This paper assesses world-wide patterns of material extraction, trade, consumption and productivity based on a new data set for economy-wide material flows, covering used materials for all countries world-wide between 1980 and 2009. We show that global material extraction has grown by more than 90% over the past 30 years and is reaching almost 70 billion tonnes today. Also, trade volumes in physical terms have increased by a factor of 2.5 over the past 30 years, and in 2009, 9.3 billion tonnes of raw materials and products were traded around the globe. China has turned into the biggest consumer of materials world-wide and together with the US, India, Brazil and Russia, consumes more than 50% of all globally extracted materials. We also show that the per-capita consumption levels are very uneven, with a factor of more than 60 between the country with the lowest and highest consumption in 2009. On average, each human being consumed 10 tonnes of materials in 2009, 2 tonnes more than in 1980. We discuss whether decoupling of economies' growth from resource use has occurred and analyse interrelations of material use with human development. Finally, we elaborate on key environmental problems related to various material groups.

A new approach to allocate environmental responsibility, the "value added-based responsibility" allocation, is presented in this article. This metric allocates total environmental pressures occurring along an international supply chain to the participating sectors and countries according to the share of value added they generate within that specific supply chain. We show that - due to their position in global value chains - certain sectors (e.g. services) and countries (e.g. Germany) receive significantly greater responsibility compared to other allocation approaches. This adds a new perspective to the discussions concerning a fair distribution of mitigation costs among nations, companies and consumers.

La presente tesis se compone de tres artículos publicados y uno enviado para publicación. Son cuatro casos de estudio que comparten el mismo eje teórico: el metabolismo social. Usando la metodología Contabilidad de Flujos de Materiales se han medido las entradas de materiales de varias economías. Los indicadores que se obtienen aplicando esta metodología permiten caracterizar los perfiles metabólicos de las economías estudiadas, identificando los factores más importantes que los determinan. Asimismo, estos indicadores pueden considerarse como una medida indirecta de la presión que una economía ejerce en el medio ambiente. Por otra parte, esta tesis tiene como objetivo dar evidencia empírica sobre la ausencia de desmaterialización de las economías. La principal conclusión es que en este mundo globalizado, los países son cada vez más dependientes del comercio internacional y el papel que un país juega en el concierto internacional determina en gran medida la manera como utiliza sus recursos materiales. Sin embargo, esta dependencia sigue diversas trayectorias. Por una parte, identificamos un conjunto de países como España que se ha beneficiado de este proceso. En las últimas dos décadas, este país ha logrado aumentar su bienestar económico usando intensivamente recursos provenientes de otros sistemas socioeconómicos, como el petróleo. Sin embargo, el principal factor determinante de su perfil biofísico ha sido el sector de la construcción. Por otra parte, identificamos aquellos países que históricamente han basado sus economías en la extracción de recursos naturales como Chile, Ecuador, México y Perú y que actualmente no presentan un patrón uniforme de uso de recursos naturales. En Ecuador, Chile y Perú, el comercio internacional ha sido el principal determinante del patrón e intensidad del uso de los recursos naturales. Sin embargo, Ecuador sigue siendo el ejemplo típico de economía extractiva mientras que Chile ha logrado una diversificación de sus exportaciones con mayor valor agregado. Este proceso se observa pero de manera muy incipiente en Perú. Chile puede considerarse como el ejemplo más exitoso en la región del modelo basado en exportaciones de materias primas al lograr un fuerte crecimiento económico. México es un caso especial y contradictorio, porque a pesar de ser un importante exportador de petróleo, ha logrado una diversificación de su producción hacía sectores con un mayor componente tecnológico debido a la creciente presencia de la industria maquiladora. Sin embargo, no son sus flujos de exportaciones ni el crecimiento económico los principales determinantes del uso que hace de sus recursos materiales sino el crecimiento de la población. Por otra parte, se observa un incremento considerable en el uso de materiales de construcción y energéticos fósiles en toda la economía mientras que al mismo tiempo, la población rural sigue dependiendo de fuentes tradicionales de energía como la leña para satisfacer sus necesidades energéticas. Otra conclusión general es que no se observa un proceso de desmaterialización ni absoluta ni relativa en ninguno de los países analizados. / This thesis is composed of three published articles and a submitted one. All share the same theoretical approach: social metabolism. By tracing all material flows into several economic systems by means of the Material Flows Accounting methodology (MFA), this thesis aims on the one hand at characterizing current metabolic profiles of different economies, identifying their main driving forces; on the other hand, it aims at providing empirical evidence on dematerialisation of the economies. The main conclusion is that in our globalised world, countries are becoming more dependent on international trade and that the role a country plays in the international markets strongly determines its pattern of material use. This dependency followed different trajectories. On the one hand, we identify countries such as Spain that benefited from this process as it increased welfare based in an intensive use of strategic natural resources coming from other economic systems such as fossil fuels. Nevertheless, the main driving force shaping the biophysical profile of this economy was the construction sector, an internal factor. On the other hand, we identify those countries that historically have relied on the extraction of natural resources such as Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru although we can no longer talk about a uniform pattern of natural resource use in the region. In Ecuador, Chile and Peru, international trade was the main driving force for material use. Ecuador remains the typical example of an extractive economy whereas a diversification of exports away from bulk commodities towards products with more added value could be observed to a greater extent in Chile and incipiently in Peru. Chile can be regarded as a successful example of the staple theory of growth as its GDP increased considerably. Mexico is a special and contradictory case. Firstly, despite being an important oil exporter, it has achieved a diversification of production, moving towards technology-intensive products due to the assembly industries. Secondly, despite it has a great potential of biomass extraction, it is undergoing a substitution process of imported biomass for national biomass, in particular, basic crops for human consumption. Instead of international trade, population growth was the main driving force for biophysical growth in this economy. Thirdly, it was observed an increasing emphasis on the use of construction materials and fossil fuels in the whole economy whereas in the countryside, rural households still rely heavily on traditional biomass flows such as fuelwood to satisfy their energetic needs. A general conclusion is that neither absolute dematerialisation nor relative dematerialisation occurred in any of the analysed countries.

