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1 A plot of soil showing that "peak soil" was reached in the year 2000, fitted to a Hubbert's curve. Adapted after Sverdrup et al. (2013a). Data from FAO (2010, 2011). The diamonds represent millions of hectares of tilled soil.
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https://www.researchgate.net/project/2nd-International-and-5th-National-Conference-on-the-Conservation-of-Natural-Resources-and-Environment
General Manuel Mier y Terán explored the limits between Mexico and United States. he discovered with a scientific team the naturals resources of the mexican space.
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... The depletion of natural resources and its negative impacts have accelerated rapidly since the beginning of the 2000s. Without developing globally effective policies, the material consumption will increase to 190 billion tonnes by 2060 (UNEP SDG's Report 2019, Sverdrup and Ragnarsdottir 2014). The debate about the increasing consumption of resources and the associated consequences has shifted from the scientific community into the public and political debate in the last 30 years. ...
... 1. Global average life satisfaction has not significantly improved since 1975 , Kubiszewski et al. 2013). If wealth were distributed more equally on a global scale, it would appear to be economically possible to support a population of 9 billion people at about 7,000 $ per capita with the current world GDP, but this is assuming the natural resources for this to be available (Bardi 2013, Bardi et al. 2019, Kubiszewski et al. 2013, Sverdrup and Ragnarsdottir 2014. ...
... Additionally, the economic contraction approach is necessary to delegate resource consumption and emissions towards the planetary boundaries. From a materials mass balance perspective, there does not appear to be any sustainable population size above 3 billion people in the long run (Ehrlich et al. 1992, Sverdrup and Ragnarsdottir 2011, Sverdrup et al., 2014, 2020a. 4. Redistribution of opportunities for income, with it the linked resource use as an opposing strategy of constant growth to lift the living standards in the poorest countries, has been suggested. ...
... Studies in the PSC have included quantitative models, and their results pointed toward P scarcity (Nedelciu et al., 2020;Ragnarsdóttir et al., 2011;Sverdrup & Ragnarsdottir, 2011;Sverdrup & Ragnarsdóttir, 2014). In these researches, a system dynamics model was proposed and mentioned the growing population as a primary driver for P consumption and demand. ...
Phosphorus is an unsustainable substance that plays an essential role in modern agricultural systems and crop yield. Due to phosphorus growing demand and the importance of sustainable application of this critical resource, there is increasing concern about its supply chain network sustainability and resiliency. In this paper, a multi-objective, multi-product, multi-period mathematical model is developed for the sustainable phosphorus supply chain management in an uncertain environment. The parametric uncertainties such as demand and supply are aggravated by disruptions with devastating effects on strategic, tactical, and operational decisions. Given the potential adverse effects of the phosphorus supply chain on the environment and human beings, a sustainable-resilient supply chain network of the fertilizer industry is designed by considering the related environmental, social, and economic challenges of the phosphorus managing. A reactive strategy is adapted to encounter the disruptions and breakdowns along with the network, while a robust stochastic programming is extended and solved using genetic algorithm to cope with the real-world uncertainties. The proposed model effectively controls the uncertainty and risk-aversion of output decisions and confronts the adverse effects of disruptions. The effectiveness and applicability of the model are validated through a real case study. Besides, the performance and reliability of the model are proved by the realization under new scenarios. The results indicate that the proposed model performs well in capturing real-world uncertainties and promoting the sustainability and resiliency of the network.
... It has already been well documented that environmentally sustainable consumer behavior is clearly an important aspect of pro-social consumption activities [1]. Instead of spending time and money on waste disposal, the concept of "zero waste" that has emerged in modern waste management is on the way to being implemented worldwide [2,3]. Zero waste management, which aims at the management of resources and waste, requires well-targeted interventions that can help minimize waste. ...
