By ALEXANDRE MACCHIONE SAES*
The challenge to promote the reversal of the trend of increasing consumption of natural resources is enormous and depends on an effectively international policy
Published in March 2024, the Global Resources Panorama Report points out that the extraction of natural resources has tripled in the last five decades. If in the last article we dealt with the distressing records in climate indicators, registered in 2023 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the present study offers another worrying dimension about environmental degradation: the accelerated consumption and degradation of natural resources.
Global resource consumption has grown from 30 billion tons in 1970 to 106 billion in 2024 – or from 23 to 39 kilograms of materials used on average per person per day. Since only 10% of these resources are recycled, it is noticeable how the global production and consumption model is still based on the necessary and continuous extraction of natural resources.
According to the report, the construction of urban equipment and transport systems, food production and energy generation are responsible for approximately 90% of global material demand. Therefore, the pressure from the aggregate demand for global resources has been a reflection of population and economic growth, the expansion of urbanization and its “middle class”.
Between 1970 and 2020, the urban population grew from 37% to 56%: a population that requires greater consumption of energy, water and materials – including for the construction of extensive urban infrastructure –, but also generates greater waste of resources and pollution.
The report has been produced since 2007 by the International Natural Resources Panel of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the indicators are becoming more critical every year. The executive director of UNEP, Inger Andersen, leaves no room for doubt about the dangerous path that the world economy is taking: “At this moment (…) resources are extracted, processed, consumed and thrown away in a way that is driving a triple crisis planetary – the crisis of climate change, the crisis of loss of nature and biodiversity, and the crisis of pollution and waste. We must start using natural resources sustainably and responsibly.”
The sustainable and responsible use of natural resources takes the issue to a shifting field of political choices and the distribution of resources among individuals. In a world where economic inequality still preserves violent differences both between countries and between social groups within countries themselves, the report clearly advocates against unequal access to resources. High-income countries, for example, consume on average six times more materials per capita and produce ten times more climate impact than low-income countries.
Therefore, to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the dissociation between the use of resources and the production of well-being is a fundamental condition to guarantee the improvement of social indicators, without putting further pressure on the environment.
According to the modeling presented in the report, it is possible to produce absolute reductions in the consumption of natural resources in high- and upper-middle-income countries, compensating for the increase required so that low- and lower-middle-income countries can meet their well-being demands. With greater energy efficiency, in food production and resource extraction, it is possible to achieve higher growth rates in the Human Development Index than in Global GDP growth.
In this sense, even though the report does not defend the degrowth theses, its considerations point to the need to redistribute the rates (and benefits) of economic growth between countries with higher incomes to those with lower incomes.
The distribution of material uses must involve a second and complex dimension of growth: the distinction between production and consumption processes. Observing data on production and consumption of natural resources, the “material footprint”, the share of Asia and the Pacific countries grew from 41% in 2000 to 56% in 2020. It is worth remembering the high growth rates of the Chinese economy in transition to the XNUMXst century, which explains this high demand for material for the region.
However, even though the countries of Europe and North America have reduced their share from 19% to 11% in the same period, having moved part of their production to other regions, they are still the world's largest consumers of materials. This is one of the central questions addressed by authors who study the “ecological footprint”, which explains the difference between spaces for extracting material resources and the markets that consume these materials.
In order to reduce stress in the extraction of natural resources, a set of recommendations are offered in the report: review of the dominant agricultural model – monoculture and intensive use of chemical products – which is responsible for the loss of 90% of the world's biodiversity and the deepening water crises; transition to a circular and sustainable bioeconomy, reducing waste and environmental impacts; and the decarbonization of the energy system.
The challenge to promote the reversal of this trend of increasing consumption of natural resources is enormous and depends on an effectively international policy. Considering that we are still based on economic growth indicators that stimulate the intensive use of new resources, maintaining the well-being of rich countries, as well as the condition for increasing the well-being of poor countries, seems to require the maintenance of this predatory model of interaction in the environment. The political cost of intervening in the model seems high, a difficult equation between national interests and global needs.
Nevertheless, the report points to a possibly optimistic scenario that, in contrast to the productive structure of the 20th century, the transition to a sustainable model appears to offer more favorable conditions to balance economic growth rates with moderation of pressure on natural resources. With the formulation and articulation of policymakers At local, national and international levels, it is possible to produce a global sustainability agenda, reducing environmental impacts and ensuring the reduction of global economic and social inequalities.
Prefacing the report, Janez Potočnik and Izabella Teixeira, co-presidents of UNEP, summarize the challenge that lies ahead: “We must not accept that satisfying human needs has to require many resources and we must stop encouraging economic success based on extraction.” .
*Alexandre Macchione Saes He is a professor at the Department of Economics at USP. Author, among other books, of Conflicts of capital (EDUSC). [https://amzn.to/3LoAQIA]
Originally published on Journal of USP.
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