Material #11: Material use triples in 50 years
UNEP’s International Resource Panel has issued its latest outlook on human’s use of the World’s resources. The findings are stark. Our use of materials* – biomass, fossil fuels, metals, and non-metallic minerals - has more than tripled over the past fifty years.
The main drivers of this increased demand are the built environment and transit systems, followed by food and energy. Without dramatic changes in how we use materials, demand may go up another 60% over the next forty years. No wonder Earth is under pressure.
These material demand patterns - as well as the impacts of climate change, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss that result from them – are unevenly distributed, with implications for what the response should be in different regions.
High-income countries use six times more materials per person, and account for 10 times more climate impacts per capita than low-income countries. (However it’s important to also acknowledge major disparities within countries too). Upper-middle income countries have seen the fasted increases in material use, driven particularly by urbanization and infrastructure booms in China and other countries in Asia.
“The only choice is to stabilize and balance the human relationship with the rest of nature”.
The report recommends a new pathway forward, which has the potential to “bend the trend” and slow the growth in material use. It stresses the importance of “integrated action on resource efficiency, climate and energy, food and land”, which will achieve more effective results than tackling any of these areas in isolation. It says the structure of the economy should reflect the true costs of resources, and that:
“The prevailing approach of focusing almost exclusively on supply side (production) measures must be supplemented with a much stronger focus on demand-side (consumption) measures”.
The report also sets out the barriers standing in the way of a transition to more sustainable use of resources. Many connect back up to the way that the economy functions.
One crucial strand of action is to call out and reverse incentives that enable and encourage the escalation of resource use.
“For several decades, international organizations, scientists and civil society actors have pleaded for the phasing out of environmentally harmful taxes and subsidies, unsustainable spatial planning practices and so on. However, much capital has been poured into property and fossil fuels, while relatively small amounts of capital have been dedicated to sustainable resource use. This applies to public finance, where it is still the norm to subsidize unsustainable practices, and private finance. Indeed, fossil fuels benefited from record subsidies in 2002”.
[see pg. 10 of the report for sources].
Bending the curve of escalating resource use may seem a Sisyphean task. (“Limits to Growth” was published in 1972!). But there is momentum across sectors and regions to challenge the economic paradigm that drives it. Whatever space or sector we find ourselves in, there are opportunities to elevate the resource and materials dimensions - and their related social justice dimensions - that are so often overlooked, and to connect people behind a new direction.
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Through 2024, It’s Material is sharing one use of the word “material” each week, on Tuesdays.
*There’s a helpful glossary of terms at the start of Bend the Curve. For the purposes of the report, “Materials” are defined like this:
“Materials are substances or compounds. They are used as inputs for production or manufacturing because of their properties. A material can be defined at different stages of its life cycle: unprocessed (or raw) materials, intermediate materials and finished materials. For example, iron ore is mined and processed into crude iron, which in turn is refined and processed into steel. Each of these can be called materials. Steel is then used as an input in many other industries to make finished products. Throughout the report, assessments refer to material resources (biomass, fossil fuels, metals and non-metallic minerals), with the term often shortened to ‘materials’.