Abstract: Due to increasing demand on earth sources in all areas, some materials have come under pressure for effective recovery and reuse. In this sense, the management of waste materials has become an important need for effective utilizations. In this regard, the waste management behaviour of individuals towards zero waste was studied using a scale and included pre-testing and administering a survey, and reducing the number of items with the determination of factors. The scale was evaluated using all necessary statistical measures. The IBM SPSS and IBM SPPS AMOS were utilized for confirmatory and expository factor analyses, respectively. It was found that the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient determined the reliability level of the improved scale, at 0.909, while the Kaiser– Meyer–Olkin coefficient was determined as 0.887. The Bartlett’s sphericity test result was found to be p < 0.000. The test results clearly indicated that the sample size was adequate for the measurement of the construct and a patterned relationship among the items was detected. However, the reliability and validity of the developed scaled were confirmed by the goodness of fit indices used. It is important to note that education, profession, level of income, and place of residence significantly influenced the participants’ zero waste management behaviour, but the gender and age of the participants were not influential factors. By having these experimental results, it is suitable to suggest that a model consisting of three factors (knowledge, facilities, and motivation) was capable of measuring the waste management behaviour of people towards zero waste in Turkey.
Keywords: scale development; survey; zero waste
... Reserves, resources, and current (2017) annual production of the metals (to increase rapidly due to low carbon technologies) used in calculations of Watari et al (2018) who provide references for source data, particularly United States Geological Survey (2017) and Sverdrup and Ragnarsdóttir (2014) . ( Clout and Simonson, 2005 ) for steel production and the previous limited use of lithium plus potentially large resources in the salars of western South America ( Ahmad, 2022 ) argue against iron and lithium terminal depletion by 2060. ...
Over the past two decades, concerns about anthropogenic CO2 emissions have led to computer-based climate models of the consequences, first on global warming and then on more general climate change. The more extremes of these models have been used to engender concerns about climate events that could be catastrophic for global populations even though natural climate change has always been incremental with only periodic large volcanic eruptions producing short-term catastrophic changes due to massive additions of aerosols to the atmosphere. Climate change accords have led to widespread acceptance of Net Zero by 2060 targets. However, indicative modelling of the nexus between clean energy and the critical metals required for low carbon solar and wind technologies and electric vehicles and their chargers indicates that many metals, particularly Co, Ni, Cu, Se, Ag, Cd, In, Te, and Pt, may be severely to terminally depleted by 2060, making further low carbon technology production impossible. Mineral exploration and currently unmined deposits with high risk factors are only likely to be able to replace these non-renewable metals at lower grades in more inaccessible or deeper mines, leading to even further increases in conventional energy for mining and metallurgy and consequent cost of the low carbon technology revolution. There is no current indication that recycling can replace the critical metal stocks. The heterogeneous global distribution of both mineral deposits containing the critical metals and production points could become a geopolitical issue if global security declines. These factors combined with the slow incremental, rather than catastrophic, changes related to climate change, suggest that a reset in Net Zero ambitions should be made to consider a more multicomponent plan for the future that involves a balanced portfolio of least polluting energy sources that do not cause serious depletion of affordable metal resources for the future.
... The International Monetary Fund defines Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as "the monetary value of final goods and services -that is, those purchased by the end user -produced in a country over a given period of time (e.g., a quarter or a year) 11 . The "basic" idea of GDP appeared in the 17th century, but it was not until the 1930s that the modern concept as we know it today was developed with Simon Kuznets (Secretary of Commerce, 1934). ...
... Indeed, if from 1950 to 1978 the two indicators are clearly positively correlated, a reversal of trend occurs around 1978 at the global level, with a correlation that becomes negative (GDP rising while the GPI stagnates and then falls) 13 . This reflects the rising environmental 11 The IMF further describe the real GDP and its limitations. 12 The total subsidies to fossil fuels were estimated to about $5.9 trillion in 2020, which represented about 6.8% of global GDP (Parry et al., 2021). ...
