Acknowledgement
For this paper, I would like to thank especially my professor for providing me the necessary insights for the development of the article. Without his lecture, progress will not be achieved in this paper. You are very much appreciated. For the other people who helped, I also would like to extend my deepest gratitude. Learning will not be as enjoyable as this without you.
Abstract
Natural resources are continuously being consumed due to the demands and needs of the people and the different institutions. However, the need to protect and preserve the natural resources is being less prioritized by most consumers. As such, it is important to know the method of assessment of the natural resources. In this paper, land owners evaluate natural resources based on their economic value and the potential harm to the environment when these resources are to be extracted. Unfortunately, the current method is largely monetized and only assesses goods and services with market value. Also, it is only used for large land areas and the smaller ones are found to be difficult to assess using the current method. Therefore, it is suggested that a new method must be developed to address the concerns of smaller lands and to reduce the damage to the environment.
Methodology
Using the internet, academic journals related to natural resource economics were found. From there, a single article was chosen and determined if it was already cited by other academic articles. The article was then summarized and synthesized into this paper.
Natural Resource Protection on Buffer Lands:
Integrating Resource Evaluation and Economics
(Burger, Gochfield, & Greenberg, 2008)
The abundance of natural resources is an important factor among people who are involved in different ventures or operations which include the use of these resources. However, this entails obligations and responsibilities for those who are involved with the exploitation because of the continuous depletion of the resources. As such, it is important that people are knowledgeable about the current policies and regulations. Among those policies, environmental assessment is a very important requirement because of its purpose of restoring and improving the condition of natural ecosystems, which are previously disturbed by humans in different ways, such as contamination and overharvesting (Burger, Powers, & Gochfield, 2010).
In most occasions, natural resources are evaluated by considering their identity, availability, and usage. However, what the public failed to assess their economic importance and the environmental impacts that can be accounted from their depletion (Burger, Gochfield, & Greenberg, 2008). As a result, protection of natural resources is hardly maintained, which resulted in the present condition of the world’s ecosystems and environment as a whole: scarcity of natural resources. As such, it is important to reevaluate the current policies so that the use of natural resources will be optimal.
Different government and non-government institutions are responsible for the assessment of natural resources. These institutions depend their evaluation based on the consideration that that the natural resources are highly valuable in their natural ecosystem, to the people who will use them, or to the society. Also, the value of the ecosystem in general is being considered as well. Depending on what will be evaluated, the assessment is being done at the beginning, when keeping track with the trends in the society, for the purpose of restoration and reassessment of the restoration process, and for the monitoring of the restoration assessment (Burger, Gochfield, & Greenberg, 2008).
Different institutions have different approach of evaluating the natural resources. As for this article, the main focus is the institution which includes land owners. The evaluation method is quantitative in nature, and specific standards are being followed to assess the economic value and damage assessment. Most of the time, the assessment was based on the physical characteristics of the natural resource, and the monetary value is largely involved in it (Burger, Gochfield, & Greenberg, 2008). As such, the only assessed goods and services are those that have market value such as buildings, lands and other physical assets. However, this method is only applicable for large area, which can reach up to hundreds of hectares of land. Unfortunately, this is the only existing method of evaluation as of now (Burger, Gochfield, & Greenberg, 2008). Because of the insufficiency, there is a need to develop a new method which will consider smaller areas of land and the non-market goods and services in order to accurately assess the resources as well as to mitigate possible environmental damages.
Evaluation of natural resources can only be accomplished when the reasons, the resources involved, and the evaluator are specified. It is because different types of resources have different ways to be evaluated and the evaluators have different approaches depending on the institution where they came from. The need to identify these points is important so that the method of evaluation is well-suitable for the type of resource, as well as to meet the required objectives in evaluating the natural resources (Burger, Gochfield, & Greenberg, 2008).
References
Burger, J., Powers, C., & Gochfield, M. (2010). Regulatory requirements and tools for environmental assessment of hazardous wastes: Understanding tribal and stakeholder concerns using Department of Energy sites. Journal of Environmental Management, 91(12), 2707-2716.
Burger, J., Gochfield, M., & Greenberg, M. (2008). Natural resource protection on buffer lands: Integrating resource evaluation and economics. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 142(0), 1-9.
