This module is about how people use resources to make a living, where they do it and what choices follow. In Cambridge IGCSE Geography (0460), questions on these ideas usually give you a map, a table or a short text and ask you to use it. Check the current syllabus on the Cambridge subject page for the exact content and the assessment route for your exam year.
Our lessons work with invented data, labelled as such, so you can practise the method without memorising numbers. Any real case study you use in an answer needs a place, a date and a source, and should be described factually and neutrally.
What should you know before you start?
You need to read a simple table and do percentage and multiplication work with a calculator. If you are less sure of those, the earlier population and settlement evidence and development and inequality modules give useful practice with data. Everything else is built in the lessons below.
One orienting example
Imagine an invented town, Bandar Selasih, with 80 000 workers. Its employment by sector is: primary 12 000, secondary 20 000, tertiary 44 000 and quaternary 4 000.
As percentages of 80 000, these are 15%, 25%, 55% and 5%, which add up to 100%. A short statement could be: “More than half of workers are in the tertiary sector, so the town relies mainly on services.”
That one sentence uses a label, a figure and a conclusion. The five lessons below train each of those habits.
In what order should you study the lessons?
- Classify a stated activity by role: every other lesson needs the labels, so start here.
- Explain a location choice using evidence: the sector tells you which factors to look for, and you practise the Factor, evidence, effect pattern.
- Compare resource demand and supply in a case: adds surplus, deficit and percentage work.
- Trace a production network without inventing data: teaches you to stay inside the source and mark gaps.
- Discuss a trade-off using explicitly supplied criteria: brings the skills together into a balanced judgement.
Then try the mixed practice set. The statistics and distribution explorer helps with tables of data, and the mistake log and retest queue helps you track repeat errors.
What are the common traps?
- Classifying by location or product name rather than by what the activity does.
- Naming a location factor without quoting the evidence for it.
- Dividing by the wrong base when you work out a percentage of a deficit.
- Filling gaps in a supply chain from memory instead of writing “not stated”.
- Adding criteria the question never gave when you weigh a trade-off.
How should you use the practice set?
Cover the answers and write your own working first, including units. Then open each answer and tick the steps you included, not only the final number.
The “If you got these wrong” section on the practice page sends each kind of error back to a lesson. If your answers name the right factor but skip the evidence, a teacher in our online one-to-one Geography tuition can work through them with you. The next module in the subject, food, water and energy systems, applies these skills to resources in more depth.