Hi everyone!

Before I begin, a little something about myself. I am Alefiya Haideri, born & brought up in Pune. A typical Puneri by nature, I am an outgoing, fun loving person who, for the record has never attempted writing a blog before. This opportunity has come about as a compulsory assignment for me academically. A little thing with the brief:

'To write a blog, talking about the natural resources of any two countries of the world'

And yes, at first, just like you probably are as well, I thought to myself:

"Who ever writes a blog out of the blue on natural resources? Nobody wakes up one fine morning saying to themselves that today I will blog about the natural resources of two countries of the world." But it was only when I actually started reading on the subject matter that I realized that there is so much more to what meets the eye.

To start off with, What do we really mean by 'natural resources'?

While we have actually studied this several times in Geography lessons in school over and over again, when this topic was assigned to me, my first assumption on hearing the words 'natural resources' was anything that exists on the earth and under its surface "naturally".

Whereas I was close, the actual term is incomplete without the intervention of human beings and invariably gets linked to the socio-economic trends of any nation. With a direct impact on the lifestyles of the people, we can simply define it as:

'Natural Resources' are anything that exists without the interference of any humankind. Either renewable, like sunlight and wind harnessed into energy, or non-renewable like coal and oil, these resources, although untouched by humans, invariably are the core raw materials that people utilize in large quantities in their day to day lives.

Having established that, what was left for me to actually begin with my data collection was picking two countries of the world to study about.

Located astride the sea routes between the east and west, being exposed to a wide range of cultural and political influence throughout its History, I recently visited a country that has been known from ancient times for its precious stones, spices, elephants and scenic beauty, and as you might have guessed, I am talking about the little island country not so far away from our own, of Sri Lanka. Still hung up on my amazing experience, having been there only a few weeks ago, I knew right away that this has to be my first country of choice.

The second country I wanted to write about, I knew would be a place I have not visited as yet. After a bit of research and much thought, I picked the country of Iraq to study for two core reasons. One, I was quite surprised to get to know that, Iraq happens to be the ninth most natural resource rich country in the world, and two, Iraq has been in the news recently for so many other reasons, I thought personally, that leaving all of those aside, it would be interesting to shine some light on another facet of the country, and hence that became my second country of choice.