... The use of wastes in concrete production has been implemented for decades in the concrete industry through supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) 8 . The most common SCM are coal fly ash (CFA) 9 , blast furnace slags (BFS) 10 , silica fume, or metakaolin (Habert, 2014;Holland et al., 2016) 11 . The performance and environmental impacts of green concrete have attracted increasing interest in the literature (Siddique, 2014;Gu and Ozbakkaloglu, 2016;Paris et al., 2016;Jiang et al., 2018;Sandanayake et al., 2020). ...
Our society relies on a wide range of facilities, which provide goods and services. They carry significant amounts of embedded materials, and their intensity and complexity has been increasing over the years. The metals and minerals demand has been widely assessed within the industrial ecology field, and conceptual and transdisciplinary approaches of materials have emerged from the rise of material use (e.g. the nexus behavior of resources and the social metabolism). They aim at deepening the understanding of the interactions between nature and society, as well as within our society. The ongoing energy transition has a significant material challenge in this transdisciplinary research field. It carries changes for all sectors, and a potential shift from an energy materials dependency to a minerals and metals dependency. The material basis of our society is addressed in a growing number of studies. A critical literature review allows to identify the main insights and gaps in a panel of publications displaying material flow analysis of base materials between 2000 and 2021. This work aims at providing further insights on four specific gaps: (1) a lack of prospective studies in a low-carbon context, (2) a lack of analysis of the energy-material nexus, (3) a lack of modeling of some sectors and (4) a limited number of solution-oriented and political-oriented studies. This thesis is included in a larger project of multi-sector material modeling: the Dynamic Modeling of Energy, Materials Demand and Supply (DyMEMDS) model.In a first published article, Olivier Vidal, Cyril François and myself show that the pace of the development and the short lifetimes of renewable technologies creates a substantial increase of the materials demand. It would likely rely on primary materials, as the recycling potential remains limited. In a second article, (Le Boulzec et al., submitted), we conduct the first dynamic modeling of the fossil fuels supply chain and estimate the material requirements and associated energy demand and CO2 emissions from 1950 to 2050 in two transition and baseline scenarios. We find that gas is the main driver of material demand and that recycled steel from decommissioned fossil fuel infrastructures could meet the cumulative need of future low-carbon technologies in some scenarios. Ambitious decommissioning strategies are necessary, in parallel to building the infrastructure of renewable technologies. In a third article, (Le Boulzec et al., submitted) we present the results of a dynamic and multi-regional modeling of the building sector from 1950 to 2100 in seven transition and baseline scenarios. The originality of this work relies on both the estimation of the material weight of thermal renovation, and the analysis of the potential of material engineering to reduce energy demand and environmental impact. We show that thermal renovation would represent a small share of the overall increase of material demand, and the energy to produce renovation materials would amount to about 1% of the energy savings. The energy consumption of base material demand could questions the feasibility of some low-energy demand scenario, but enhanced recycling of concrete wastes and low carbon materials could provide solutions.The three sector studies highlight the significant increase of material demand in the building and energy sectors due to the combination of the low-carbon transition and potentially surging population and GDP per capita. It could translate into growing energy demand and environmental impact of material production. This thesis outlines the role of (1) collect and recycling and (2) low-carbon materials to improve the sustainability of material use. However, local and ambitious policies are urgently required to successfully implement the solutions.
... The availability of adequate geological resources and reserves has been suggested by some authors as a factor potentially limiting future supply of some raw materials (Bardi and Pagani, 2007;Cohen, 2007;Royal Society of Chemistry, 2019;Sverdrup and Ragnarsdóttir, 2014) . Some studies have calculated depletion times for mineral reserves and thus suggest that supplies will be exhausted over short timescales, ranging from a few years to several decades . ...
This report has been produced by the British Geological Survey (BGS) under the auspices of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)-funded UK Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre (CMIC). It is the first output from CMIC, which aims to provide up-to-date, accurate, high-resolution data and dynamic analysis on primary and secondary minerals resources, supply, stocks, and flows of critical minerals, in the UK and
globally.