Understanding the environmental implications of consumption and production depends on appropriate monitoring tools. Material flow accounting (MFA) is a method to monitor natural resource use by countries and has been widely used in research and policy. However, the increasing globalization requires the consideration of "embodied" material use of traded products. The indicator raw material consumption (RMC) represents the material use - no matter where in the world it occurs - associated with domestic final demand. It provides a consumption-based perspective complementary to the MFA indicators that have a territorial focus. Several studies on RMC have been presented recently but with diverging results; hence, a better understanding of the underlying differences is needed. This article presents a comparison of Austrian RMC for the year 2007 calculated by six different approaches (3 multi-regional input-output (MRIO) and 3 hybrid life-cycle analysis-IO approaches). Five approaches result in an RMC higher than the domestic material consumption (DMC). One hybrid LCA-IO approach calculates RMC to be lower than DMC. For specific material categories, results diverge by 50% or more. Due to the policy relevance of the RMC and DMC indicators it is paramount that their robustness is enhanced, which needs both data and method harmonization.

Orientador: Enrique Ortega Rodriguez / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia de Alimentos / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-10T19:25:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cavalett_Otavio_D.pdf: 1768365 bytes, checksum: 167e95b088960c318d1d668f8a548c6b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: O objetivo deste trabalho de pesquisa é avaliar o ciclo de vida da soja para quantificar as contribuições ambientais e econômicas necessárias em cada etapa de produção, transporte e processamento de soja e seus principais produtos. Para tanto, foram utilizadas a análise de energia incorporada, a análise de intensidade de materiais e a análise emergética, além de indicadores econômicos e sociais. Os resultados mostram que produção agrícola da soja é a etapa que utiliza maior quantidade de recursos no ciclo de vida dos produtos considerados: farelo de soja exportado para a Europa, biodiesel e óleo de soja refinado. Por isso, esta é a etapa agrícola é aquela que requer mais atenção dos tomadores de decisões em políticas publicas para um ciclo de vida da soja mais sustentável. Os resultados mostram que a produção de biodiesel de soja convencional não é uma alternativa sustentável (renovabilidade = 31%) para fornecimento de energia para a sociedade e também que os fluxos de farelo de soja exportados para a Europa são responsáveis por grandes impactos ambientais (índice de carga ambiental = 2,83). Entretanto, os resultados obtidos mostram que a soja pode ser produzida em sistemas alternativos mais sustentáveis de forma a reduzir estes impactos negativos / Abstract: The objective of this study is to assess the soybean life cycle to quantify the environmental and economic contributions at each stage of soybean and soybean products production, transport and processing phases. In order of that, it were used the Embodied Energy Analysis, the Material Intensity Analysis and the Emergy Synthesis as well other economic and social indicators. The results showed that agricultural production stage is the phase that uses larger amount of resources in the life cycle of soybean products considered: soy meal exported to Europe, biodiesel and refined soy oil. Therefore, the agricultural phase requires more attention of decision-makers for public policies toward a more sustainable soybean chain. Quantitative indicators showed that biodiesel production from conventional soybean is not a sustainable (renewability = 31%) alternative for energy supply to the society. Also, the soy meal flows exported to Europe are responsible for high environmental damages (environmental loading ratio = 2.83). However, the results showed that soybean can be produced in more sustainable alternative systems in order to reduce these negative impacts / Doutorado / Doutor em Engenharia de Alimentos

