Food, water and energy are the three resources that every settlement depends on. In Geography you are asked to read data about them, explain why supply falls short, trace how an energy system works, compare ways of managing it and judge how strong a claim really is.
This module sits inside the wider Geography learning guide. It also links naturally to economic activities and resources, because supply problems often start with how land and resources are used.
What do you need before you start?
You need to read a table and a simple graph, work out a difference, a percentage and an average, and write a clear sentence of cause and effect. Nothing here needs more than IGCSE-level arithmetic. Check the current syllabus for your exam year on the Cambridge page, because the exact wording of content and skills can change between series.
One orienting example
All numbers in this example are invented for practice. A small town receives 600 mm of rain in a year. Its potential evapotranspiration, the water that could leave the surface if supply were unlimited, is 500 mm.
The balance is 600 − 500 = +100 mm, so across the year there is a surplus.
That is a start, but it hides the question that matters most: when does the surplus arrive? If it all comes in three wet months and the other nine are short, the town can still run dry. Every lesson in this module repeats that move: read the number, then ask what it hides.
In what order should you study the lessons?
- Interpret a water-balance style dataset first, because it teaches you to read monthly data and spot a seasonal deficit.
- Explain a food-supply constraint next, because it turns the same careful reading into a chain of cause and effect.
- Trace an energy-system input and output after that, to practise following arrows and calculating efficiency.
- Compare management approaches descriptively once you can describe a system, so you can set two responses side by side.
- Identify missing evidence in a sustainability claim last, because it asks you to question a claim using everything above.
What are the common traps?
- Quoting a single yearly total and ignoring the seasons inside it.
- Naming a constraint, such as drought, without saying how it reduces supply.
- Treating “energy used” as “energy destroyed” rather than energy that ends up as waste heat.
- Writing about two approaches in separate paragraphs with no comparing words.
- Accepting the word “sustainable” without asking who measured what, against which baseline.
How should you use the practice set?
Work through the mixed practice set with a pencil and a calculator, covering the answers until you have written your own. The statistics and distribution explorer helps with means and medians, and the food-web and energy-flow explorer helps you check what each arrow means. Log any repeated slip in the mistake log and retest queue.
Case-study facts are not invented here. When you build your own notes, record the date, the source and the place for every figure, because Geography case-study facts need that context.
Fieldwork and the alternative-to-fieldwork route are set by your own course and exam centre, and the Cambridge syllabus page sets out what is assessed. Our online one-to-one lessons focus on the data and written-answer skills around them, described on the Geography tuition page.