(A) the development and utilization has a long history
China is one of the ancient civilizations in the world, and the exploitation and utilization of natural resources by people of all ethnic groups in its vast territory has a long history. As early as the Paleolithic Age, which began more than two million years ago, the ancestors of our Chinese nation-Wushan people (about 2 million years ago), Yuanmou people (about 6.5438+0.7 million years ago) and Beijingers (about 500,000 years ago) were able to use some hard minerals and rocks-flint, quartz, slate and limestone. In the Neolithic Age, which began about 1000 years ago, our ancestors living in the upper and lower reaches of the Yellow River and the north and south of the great river began to use stone sickles made of mineral raw materials and square stone tools thinner than stone axes to grow plants and raise farm animals locally, and they were able to engage in plant planting and animal raising to meet daily needs. At the same time, they also began to reclaim land in some areas of the Yellow River basin and the Yangtze River basin into cultivated land and use grasslands to graze livestock.
In slave society, bronze smelting industry has become an important material basis for social production and development. About 5970 years ago, about equivalent to Yangshao culture period, China had the earliest record of using copper. As a result of accumulating a lot of knowledge about mineral exploitation and smelting production, rich records about the distribution of mineral resources in China were left in ancient books during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Qin Shihuang once set up an iron official to manage the national mining and metallurgy industry. During the Han and Jin Dynasties, China had learned to boil salt with natural gas and extract mercury from mercury sulfide. There were also records of oil flammability in Yanchang area of Shaanxi Province. By the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-9 AD), coal was widely used as fuel in China.
In the development and utilization of marine resources, since ancient times, our people have regarded the ocean as the base for production struggle and scientific experiments. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, sea salt was dried on the beach on a large scale, and coastal fishing was vigorously developed. During the Western Han Dynasty, maritime traffic was developed, and frequent maritime traffic exchanges were conducted with Japan and other countries. During the Tang and Song Dynasties (6 18 ~ 1279), China merchant fleet became the most active fleet sailing in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. In the Ming Dynasty, China navigator Zheng He led a huge fleet. During the period of 1405 ~ 1433, he made seven voyages to the western ocean, passing through more than 40 countries, adding a glorious chapter to the history of world navigation.
(2) The development and utilization of various resources have developed rapidly.
1949 after the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), the development and utilization of natural resources in China has developed rapidly, and remarkable achievements have been made in the development and utilization of various resources. For example, in the development and utilization of mineral resources, in the mid-1950s, various provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities successively set up specialized institutions for geological exploration and mine development, and the average drilling workload of mineral exploration reached more than 2 million meters per year, which was several hundred times that of the highest year before 1949. The minerals with proven reserves have surged from 1948 to 18 at present. Some of these minerals, such as iron ore, had only 6.5438+0.8 million tons of proven reserves in the 1930s, but now its proven reserves are nearly 50 billion tons!
With regard to the development and utilization of marine resources, China launched a comprehensive national marine survey in the 1950s, and made a special investigation on the fishery resources, oil and gas resources and tidal resources in the vast sea area of China. At present, except marine fishing, sea salt production (the annual output of sea salt is the highest in the world) and shipping, other industries are developing continuously, and they are marching into the depth and breadth of marine resources development and utilization, and emerging marine industries are booming. Large-scale exploration, tidal power generation, seawater desalination and comprehensive utilization of oil and gas resources under the continental shelf are also booming.
(3) There is still great potential for development and utilization.
The development and utilization of natural resources in China has developed rapidly and achieved remarkable results. However, due to the low level of technology and management, the level of development and utilization is generally not high, and the potential for development and utilization is still great. According to statistics, at present, the reuse rate of industrial water in China is only about 20%, the utilization rate of mineral resources is only 40% ~ 50%, the utilization rate of chemical raw materials is only 33%, the utilization rate of wood is only 40% ~ 50%, the energy utilization rate is only 33%, the overall utilization rate of nonferrous metal smelting in metallurgical industry is less than 50%, and the iron-containing dust and mud is only 15%. According to this calculation, China discharges 330,000 tons of pure sulfur, 73,000 tons of non-ferrous metals, 800,000 tons of iron and 2.3 million tons of coal through waste water, waste gas and waste residue every year.
