Managing with Depleted Resources

Obviously the resources of the planet are finite and this is a limiting factor to growth and development. The depletion of the resources of the planet is one of the factors which has helped create the current interest in sustainability. Nevertheless the economic system under which the world operates is predicated on an assumption that development is possible and so the concern is with acquiring the additional resources required for that development. This is perfectly in accordance with the assumptions made by Brundtland and accepted ever since. However environmentalists have been showing that the resources of the world are overused and usage is not sustainable at this level and there is starting to be a general understanding of the meaning of resource depletion. While this has been occupying the minds of people in the developed western world a number of countries have adopted a strategy of rapid growth and economic development. Principal among these have been the BRIC countries. These countries have access to a large proportion of the remaining natural resources of the world while also having large populations and therefore great scope for rapid economic growth. This leads of course to an unstable global economy as there is a looming imbalance between supply and demand, leading to problems of governance in this new environment. We consider a diagnosis and prognosis for this situation.