Resource stewardship practice questions.

An adviser to a government in the Ethiopian highlands argues that once a farming population outgrows its harvest, the shortage itself pushes households to terrace slopes, shorten fallows and intercrop, so output per hectare rises. Which view of the population-resource relationship is this?

• Boserup's view, in which scarcity triggers agricultural innovation
• Malthus's view, in which food supply sets a ceiling on population
• The neo-Malthusian view, in which consumption must be capped by policy
• Simon's view, in which resource prices fall as substitutes are found

Answer: Boserup's view, in which scarcity triggers agricultural innovation

Boserup reverses the Malthusian causal chain: population pressure becomes the trigger for intensification rather than a limit removed by famine. Neo-Malthusians, by contrast, extend Malthus's pessimism to resources beyond food and call for policy caps, while Simon rejects the limit altogether by arguing that prices and substitution solve scarcity.

A Dutch appliance manufacturer leases the motors and drums of its washing machines to customers, takes them back at the end of the contract, remanufactures them and fits them into new machines without any loss of material quality. Which principle of the circular economy does this illustrate?

• Downcycling components into lower-value products
• End-of-pipe treatment of the waste stream
• Keeping components circulating at their highest value
• Substituting a renewable input for a non-renewable one

Answer: Keeping components circulating at their highest value

A circular economy is defined by cycling materials at the highest value they can hold, so remanufacture ranks above recycling because it keeps the shape and the manufacturing energy already invested in the component, instead of returning it to raw material. Treating waste at the end of a linear chain is not circularity at all, merely cleaner disposal.

A 10-mark extended answer in Paper 2 on resource stewardship is assessed against markbands. Which feature is needed to reach the top band?

• A definition of every key term that appears in the question
• Coverage of at least five different countries as examples
• A diagram used in place of one of the written paragraphs
• A supported conclusion that answers the question directly

Answer: A supported conclusion that answers the question directly

The top band rewards structure and synthesis, which means an explicit conclusion resting on the evidence given. Extra definitions or a longer list of countries add length without addressing the command term.

A circular economy is proposed as an alternative to the linear take-make-dispose model. Which change is most fundamental to it?

• Designing products so that materials re-enter production rather than becoming waste
• Increasing the volume of material sent for recycling after disposal
• Extracting resources more efficiently at the mine or well
• Exporting waste to countries with lower processing costs

Answer: Designing products so that materials re-enter production rather than becoming waste

Recycling at the end of a product's life is the weakest form of circularity, because the decisive choices - materials, joints, repairability, ownership model - are made at the design stage. A circular economy therefore changes what is produced, not only what happens to it afterwards.

Malthus and Boserup reached opposite conclusions about population growth and resources. What is the essential difference between them?

• Malthus treated the resource limit as fixed; Boserup treated it as responsive to pressure
• Malthus wrote about food only, while Boserup wrote about energy only
• Boserup argued that population growth must be halted to avoid famine
• Malthus argued that technology always keeps pace with population

Answer: Malthus treated the resource limit as fixed; Boserup treated it as responsive to pressure

For Malthus, food supply grows more slowly than population and a check is inevitable; for Boserup, population pressure is itself the stimulus that drives intensification and innovation. The disagreement is about whether the ceiling is given or created.

In the circular economy, materials are kept moving either in a biological cycle or in a technical cycle. Which of the following belongs to the technical cycle?

• Retreading the casing of a worn truck tyre so that it runs again
• Digesting livestock slurry to produce biogas and a soil conditioner
• Composting vegetable peelings so that nutrients return to farm soil
• Ploughing crop straw back into the field after the grain harvest

Answer: Retreading the casing of a worn truck tyre so that it runs again

The technical cycle keeps manufactured materials - metals, polymers, alloys - circulating through reuse, repair, remanufacture and recycling, because they cannot safely return to the soil. The other three return biological nutrients to the land, which is the biological cycle.