For example, in the development and utilization of land resources in China, the average multiple cropping index of existing cultivated land in China is about 150%, and it is as high as 218% in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River; In South China, where light, heat and water conditions are superior, three or even four crops can be harvested a year, but the actual multiple cropping index is only 195%. Most areas in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain can be replanted once a year, and the multiple cropping index is only 148%. Therefore, if we actively create conditions and improve the existing multiple cropping index of cultivated land according to local conditions, it will actually mean expanding the cultivated land area, and its agricultural production potential is very considerable. In addition, the existing cultivated land in China is generally high, medium and low yield, accounting for 1/3 respectively, which means that the medium and low yield cultivated land accounts for 2/3. If we can improve the production conditions, maintain stable and high yield in high-yield areas, strive to increase steadily, gradually increase the unit output of low-and medium-yield cultivated land, and strive to achieve a balanced increase in production among regions, it will certainly make China's cultivated land production level step up to a new level. According to another study, 65.438+84.5 million mu (65.438+23 million hectares) of cultivated land will be maintained, the grain planting area will be 26.5438+0./kloc-0.50 million mu (65.438+0.4/kloc-0.035 million hectares), and the irrigation area will reach 65.44. After the comprehensive revision of land quality, it is considered that the maximum possible grain productivity in China is about 830 million tons, and the yield of sowing surface is close to 6 tons/hectare (400 kg/mu), which is more than twice the existing yield, and there is also the potential of increasing grain production by 1 times.
There is also great potential for the development and utilization of marine resources in China. For example, in mariculture, there are130,000 hectares of water surface and beaches with water depth15m along the coast of China alone. If half of it can be used to develop mariculture, according to the current average production level of mariculture in China, the output can reach more than 20 million tons per year, and the national per capita can get 20 kilograms of seafood every year. Some people think that if 5 billion prawn larvae are released in the Bohai Sea, the output of prawns in China will double and the annual foreign exchange income will reach hundreds of millions of dollars.
(D) The waste and destruction of resources is quite serious.
As mentioned above, the development and utilization of natural resources in China has a long history. This area has accumulated rich and valuable experience in the development and utilization of natural resources, developed huge industrial economic activities, and transformed potential natural resource advantages into realistic economic advantages; On the other hand, in the long history, people have constantly changed their living places and opened up new living spaces, leaving behind the ruins of the destruction of natural resources by primitive farming culture; Later, after several generations of rulers plundered and destroyed natural resources, as well as unreasonable development and utilization of natural resources, the destruction of various natural resources in China's vast territory reached an unprecedented level.
After 1949, our party and government attached great importance to the development, utilization and protection of natural resources, and did a lot of work in the rational development and utilization of natural resources, which promoted the remarkable development of the national economy and the improvement of the natural environment in some areas. However, due to the excessive development intensity of natural resources in history, the lack of proper understanding of the rational development, utilization and protection of natural resources, and our repeated decision-making mistakes in politics, economy and population, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution caused two great shocks and great damage to natural resources. In recent years, the short-term behavior of seeking near profits in some areas is still predatory management of natural resources, resulting in destructive development. For example, in the development and utilization of land resources, some areas have been intensively managed for a long time, and pesticides and fertilizers have been improperly used. The planting area of green manure and the application amount of organic manure are reduced, the agricultural infrastructure such as water conservancy is repaired and the traditional organic farming mode is lost, which leads to the decline of soil fertility, the destruction of soil structure and the reduction of agricultural production. At the same time, the rapid growth of urban industry and the blind development of many township enterprises have caused the rapid spread of environmental pollution and directly threatened the increase of agricultural production. In addition, urban (including many small towns) and rural construction occupy a large number of limited cultivated land; In some coastal areas, due to abandoning agriculture for business, cultivated land has been abandoned or used for other purposes, which makes the already tense relationship between man and land more and more severe with the increase of population pressure.
Unreasonable exploitation and utilization of natural resources leads to the destruction of natural environment and the imbalance of ecological system, and also increases the area of soil erosion in the loess plateau in northwest China and hilly areas in south China. At present, the area of soil erosion in China has increased from11600,000 square kilometers at the beginning of liberation to about 3.67 million square kilometers, accounting for 38.2% of the total land area of China. It is estimated that the annual soil erosion is at least 5 billion tons, equivalent to 1 167000 hectares of 33 cm thick cultivated land. Only the Loess Plateau takes away about 40 million tons of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium due to soil erosion every year, which is equivalent to the total amount of chemical fertilizer produced in China every year. According to incomplete statistics, in the past 40 years, more than 2.7 million hectares of cultivated land have been reduced due to soil erosion, resulting in an annual economic loss of about 654.38+000 billion yuan! Wood consumption exceeds the growth of trees every year, with a deficit of nearly 1 100 million cubic meters; The grassland degradation area in China has reached 0.5 1 100 million hectares; The desertification area has increased from the original 6.5438+0.37 million square kilometers to 6.5438+0.76 million square kilometers; The area of rivers and lakes on land is also decreasing, which will inevitably aggravate the formation of floods in some large rivers and basins.
