Raimund Bleischwitz

Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) and University of Bremen · Social Science (FB08)

The contemporary debate considering the use of natural resources in economic growth centres around the concept of ‘decoupling’ driven through improvements in resource efficiency. Many studies extrapolate future demand from a short time series of previous years. However, we believe there should be greater attention on the underlying demand assumptio...

Debate around increasing demand for natural resources is often framed in terms of a “nexus” and perhaps at risk of becoming a buzz word. A nexus between what, at what scales, and what would be the consequences? This article analyses why readers should care about the nexus concept towards the SDGs. We discuss a five-nodes definition and propose pers...

China's wide-ranging circular economy (CE) efforts have been studied multiple times from a range of perspectives. Synthesizing the relevant literature, this paper provides a critical reflection on the transition to a CE in China. Key factors for China's success in shifting towards a CE are seen in multi-level indicators and upscaling niches. This p...

Last years have seen a surge of Industrial Symbiosis (IS) development in association with ad-hoc widespread policies to encourage more circular and sustainable practices in the manufacturing sector. Developments in Europe, despite having attracted less attention in the literature, have been significant, driven both by public and private initiative....

In today’s world, urban systems play an important role in sustainable economic development. In particular, urbanisation trends and the increasing demands of urban mobility place additional pressure on existing transportation infrastructure, and this creates new challenges for urban planners in terms of developing integrated and sustainable urban mo...

Marine fishing is a crucial component of the blue economy (BE), an avenue for sustainable livelihoods, and the socioeconomic development of economies, predominantly in the global south. However, marine fishing is increasingly dotted with (un)sustainability issues, including the exclusion of fisherwomen in fisheries value chains, and lucrative fishe...

Ocean sustainability initiatives – in research, policy, management and development – will be more effective in delivering comprehensive benefits when they proactively engage with, invest in and use social knowledge. We synthesize five intervention areas for social engagement and collaboration with marine social scientists, and in doing so we appeal...

This article addresses ship recycling. Often criticized for dire health and safety conditions at breaking destinations in the Global South, our article considers ship recycling as a potential future source for secondary steel in green transformations. It represents an analysis of forthcoming changes in the regulatory framework, an initial assessmen...

The COVID-19 pandemic that shocked the world from 2020 to 2022 was caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Coronavirus-2, which causes a highly infectious respiratory disease that led to lockdowns and movement control orders worldwide. This interfered with the movement of people and goods and thus impacted the economy and people’s liveli...

The nexus approach for sustainable management of natural resources combines environmental management and governance across sectors and scales. This approach, along with other integrative practices, has however seen limited uptake in practice despite its great promise. Drawing on the 'street-level bureaucracy concept', this article examines the role...

Gadolinium (Gd) is one important non-renewable strategic element and has been widely used in many fields. This study investigates gadolinium flows in China by conducting dynamic material flow analysis and identifies key factors that affect gadolinium supply and demand. Results show that: (1) China's demand for Gd increased by 30% from 2011 to 2020;...

The Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen, Germany, has three decades of experience in collaborative research projects in close partnership with institutions in the Global South. With its mission to provide the scientific basis for the sustainable use and management of tropical marine resources, it has a unique position with a...

The spotlight on sand mining in coastal zones and marine activities has increased, and for good reason. Since the 2000s, sand has become a scarce but essential natural resource for development; albeit sand extraction has been dotted with myriad socioeconomic and ecological costs. In coastal communities of Kerala, the costs of sand extraction have p...

Waste generation and disposal have been a global issue for decades. The total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2019 were 49,758 MtCO 2 e with waste disposal accounting for 3.2%. With rapid urbanization trends, municipal solid waste (MSW) has become a global challenge which needs to be addressed. A large fraction of MSW such as food wastes,...

China has launched a national level carbon emissions trading market with a rate-based cap and benchmarks in the power generation sector. This emissions trading system (ETS) differs from a mass-based one, which lacks an absolute carbon cap. This study assesses the impact of such an unconventional ETS on economic development, carbon emission mitigati...

