IB Diploma Programme Geography SL (first assessment 2019; 2017 guide). The core is shared by SL and HL, and this topic covers its second and third units in full — Global climate—vulnerability and resilience (climate change and its causes, vulnerability, adaptation and mitigation) and Global resource consumption and security (patterns of consumption, renewable and non-renewable resources, food and water security, stewardship). The concepts SUSTAINABILITY, PROCESS and SCALE carry the answers, and the worked figures below are the stable published ones.

Must-know for climate and resources:

CLIMATE CHANGE has NATURAL causes — orbital (Milankovitch) cycles, solar variability, volcanic episodes — and ANTHROPOGENIC ones: the greenhouse effect 温室效应 intensified by carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning and land-use change, and methane from livestock, rice and leaks. The EVIDENCE triangulates: instrument records show about 1°C of warming since pre-industrial times; ice cores extend the carbon-dioxide record back 800 000 years; glaciers retreat and global sea level rises. The PARIS AGREEMENT (2015) frames the target: hold warming WELL BELOW 2°C while pursuing 1.5°C — the number every strategy answer measures itself against.

Vulnerability 脆弱性 is exposure plus sensitivity minus capacity: low-lying deltas and small island states face sea-level rise; arid margins face drought; poverty, weak governance and dependence on agriculture raise sensitivity; wealth and institutions lower it. Resilience 恢复力 is the capacity to absorb shocks and reorganise — Bangladesh's cyclone shelters and warning systems turned a death toll of hundreds of thousands (1970) into tens (2020s): the same hazard, transformed capacity. The response pair is the exam's spine: mitigation 缓解 attacks the CAUSE (decarbonising energy, reforestation, efficiency, carbon pricing), while adaptation 适应 adjusts to the IMPACT (sea walls, drought-resistant crops, managed retreat, early warning). Richer states can fund both; poorer states are most vulnerable and least resourced — the justice frame the essays want.

Global consumption patterns are UNEVEN and RISING: energy use per person in high-income states runs several times the low-income figure, and total demand grows with population and industrialisation. The ecological footprint 生态足迹 measures demand on nature in global hectares per person: the world average of about 2.6 gha against a biocapacity of about 1.6 gha means humanity uses the equivalent of roughly 1.7 Earths — overshoot that is only possible by drawing down natural capital. RESOURCES divide into renewable resources 可再生资源 (solar, wind, biomass, fish — restorable within human timescales when harvested within their regeneration rate: the sustainable yield) and non-renewable (coal, oil, gas, minerals — stock, not flow). Energy transitions shift the mix from fossil toward renewables, judged on cost, storage, land use and the minerals the transition itself mines.

WATER: agriculture takes roughly 70% of global freshwater withdrawals, industry and municipalities the rest; water security 水安全 fails where demand crosses supply — aquifer depletion, glacier-fed rivers losing their store, and pollution — and is measured by access to safe water, not raw availability. FOOD: food security 粮食安全 stands on four pillars — AVAILABILITY (production and imports), ACCESS (affordability and distribution), UTILISATION (nutrition and safety) and STABILITY (across seasons and shocks) — so a famine can occur amid availability where access collapses. The strategic choice the unit ends on: CONSUMERISM (consume more, secure supply) versus resource stewardship 资源管护 (consume differently — efficiency, circular economies, demand management, the SDG logic of using less to live well), with the ecological-footprint arithmetic as the scoreboard.

• Natural vs anthropogenic climate causes; the three evidence streams; the 2°C/1.5°C Paris frame (climate).
• Vulnerability as exposure + sensitivity − capacity; resilience with the Bangladesh contrast; mitigation vs adaptation with named examples of each (climate).
• Footprint vs biocapacity: 2.6 vs 1.6 gha ≈ 1.7 Earths; overshoot as capital drawdown (resources).
• Renewable vs non-renewable with sustainable yield; the energy-transition trade-offs (resources).
• Water: agriculture ≈ 70% of withdrawals; security as access, not availability (resources).
• Food security's four pillars applied; famine amid availability; consumerism vs stewardship evaluated (security).

Boundary notes: the SL core paper rewards named PLACE examples at a stated SCALE (local, national, global) and precise use of "mitigation" and "adaptation"; the footprint, share and threshold figures above are the stable published values used as the unit's arithmetic spine.