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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VIENNA/oai:epub.wu-wien.ac.at:5322 |
| Date | 18 March 2014 |
| Creators | Giljum, Stefan, Dittrich, Monika, Lutter, Franz Stephan, Lieber, Mirko |
| Publisher | MDPI |
| Source Sets | Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, PeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Austria |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/resources3010319, http://www.mdpi.com/, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/resources, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/resources/special_issues/sustainable-resource-management, http://epub.wu.ac.at/5322/ |
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