... Nonetheless, some authors state that there is a minimum concentration value from which beneficiation could be still profitable [24,69]. Hence, we could even go beyond and analyze the extraction energy costs of the so-called ultimate recoverable resources (URR), which are defined as the total amount of a certain mineral that could ever be recovered and produced [70]. ...
... Hence, we could even go beyond and analyze the extraction energy costs of the so-called ultimate recoverable resources (URR), which are defined as the total amount of a certain mineral that could ever be recovered and produced [70]. Sverdrup and Rangnasdottir [24] proposed this limit grade at 5 × 10 −5 wt-% for any metal. These authors' limit is based on the well-known Hubbert's peak model [71]. ...
Niobium and tantalum are mainly produced from columbite–tantalite ores, and 60% of their production is nowadays located in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. The concentration of supply, the scarcity, the wide range of use in all electronic devices, and the expected future demand boosted by the clean and digital transition means that Nb and Ta have high supply risks. In this context, extraction from rich Ta and Nb tailings from abandoned mines could partly offset such risks. This study analyzes the energy cost that the reprocessing of both elements from tailings would have. To that end, we simulate with HSC Chemistry software the different processes needed to beneficiate and refine both metals from zinc tailings as a function of Nb and Ta concentration. At current energy and metal prices, tantalum recovery from rich Ta-Nb tailings would be cost-effective if ore-handling costs were allocated to a paying metal. By way of contrast, niobium recovery would not be favored unless market prices increase.
... The utilisation of fossil fuel energy resources has been one of the key drivers of societal growth for centuries, and since the industrial revolution, energy systems have been increasingly conceived on the burning and extraction of fossil fuel resources: referred to today as the conventional energy system [1,2]. However, it has been known since the 1980s that the utilisation and dependency on fossil fuel resources are unsustainable due to two principal factors: (i) the environmental degradation and climate instability caused by the extraction, production, and burning of fossil fuels, and (ii) the exhaustibility characteristics of fossil fuel resources is forecasted to lead to resource scarcity in the coming decades [3]. This knowledge of the negative characteristics of conventional energy systems affirms that the current global energy system cannot be considered sustainable for current or future generations and, indeed, is causing economic, societal, and environmental damage [1,[3][4][5][6]. ...
... However, it has been known since the 1980s that the utilisation and dependency on fossil fuel resources are unsustainable due to two principal factors: (i) the environmental degradation and climate instability caused by the extraction, production, and burning of fossil fuels, and (ii) the exhaustibility characteristics of fossil fuel resources is forecasted to lead to resource scarcity in the coming decades [3]. This knowledge of the negative characteristics of conventional energy systems affirms that the current global energy system cannot be considered sustainable for current or future generations and, indeed, is causing economic, societal, and environmental damage [1,[3][4][5][6]. This has been made even more evident in recent years with the world facing various energy-related threats and growing impacts of climate change caused by burning fossil fuels, which has resulted in increasingly extreme weather phenomena, depletion of natural resources, and environmental degradation [2,5,[7][8][9][10][11]. ...
The energy transition is a complex problem that requires a comprehensive and structured approach to policymaking. Such an approach is needed to ensure that transition pathways and policies enable greener energy alternatives whilst ensuring prosperity for people living in the region and limiting environmental degradation to the local ecosystem. This paper applies a qualitative approach based on systematic literature research and review analysis to identify and analyse previous work within this interdisciplinary field in order to understand the complexity of energy transitions and identify key variables and sub-sectors that need to be addressed by policymaking. The paper then looks at the problem from a regional level and uses the Tees Valley region in North East England as a reference case for the energy system and potential proposed policies for the energy transition. A system dynamics methodology was employed to help visualise and emphasise the major complexity of the energy transition and the challenges that policymaking needs to tackle for the successfully enable implementation and application of the energy transition policies. The results of this study identified that in relation to the Tees Valley energy system, its development and transition towards decarbonisation, the major challenge for the policymakers is to ensure that proposed policies foster growth in job creation without leading to job losses within the local employment market.