In this issue of One Earth, Li and Hanaoka explore technological and policy options for decarbonizing China’s iron and steel sector, which produces more than half of the world’s crude steel. We expand on the discussion to consider opportunities and challenges associated with circular economy approaches of steelmaking.

Aluminium is one widely used metal that plays an important role in China’s industrial and economic development. The life cycles of aluminium products involve high energy inputs, intensive material consumption and heavy environmental emissions. China has released its ambitious climate change targets, namely reaching carbon peak in 2030 and achieving...

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is causing tensions and potential for conflict along the Nile. Egypt fears water losses and threatens sanctions; Ethiopia plans to expand the electric power supply. The United Nations Security Council is advocating negotiations under the auspices of the African Union. Against this backdrop, this article discusses...

This paper analyses the impacts of climate change and its implications for human security for the regions of Northern Nigeria and Lake Chad. The introduction identifies a gap between evidence on global environmental change and interactions on the ground; it positions the scope for a deeper understanding of the climate–security–resource nexus in Nor...

Given the recent debate on the role of central banks under climate change, this research theoretically investigates the mix of monetary and climate policy and provides insights for central banks who are considering their engagement in the climate change issue. The “climate-augmented” monetary policy is pioneeringly proposed and studied. We build an...

There is significant potential for reducing energy use and emissions from buildings through energy efficiency retrofits. However, a number of barriers, including long payback periods and uncertainties around business models and technologies, restrict large scale implementation. A recent joint project, piloting green energy schemes and low-carbon in...

This research compares the potential environmental impacts of heat pumps with gas boilers and scenario analysis through utilising the life cycle approach. The study analyses the current situation with the baseline model and assesses future applications with Circular Economy (CE), Resource Efficiency (RE) and Limited Growth (LG) scenarios. Then, hyb...

The wide adoption of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles will require increased natural resources for the automotive industry. The expected rapid increase in batteries could result in new resource challenges and supply-chain risks. To strengthen the resilience and sustainability of automotive supply chains and reduce primary resource re...

The Eco-Innovation Observatory functions as a platform for the structured collection and analysis of an extensive range of eco-innovation and circular economy information, gathered from across the European Union and key economic regions around the globe, providing a much-needed integrated information source on eco-innovation for companies and innov...

This report is available for download from https://ec.europa.eu/environment/ecoap/about-eco-innovation/policies-matters

This article assesses the water use of hydropower in Brazil, shedding light on the scale of the water cycle and the resilience of hydropower under accelerating climate change conditions. Recent droughts unveiled increasing risks and highlighted a lack of methodological approaches and well-defined metrics. We present a novel detailed spatiotemporal...

This chapter assesses the water use of hydropower in Brazil, shedding light on the scale of the water cycle and the resilience of hydropower under accelerating climate change conditions. Recent droughts unveiled increasing risks and highlighted a lack of methodological approaches and well-defined metrics. We present a novel detailed spatiotemporal...

The resource nexus consists of a framework to address interlinkages between natural resources and systems that provide water, energy, food and waste management. It transcends traditional assessments conducted in “silos”, raising trade-offs and synergies that are rarely acknowledged. The nexus framework is intrinsically context-specific, as each res...

Recently, business models for environmental sustainability have gained increasing attention in the management field and among practitioners and stakeholders. This study aims to analyse the state of the art on the topic by reviewing the growing but mainly phenomenon‐driven research. In particular, by identifying main research trends and relevant gap...

The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are central to future global economic development. However, they are facing both environmental and natural resource stresses due to their rapid economic growth. This study examines the balance between economic benefits and cost of environmental emissions and resource usage in BRICS...

China is increasingly known for its ambitions towards an 'ecological civilisation' and a circular economy. Our article assesses the implications of an accelerated shift towards steel recycling in China. Given the relevance of steel for development worldwide as well as its environmental intensity, any such shift is likely to have implications for co...

Background Co-benefit assessments on health and economic impacts of climate change mitigation towards the 2-degree target are still largely insufficient in literature, especially from a sectoral perspective. Objectives This study aims to (1) evaluate PM2.5 pollution-related health impacts on China's road transport sector at both national and provi...

