Environmental and Resource Geography: Sustainability, Water, Waste, Energy and Pollution
What this domain tests
This domain tests resource classification and management, sustainability concepts, pollution processes and climate response, with strong emphasis on small-island constraints: limited land, scarce freshwater, import-dependent energy and concentrated coastal pressure.
Core rules and concepts
- Classify resources: renewable versus non-renewable; stock versus flow; resource versus reserve (the economically extractable portion).
- Sustainability means meeting present needs without compromising future generations; operationalise it with carrying capacity, ecological footprint and Environmental Impact Assessment.
- Water: Malta's Mean Sea Level aquifer is the only significant groundwater body. Recharge is limited by thin soils, urban sealing and short, intense rainfall.
- Over-abstraction lowers the freshwater lens below sea level, allowing saline intrusion and brackish wells.
- Waste hierarchy: prevent > reuse > recycle > recover energy > dispose. Landfill is the last resort, not the default.
- Energy: import dependence, the Sicily interconnector, solar PV and offshore wind; renewables are variable and land- or sea-hungry.
- Pollution: point versus diffuse sources; eutrophication sequence - nutrient enrichment → algal bloom → decomposition → oxygen sag → faunal loss.
- Climate response: mitigation attacks causes (emissions); adaptation manages impacts (coastal defence, heat plans, water storage).
Worked example
An abstraction licence is doubled. The water table falls below sea level, seawater moves inland, well conductivity rises and farmers report brackish water. Reasoning: pumping exceeds recharge → hydraulic gradient reverses → saline intrusion → usable resource shrinks. Responses follow logically: cap abstraction, recharge with treated stormwater, meter demand, and treat or desalinate supplies at an energy cost.
Traps that cost marks
Swapping mitigation and adaptation; claiming renewables have zero environmental impact; ignoring the scale of a management measure (household versus national); making unsupported statements about pollution without naming the source and pathway.