... Thus, phosphate rock, a marketable resource, would be replaced by waste for the production of phosphoric acid so that a circular economy could be achieved. Phosphorous is considered a critical raw material (European Commission, 2020), with a worldwide production of phosphate rock in 2013 of around 210 Mt (Sverdrup and Ragnarsdóttir, 2014). Although, this value is expected to increase until reaching an annual production of around 520 Mt in 2050 (Nedelciu et al., 2020). ...
A phosphogypsum stack located in SW Spain releases highly acidic and contaminated leachates to the surrounding estuarine environment. Column experiments, based on a mixture of an alkaline reagent (i.e., MgO or Ca(OH)2) dispersed in an inert matrix (dispersed alkaline substrate (DAS) technology), have shown high effectiveness for the treatment of phosphogypsum leachates. MgO-DAS and Ca(OH)2-DAS treatment systems achieved near total removal of PO4, F, Fe, Zn, Al, Cr, Cd, U, and As, with initial reactive mass:volume of leachate treated ratios of 3.98 g/L and 6.35 g/L, respectively. The precipitation of phosphate (i.e., brushite, cattiite, fluorapatite, struvite and Mn3Zn(PO4)2·2H2O) and sulfate (i.e., despujolsite and gypsum) minerals could control the solubility of contaminants during the treatments. Therefore, the hazardousness of these wastes must be accurately assessed in order to be properly managed, avoiding potential environmental impacts. For this purpose, two standardized leaching tests (EN-12457-2 from the European Union and TCLP from the United States) were performed. According to European Union (EN-12457-2) regulation, some wastes recovered from DAS treatments should be classified as hazardous wastes because of the high concentrations of SO4 or Sb that are leached. However, according to United States (US EPA-TCLP) legislation, all DAS wastes are designated as non-hazardous wastes. Moreover, the solids generated in the DAS systems could constitute a promising secondary source of calcite and/or P. This research could contribute to worldwide suitable waste management for the fertilizer industry.
... In recent years, raised awareness of the resource limits brought the attention on the challenges of resource depletion and sustainability within the frame of global economy. An excellent review on the current and future availability of many natural resources in the context of sustainable development is provided by Sverdrup and Ragnarsdottir (2014). In their discussion they adopt the terminology of AtKisson (2008) who defines sustainable development as: A directed process of continuous innovation and systemic change in the direction of sustainability and sustainability as: A set of conditions and trends in the given system that can continue indefinitely. ...
... In their discussion they adopt the terminology of AtKisson (2008) who defines sustainable development as: A directed process of continuous innovation and systemic change in the direction of sustainability and sustainability as: A set of conditions and trends in the given system that can continue indefinitely. Sverdrup and Ragnarsdottir (2014) also state that sustainable development implies that there are quantifiable limits to physical consumption as well as to natural system acceptable damage and that growth and degrowth are continuously present in society, representing its relative positioning to the sustainability limits. ...
Green geochemistry (also called sustainable geochemistry) is a relatively new emerging field. It is a scientific concept that seeks to improve the efficiency with which natural resources are used to meet human needs for chemical products and services. Green geochemistry is focused on the interactions between human, environment, and engineered systems. It aims at understanding and contributing to solutions for the challenges for the future of humanity. More concretely, it aims at finding solutions to maintain the integrity of the life support systems on a global scale. Such sustainable development addresses a wide range of subjects such as climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, as well as land and water degradation for example. Indeed, sustainability requires direct action to conserve, protect and enhance natural resources. This book takes a broad view of green geochemistry and integrates a wide variety of approaches. Topics include sustainable raw materials, carbon capture and storage, blue carbon, green hydrogen, enhanced weathering, ocean afforestation, landfill geochemistry, nuclear waste recycling, and green infrastructure.