This paper was prepared as a background document for an OECD/EC high-level expert workshop on “Managing the transition to a circular economy in regions and cities” held on 5 July 2019 at the OECD Headquarters in Paris, France. It sets a basis for reflection and discussion. The background paper should not be reported as representing the official vie...

This article discusses issues on resources availability to achieve climate adaptation and resilience for cities and infrastructures. In the age of climate change, there could be cascading failures through a range of infrastructure breakdowns. Direct and indirect damage costs could exceed what had been estimated in traditional risk assessments. This...

Starting from institutional theory, this study aims to explore the effects of coercive, normative and mimetic pressures on businesses climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. In order to test these hypotheses, the study relies on an econometric model by using data from 487 Italian manufacturing companies collected by a questionnaire-bas...

Land resources are important for China’s rapid economic development, especially for food and construction. China’s land resources are under tremendous pressures, and therefore land use is increasingly displaced to other parts of the world. This study analyses the evolution and driving forces of China’s land consumption from 1995 to 2015. The main r...

Rapid urbanization brought many environmental issues, leading to an urgent need on urban environmental governance. This special issue aims to focus on such a topic so that cities can accelerate their transition to equitable, sustainable, and livable Cities. Twenty-six papers were selected in this special issue, with different foci on different topi...

Can technology neutralize the threat that depletion poses to resource availability? We offer new insights into this long-standing topic by analysing the US mining sector of iron ore, an important primary commodity used in a wide range of industrial productions. We develop a new econometric approach that allows to distinguish the sign of unobserved...

Supply chain effectiveness and general societal prosperity, as well as economic and ecological productivity will be highly affected in the next decades, entailing challenges for the supply chain and logistics sector. Thereby this sector plays a significant role within the transformation process of economic systems, yet the capacities of it remain u...

China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an unprecedented development strategy in terms of scope and scale, to increase the connectivity with the rest of the world by infrastructure development and trade activities. Recently, more attention has been directed to the environmental implications of the international trade activities under thi...

We call for a global initiative to advance the circular economy. It should set up an international platform to share data and experiences, and coordinate industrial policies and trade to conserve resources and energy. Policies, missions and incentives should be developed to spread circular-economy practices worldwide.

The tremendous use of building materials poses heavy threats to resources and the environment. In order to better understand the GHG emissions embodied in the abundant building material consumption of Shanghai's buildings and search for approaches to reduce GHG emissions, this study explores the building consumption and the embodied GHG emission in...

This paper examines the inter-linkages between the water and energy sectors and their planning processes, by describing a comprehensive analytical tool developed to evaluate water energy nexus operational cost trends and planning to assist decision makers in exploring and evaluating alternative courses of action. Brazil has been chosen as a case st...

Eco-industrial Parks (EIP) have become a central element in China’s industrial strategy to combine industrial development while minimizing environmental impacts and improving resource efficiency. National standard system has been developed as a main tool for assessing EIPs. This paper provides a review of the development of China's EIP standard sys...

In practice firms are faced by a range of market frictions and barriers, which can prevent them from undertaking investments in efficiency and low-carbon technologies. With a focus on resource efficiency investments, this chapter systematically investigates how the theoretical assumptions of perfectly competitive and efficient markets are violated...

Increasing resource efficiency is considered to yield multiple economic and environmental benefits. However, evidence suggests that resource efficiency is only gradually increasing across regions, countries, and firms. To systematically investigate the incentives and dis-incentives for firms to invest in resource efficiency, this chapter firstly in...

This chapter discusses long-term changes in economies and future challenges. It introduces two concepts that may help boosting resource efficiency in the future. First, new insights into the saturation effect, i.e. evidence on how UK, USA, Germany and Japan have been consuming key materials since early stages of their industrialisation. The result...

he SINCERE project (SINo-european Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency) is addressing the following priority themes under the Green Economy area: - The greenness and dynamics of economies; - Metrics and indicators for a green economy; - Policies planning, and institutions (including business) for a green economy - Green economy in cities and me...

