Curriculum Oceans, Forests & Natural Resources
Oceans, Forests & Natural Resources
The economics of what nature provides - fisheries and quotas, mines and critical minerals, sand, groundwater, forests, the deep sea, and how to count natural wealth.
- Why Fish Stocks Collapse How open access to fisheries leads to overfishing, what happened to Canada's cod, and the state of the world's fish stocks. 📄 Read-aloud
- Fishing Quotas and Catch Shares How giving fishers secure shares of a total catch can end the race to fish, with evidence from Iceland, New Zealand and elsewhere. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Economics of Mining Why mining is capital-intensive and cyclical, how mineral prices drive booms and busts, and what makes mining benefit or harm local communities. 📄 Read-aloud
- Critical Minerals and the Energy Transition Why minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earths have become strategic, where they come from, and the risks of concentrated supply. 📄 Read-aloud
- Hotelling's Rule: When to Extract a Finite Resource The classic theory of how the owner of an exhaustible resource like oil decides when to extract it, and what it predicts about prices. 📄 Read-aloud
- Sand: The Resource We Forgot Why sand is one of the most used natural resources on Earth, how demand for construction is depleting it, and the problem of illegal sand mining. 📄 Read-aloud
- Oceans, Forests & Natural Resources: Checkpoint 1 Quick checkpoint - five questions on fisheries, catch shares, mining, critical minerals and Hotelling's rule. 5 questions
- India's Groundwater Crisis Why India pumps more groundwater than any other country, how free electricity for pumps contributes, and the policies aimed at saving aquifers. 📄 Read-aloud
- Forests as Economic Assets The many kinds of value forests provide beyond timber, from food and medicine to clean water and carbon storage, and how that value can be recognised. 📄 Read-aloud
- Deep-Sea Mining The race to mine metals from the ocean floor, the international body that regulates it, and the debate over its environmental risks. 📄 Read-aloud
- Natural Capital Accounting Why GDP can rise while a country uses up its natural wealth, and how new accounting systems try to measure nature's value. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Blue Economy The economic activities that depend on oceans - fishing, shipping, tourism, energy - and the push to grow them sustainably. 📄 Read-aloud
- Urban Mining: Recovering Metals From Waste How discarded electronics contain valuable metals, why so little is recycled, and the economics of turning e-waste into a resource. 📄 Read-aloud
- Mangroves: Nature's Coastal Defence How mangrove forests protect coasts from storms, support fisheries and store carbon, and why their economic value is often overlooked. 📄 Read-aloud