Resource Depletion. These words are commonly heard nowadays, especially among those who keen on environment and economics. They means a lot to our environment and economic growth. How do we know that certain resource depletion occurs?

According to Wikipedia, Resource depletion is the consumption of a resource faster than it can be replenished. Natural commonly divided between renewable resources and non-renewable resources.¹ So in many cases, we have high rate of resource depletion. For example, fossil fuels take millions of years to reform but we extract it everyday. On the other hand, we use 100 kg of fruit skin(food waste) for biomass everyday but we are only able to produce 80 kg of fruit per day. It may seem to be fine for a year but what will happens in another 100 years? No more resources for us to utilize. In any case, our resources depletion is increasing over the years.

So what is the cause of such problem? Is it because our human population has been increasing over the years rapidly? NO, not really. In fact, it is a myth among our society. On the other side, economic growth is the main culprit for resources depletion to occur. According to kitco.com, "Population growth will cause the world to run out of resources was one of the many ?myths? challenged by the authors stating that it is, in fact, economic growth and development that will be a major driver of future commodity demand. "² For more information, please do check this website out - http://www.kitco.com/news/2014-11-13/Busting-Myths-Of-Natural-Resource-Depletion-WEF-Report.html

In Malaysia, the resource depletion that we concern the most is the depletion of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels is one of Malaysian's economic support. Over the years, we have been extracting fossil fuels and of course, one day fossil fuels might just run out. The statistics will be in this webiste - https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/29037/³ Therefore, to prevent the condition from worsening, now we are finding alternatives to replace the fossil fuels. 

To tackle the problem of resource depletion. Many countries and lending each other a helping hand by joining the Paris Agreement. For more information, you can check out on previous articles by us Ambassadors. As for what we can do, ALWAYS DO THE 4R - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle & Rethink before really throwing away any waste because it is a resource.