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UN Global Resources Outlook 2019: Natural Resources for the Future We Want
Abstract
The international community has set ambitious goals for global prosperity and protecting the planet, including the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and environmental conventions such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Progress towards these ambitions is in our grasp – but a fundamental change in how natural resources are used around the world is necessary if these objectives are to be achieved. Natural resources are used to build infrastructure and drive economic progress, but they also have consequences in terms of negative impacts for the environment and human well-being.
Fundamental change is embodied in the principles of sustainable consumption and production, which address the entire life cycle of economic activities from the extraction of natural resources, through the production and use phase of products and goods, and finally to the disposal of resources. Harnessing this change will promote a sustainable transition to a world where economic development is pursued while negative impacts to the environment and humans are reduced in absolute terms (in other words, decoupling).
Decoupling occurs when resource use or a pressure on the environment or human well-being grows at a slower rate than the activity causing it (relative decoupling) or declines while the economic activity continues to grow (absolute decoupling) (IRP, 2011). Absolute decoupling in high-income countries can lower average resource consumption, distribute prosperity equally and maintain a high quality of life. Relative decoupling in developing and economies in transition can raise average income levels and eliminate poverty, while still increasing levels of natural resource consumption until a socially acceptable quality of life is achieved. While past IRP reports have focused largely on decoupling resource use and impacts from economic growth, this report also considers another dimension of decoupling: well-being decoupling. Well-being decoupling means increasing the service provided or satisfaction of human need per unit of resource use.
The Drivers-Pressures-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework is one type of systems approach that can be used to analyse how society is using natural resources and the various implications of this use. This report is structured along the DPSIR framework, with Chapter 2 describing the drivers and trends of materials, land, and water resources use and explaining how these create pressures on the environment. Chapter 3 continues the analysis through the lens of life cycle assessments. It takes the results from Chapter 2 and calculates the environmental impacts generated from the extraction and processing of these natural resources. Chapter 4 then provides two different outlooks – one based on Historical Trends and the other modelling the effects of concerted policy and societal actions to drive a transition Towards Sustainability. Finally, Chapter 5 reflects on the messages of chapters 2, 3 and 4, and then offers recommendations to policymakers, the private sector, and civil society that can support innovations for environmental challenges and sustainable consumption and production.
... During 2000-2017, average G20 resource productivity grew by around 40 %, and projections expect further increase (OECD, 2021). However, research shows that this will not be enough to offset the global growth in material use unless resource efficiency, climate mitigation, carbon removal, and biodiversity protection policies reverse the trends (Oberle et al., 2019). Actions at the personal level are also of importance and can be promoted by the use of information technologies (Petrariu et al., 2022). ...
Increasing population and economic growth in Europe and the world are leading to growing demand for food, livestock feed, and energy, and consequently to growing negative impacts on the environment and climate change. Tensions and price fluctuations in international material supply chains have recently become an even greater challenge. As for biomass, its availability is limited due to land, water, human, and financial resources as well as the environmental boundaries. Therefore, efficiency of biomass use is becoming increasingly important; it is crucial to develop and apply integrated assessment frameworks for tracking progress in resource use efficiency that would allow comparing the efficiency of biomass and non-biomass use. This paper embarks on the analysis of biomass and non-biomass resource use in selected European countries over 2010–2019. The index decomposition analysis model is set up to decompose the changes in biomass consumption with respect to intensive and extensive drivers. Resource use efficiency is then assessed via the non-parametric frontier, taking into account the other inputs (labour and capital). The results suggest that biomass efficiency is higher than that of nonbiomass materials. The efficiency scores suggest that further decoupling of domestic material consumption and economic growth is needed.
... Selected economies are the newly industrialized nations, and the industrialized economy's share of material extraction is increasing mainly due to developing new infrastructure. Given that industrialization is accelerating in some economies, rapid economic growth is also linked to increased resource exploitation and dependence on imported fossil fuels due to unsustainable resource use (Oberle et al., 2019). Also, this outcome is supported by (Ling et al., 2022) and in contrast with (Dogan and Aslan, 2017). ...