In addition, most industrial enterprises in our country have poor management, backward production technology and outdated machinery and equipment, which also leads to the waste and destruction of resources. For example, the coal consumption of China 1 100 million yuan GDP is 2.4 times higher than that of Britain and the United States, 3.6 times higher than that of Sidegard and 4 times higher than that of Japan. The caustic soda discharged into rivers with wastewater in the national paper industry every year is equivalent to 1/3 of the national caustic soda output. The utilization rate of resources and energy is low, and a lot of materials and energy are discharged into the environment as "three wastes", which means that a lot of resources and energy are wasted, and instead of being transformed into industrial products to benefit the people, they become environmental pollutants, endangering today and future generations.
Second, China's natural resources development and utilization challenges
To sum up, the development and utilization of natural resources in China experienced two different development stages around 1949. Generally speaking, there is progress, remarkable achievements, successful experiences and mistakes. In order to further optimize the future development and utilization, it is particularly important to clearly see the challenges faced by further development and utilization. This challenge mainly comes from two aspects:
(A) the per capita resources are relatively small, and there is a downward trend.
Above, when we made an overall evaluation of China's natural resources, we clearly pointed out that China, with its vast territory, is also the most populous country in the world. Therefore, almost without exception, China's resources are characterized by large absolute quantity and small per capita relative quantity, such as water resources (fresh water), cultivated land, forest and grassland resources. Although they are among the top countries in the world in absolute quantity (the total river runoff is the sixth in the world, the cultivated land area is the fourth in the world, the woodland area is the eighth in the world, and the grassland area is the second in the world), their per capita occupancy level (1989) only accounts for 28. 1%, 32.3% and 14.3% of the world average respectively. It should also be pointed out that, because the amount of natural resources is often a constant with little change, and the population is a constantly changing variable, even under the condition of adhering to family planning and strictly controlling population growth, China still has an absolute net growth of more than 6,543,800 people every year; Coupled with some unreasonable factors in the development and utilization of natural resources, China's per capita resources will continue to decline. As we all know, having sufficient quantity and quality of natural resources is often the necessary material guarantee for modern economic construction. The per capita possession of some important resources in China is relatively small, and its continuous downward trend will undoubtedly pose a severe challenge to the stable and sustainable development of China's modern economic construction.
(2) The shortage of natural resources is increasing.
This is another challenge to China's modern economic construction. The origin of this challenge, first, is due to the sustained large-scale population growth in China; Second, because the economic structure is unreasonable, industries that consume large resources are over-developed; Thirdly, the predatory exploitation and unreasonable utilization of some natural resources still exist in some regions and periods, which leads to an increasingly serious over-dependence on the demand for some resources and an increasingly serious shortage of some resources. This is particularly prominent in the case of the general shortage of water resources in northern China and the shortage and degradation of cultivated land in China. According to statistics, so far, there are more than 300 water-deficient cities in China, and the daily water shortage exceeds 6,543,800 tons. It is estimated that by the year 2000, the amount of water that can be provided by national water conservancy facilities can only reach 667.797 billion cubic meters, which is 465.438+82.2 million cubic meters short of the water demand of 709.6/kloc-0.90 billion cubic meters. The most serious water shortage areas are the Yellow River, Huaihe River, Haihe River and Liaohe River basins, accounting for 64% of the total water shortage in China. Because of water shortage, the shortage of irrigation water in agriculture leads to the reduction of grain production by more than 2.5 million tons every year, which has a great impact on industrial and agricultural production and residents' lives. Therefore, the shortage of water resources is one of the most important challenges in the development and utilization of natural resources in China.
As far as cultivated land is concerned, the pressure of carrying population on cultivated land in China is already great; However, there are not many reserve resources of cultivated land in China, and most of them are distributed in remote areas with inconvenient transportation and sparse population, so it is difficult to reclaim and utilize them, and it is difficult to expand cultivated land to alleviate the increasingly serious population pressure of cultivated land in China. On the other hand, the phenomenon of indiscriminate occupation of cultivated land in urban and rural economic development is increasing. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of hectares of cultivated land have been reduced every year in China, and the contradiction between agricultural land and urban and industrial land demand has become increasingly prominent, further aggravating the contradiction between people and land caused by the shortage of cultivated land, which is also a problem that needs to be properly solved by effective countermeasures.