In this article, we analyse the evolution of circular economy (CE) scientific knowledge in the most productive political geographies in the field, namely the European Union (EU) 28 and China by using bibliometric, network and survey analysis. Our objective is to provide a systemic, quantitative, visio-temporal review of the evolution of the CE scie...

It is critical to adapt to climate change and reduce the overall carbon emissions. China announced its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) at the Paris climate conference in 2015. The carbon cap-and-trade scheme, which plays a key role in carbon emissions abatement, is an effective policy for China to achieve its NDC. This study focuses on th...

The complexity of nature and its interactions with societies is nowadays often discussed under the narrative of the water–energy–food nexus.1 This nexus approach refers to interlinkages among the use of natural resources, illustrated by water needed for both energy and food production. While research about interlinkages has a long tradition in sust...

Tantalum, considered one of the critical elements by many countries, is a widely used metal in industries such as electronics, aerospace and automotive. The tantalum market has experienced several disruptions and subsequent price swings in the past, implying problems with its supply chain resilience and stability. In this study, we trace the entire...

Construction and demolition waste (CDW) accounts for 30% to 40% of the total amount of waste in China. CDW is usually randomly dumped or disposed in landfills and the average recycling rate of CDW in China is only about 5%. Considering there is big challenge in adoption of circular economy in CDW industry in China while related research is still li...

In recent years the concept of the resource "nexus" has been hotly debated and now widely adopted in research and policy circles as a powerful new way of understanding the relationships between multiple resources and their sustainable management. These include particularly water, food and energy. This comprehensive Handbook presents a detailed inte...

In practice firms are faced by a range of market frictions and barriers, which can prevent them from undertaking investments in efficiency and low-carbon technologies. Thus, even when environmental taxes are imposed, firms may be unable (or unwilling) to adjust their behaviour and technology in response to price signals. With a focus on energy and...

This chapter addresses the resource nexus, a concept that has recently become quite popular. It is often framed as a water-energy-food nexus and discussed at international organisations, within infrastructure planning units and among actors on the ground concerned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. The chapter seek...

The supply side of resource provision is often seen from two contrasting views: one narrative is the scarcity debate and ‘limits to growth’, according to which the availability of resources is limited and uncertain. The other narrative is one of optimism and argues in favour of abundant supply, where any potential scarcity is prevented through tech...

Recent major droughts in Brazil have given rise to discussions about water availability and security in relation to energy production. The relationship of the two resources, the water-energy nexus, is recognised being of importance in literature and metrics for its estimation and understanding are sought after. One important aspect in understanding...

Demand for natural resources has grown rapidly for decades, and is expected to continue growing. These trends lead to repercussions, risks, and threats for humans and ecosystems at different scales. The challenges of sustainable resource management and governance are on numerous agendas, ranging from the G7 and G20 summits to UNEP’s International R...

This chapter sheds some light on the latter group of phenomena by looking at important stylized facts of the structure and the evolution of some specific commodity markets. It explains the events in a broader historical perspective by focusing on the international dimension of the modern commodity industry, and in particular on the recent trade pat...

Measuring eco-innovation helps us understand the overall trends and raises awareness in society. Measuring eco-innovation at the national level and making comparisons across countries may allow us to benchmark performance and foster policy learning. This paper assesses two indices developed in two different regions: The ASEM Eco-Innovation Index (A...

This paper analyses the cross-sectoral integration of the water-energy nexus in Brazil. Recent droughts resulted in unprecedented water scarcity. This caused water shortages for population and agriculture, as well as for electricity production (hydropower being the main source of electricity production). As a result, the system became more vulnerab...

Due to different resource endowment, geographical features, culture and population sizes, different regions are facing different challenges and therefore need to adopt different strategies toward sustainable development. China’s Eastern, Central and Western provinces are taking different policies on international trade in order to boost their econo...

International trade has accelerated the trend of globalization, giving consumers and countries the opportunity to reach new markets and products. However, it also brought negative externalities in the forms of pollution and environmental degradation. Plus, the large amounts of resource flows among different countries may aggravate resource depletio...