated with sustainable natural resources management gets factored in. In conclusion, “The paper suggested that the countries should view natural resources as a critical asset and secondly, asset specific strategies should be formed for their development; it is emphasized that these asset specific strategies should be designed in such a manner as they do not work against one another and are aligned with the overall economic plan of the country” .
In summary, this journal article and its contents should indeed be significant for government officials, policy makers, and businessmen because it presents a framework that they can integrate to their current organizational management and policy frameworks. This makes the long series of steps involved in sustainable natural resources management significantly shorter because these groups would not have to conceptualize the goals and objectives of their sustainable natural resources management efforts mainly because they were already discussed in this research. Moreover, the authors of the paper suggested that organizations involved in natural resources management be motivated to go for sustainable means because it is the only best way how natural resources can be preserved for the use of future generations.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my professor for motivating me to write a great paper on the topic of natural resources management. Without my professor’s motivation, I would basically not have the energy to wake up at night and study course and other additional materials to come up with this paper. I would also like to thank my colleagues for their insights and ideas on how to make my paper more academically oriented and professional. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents for supporting me in this endeavor.
References
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