Abstract This thesis explored innovative ways to improve estimation of material footprint-type indicators in application of Input-Output (IO) analysis to Material Flow Accounting. The following six research questions were addressed: 1) What is the potential impact of sector aggregation in IO modelling of raw material flows? Modelling errors due to aggregation of industries with dissimilar material requirements and trade structures into a single sector in IO models when calculating the material footprint were empirically analysed relative to greenhouse gas emissions. Significant biases emerged for raw material flows, which suggests that care should be taken when aggregating extractive sectors in IO models. 2) Can bottom-up approaches, such as LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), improve estimation of the raw materials embodied in trade products? and 3) What are the implications of integration of country-specific information from high geographical coverage IO models into LCA approaches for calculation of raw material embodied in trade products? An approach for combining country-specific production blueprints with LCA based on regional averages was developed. This approach proved useful in refining estimates of upstream raw materials embodied in trade products, although care is needed during its application since new biases may arise. 4) Can further perspectives be gained with a new allocation method, the ‘value added-based material footprint’, which assigns supply chain-wide raw material extractions to each participating economic actor according to its added value generation, contributing to discussions on the distribution of mitigation costs? Certain countries and sectors were found to be more material-intensive with this new accounting approach than in other widely known allocation methods, e.g. consumer footprint. 5) Are there unequal exchanges between high-income economies and middle- and lower-income countries when measured in terms of raw material and value added flows? and 6) Could integration of local and global IO data provide useful insights to study presence/absence of unequal material exchange at sub-national level? A study of material flows at inter- and intra-national level demonstrated that a regional economy can play a twofold role, both as sink or source of raw materials and in value added, depending on its position in the global economic hierarchy. / Tiivistelmä Tässä työssä tutkittiin innovatiivisia tapoja, joilla voitaisiin parantaa materiaalijalanjälki -tyyppisten indikaattoreiden käytettävyyttä panos-tuotos (Input-Output, IO) -analyysissa, kun niitä sovelletaan Materiaalivirta-analyysi (Material Flow Accounting, MFA) -metodiin. Seuraaviin tutkimuskysymyksiin haettiin vastauksia: 1) Mikä on sektorien yhdistämisen potentiaalinen vaikutus raaka-ainevirtojen IO-mallintamisessa ja miten poikkeamia voidaan estää? Tämän puitteissa tarkasteltiin mallinnusvirheitä, jotka johtuvat erilaisten toimialojen yhdistämisistä yhdeksi sektoriksi. 2) Voivatko alhaalta ylöspäin suuntautuvat lähestymistavat, kuten elinkaariarviointi parantaa tuotteisiin sisältyvien raaka-ainevirtojen arviointia? ja 3) Mitä vaikutuksia on laajan maantieteellisen kattavuuden IO-malleihin sisältyvien maakohtaisten tietojen yhdistämisestä LCA-pohjaisiin lähestymistapoihin, kun tavoitteena on laskea tuotteisiin sisältyviä raaka-ainemääriä? Tämän tutkimista varten kehitettiin lähestymistapa, joka yhdisti maakohtaiset tuotantosuunnitelmat ja elinkaariarvioinnin. Tämä lähestymistapa osoittautui hyödylliseksi tarkentamalla arvioita tuotteissa olevista raaka-aineista, vaikkakin sen soveltaminen edellyttää varovaisuutta, koska uusia vääristymiä voi syntyä. 4) Voidaanko uusia näkökulmia löytää uudella arvonlisäykseen perustuvalla allokointimenetelmällä, joka jakaa raaka-aineen louhinnan kullekin toimintaketjun osallistuvalle taloudelliselle toimijalle lisäarvon tuotannon mukaan? Tämän uuden kirjanpitomenetelmän mukaan jotkut maat ja alat ovat materiaali-intensiivisempiä kuin niitä on pidetty kulutuksen jalanjälkiallokointimenetelmien perusteella. 5) Onko korkean tulotason talouksien ja keskitasoiselle ja alhaiselle tulotasolle asettuvien maiden välillä epätasaisia vaihtoja, kun raaka-ainekulutusta ja arvonlisäystä mitataan? ja 6) Voisiko paikallisten ja globaalien IO-tietojen integrointi antaa hyödyllisiä näkökulmia tutkimukseen, joka tarkastelee epätasaisen aineenvaihdon esiintymistä tai puuttumista alueellisella tasolla? Materiaalivirtojen tutkiminen kansainvälisellä ja kansallisella tasolla, jossa yhdistettiin IO-tietokannat erilaisella maantieteellisellä resoluutiolla osoitti, että alueellisella taloudella voi olla kaksoisrooli sekä raaka-aineiden että arvonlisäyksen lähteenä tai nieluna riippuen sen asemasta globaalissa taloushierarkiassa.