There are many countries in this world, of which some are blessed with great natural resources, such as America, and some are not, such as Japan, in which, if the material success of a given country, simply came down to the quantity and quality of natural resources contained within its borders, than Russia as the largest country in the world and the country considered to have the greatest amount of natural resources would be the most powerful and richest country in the world, but it is not, as Russia's GDP in aggregate does not even make the top ten of nations in the world, and Russia's GDP per capita, does not even make the top fifty. Additionally, as ranked by investopedia.com, Iran and Saudi Arabia, are considered to be in the top five of countries that have the largest natural resources in the world, in which Iran is an economic mess, and Saudi Arabia, despite its vast oil and natural gas resources, is on a per capita basis, ranked just #35 in the world, in addition to its significantly large disparities in wealth. On the other hand, there are countries such as Japan, that lack natural resources in regards to oil, coal, natural gas, and arable land, yet this small island nation, has the third highest aggregate GDP in the world. So too, many examples could be given of other nations such as Venezuela, Nigeria, and Angola, that have ample natural resources but are countries that are not noted for being either stable politically or equitable in their income.
The very first thing to really consider about natural resources, is that what so many people consider to be natural resources such as oil, natural gas, water, timber, arable land, and coal, are just some of the resources that man has developed over the years to utilize for energy, food, building, transportation, or heating, which means the designation of natural resources has a lot more to do with things that have been developed so as to be utilized efficiently as compared to something of pure intrinsic value. What this means is that mineral resources such as oil, are valuable to mankind, because mankind has learned how to extract it from the earth very efficiently, along with how to process it, create energy from it, how to utilize it in plastics and all sorts of other products, and how to distribute it throughout the world, so that the development and importance of oil, aligns hand-in-hand with the products and needs that are coordinated with it. The fact that oil is an incredibly valuable commodity has a lot more to do with the imagination and the application of the mind of man, than it necessarily has to do with the product itself, because it is that very application and imagination that has taken an abundant resource and developed it successfully for man's benefit.
The above presupposes that rather than getting fixated that the world has a finite amount of natural resources which we are using up at a greater and greater rate, because populations are increasing, in addition to the fact that more and more nations are using more and more natural resources, is that, mankind is not a fool, for the greatest natural resource is to take the foundation of what has already been learnt by previous generations, and to utilize this as the basis to increase that knowledge, applying such in new and more efficient ways, so that mankind can do even more than was previously thought imaginable.
This thus signifies that the greatest natural resource isn't really mineral resources, though they have their value, but the mind of mankind, itself, and as long as mankind is driven to make the world a better and richer place, progress will continue, so that the more the world is developed, the more material wealth that will be discovered, indicating that the most successful nations are the ones that are both optimistic and that also diligently apply themselves to the vital tasks at hand.