In the era of development, the world is facing severe challenges, and environmental degradation is one of them. However, the globe has tried to introduce several initiatives to fight for environmental sustainability, such as the Sustainable Development Goals. The leading role of the proposed goals is to balance development and environmental anxiety. Therefore, to these issues, artificial intelligence and technological advancements play a vital role in the natural resource economy in the digital age. Policy analysts are always looking for solutions and have come up with several viable remedies to this problem. Consequently, information & communication technology (ICT) plays a significant role in sustainability in the digital era. However, under the theme of natural resource sustainability, the effectiveness of ICT has a significant impact on sustainability. Accordingly, the current study investigates the long-run effect of income per capita, tourism, natural resources rents, urbanization, and ICT on environmental sustainability in 36 OECD economies from 2000 to 2018. The current research employs an Augmented Mean Group (AMG) and two-step GMM to investigate the study's objectives. Results show the positive contribution of urbanization, natural resources, and tourism to CO2 emissions, while ICT reduces emissions. Besides, an inverted EKC curve is also validated for selected economies. In addition, the moderate effect of ICT on urbanization, natural resources, and tourism shows a significant decline in CO2 emissions. In light of the findings, this study recommends several crucial measures for environmental sustainability.
... The depletion of the reserves of many resources is accompanied by a deterioration in mining conditions and, consequently, a significant increase in the production cost. Mining and processing of materials, fuels, and foodstuffs account for about half of total global greenhouse gas emissions (not including land-use-related climate impacts) and more than 90% of biodiversity loss [36]. ...
Purpose. The research purpose is to develop a concept for complex mining of mineral resources from coal mines using the example of PJSC DTEK Pavlohradvuhillia mines with a transition to multi-product production of clean drinking water, utilization of methane, secondary coal from rock dumps and sludge reservoirs, low-potential thermal energy of mine groundwaters and associated raw materials from desalination waste. Methods. The research uses an integrated approach, which includes an analysis of existing experience and available complex coal mining technologies, laboratory studies of mine water desalination technology by the reverse osmosis method with thermal distillation of concentrated brine, and chemical analysis using ElvaX laboratory equipment. Findings. This paper presents the research results of a comprehensive analysis of mineral raw material resources related to coal mining. The technically achievable energy potential that can be produced from the secondary coal of rock dumps and sludge reservoirs has been determined, which in total is 183.3 TJ. The annual heat potential of methane gas utilization has been estimated, which in total of PJSC DTEK Pavlohradvuhillia’s mines reaches 7.1 PJ. The possibility of extracting up to 1.12 TJ/year of associated thermal energy from the water-drainage installation of mine complexes has been determined. For the conditions of the Zakhidno-Donbaska mine, the authors of the paper have developed a technological scheme for the water preparation process by the reverse osmosis with the desalination brine treatment by the method of multistage evaporation on adiabatic evaporators. Originality. For the first time, the energy flows related to coal mining technology have been comprehensively analyzed for the possibility of their joint use to cover the needs of the mine complex. The prospects for complex mining of mineral resources have been assessed based on the adaptation of the mine complex production facilities to the multi-product production of clean drinking water, utilization of methane gas, low-potential thermal energy from mine groundwaters and secondary raw materials of desalination waste. Practical implications. The proposed set of technological solutions will ensure the sustainable development and diversification of the production of PJSC DTEK Pavlohradvuhillia coal-mining enterprises, as well as the effective transformation of coal-mining cities during the period of transition from mono-product production to the creation of multi-business production complexes that comply with ESG principles. The creation of multi-product mine complexes capable of producing not only coal, but also heat and associated mineral raw material resources, should become a guarantee of stable social-economic development of coal-mining regions.
... This was reported by a group of researchers led by A. Khan in 2020. Since 1980, the amount of biomass harvested has increased from 10 to 25 billion tons, and the amount of coal, oil, and gas extracted has increased from 7 to 16 billion tons, demonstrating that natural resource depletion is a growing problem (Oberle et al., 2019). There are now ecological sustainability concerns due to the massive increase in the exploitation of natural resources like deforestation, extraction, and agriculture (Balsalobre-Lorente et al., 2018). ...
The rising value of the extracted natural resources is a direct result of industrialization, which in turn is driven by economic growth. Continuous development, agricultural practices, and hazardous mining operations can all harm the environment. Hence, this research examines the impact of natural resources on carbon emission alongside other significant control variables, such as renewable energy consumption and economic growth, across BRICS economies from 1990 to 2020. The authors use panel data and the latest panel data econometrics tools for long-run relationships, such as the Method of Moment Quantile Regressions, to detect variable changes over time for empirical evidence in BRICS countries. First, slope homogeneity and cross-section dependence tests showed that slopes were not uniform across the distribution and that variables were cross-dependent. Then, the different panel unit root test that is most applicable is applied. The Westerlund cointegration test was then utilized to determine the cointegration of variables over the long term. The results of the MMQR indicate that natural resources and economic expansion boost carbon emissions in BRICS economies. Additionally, renewable energy consumption and mineral rents reduce carbon emissions. The outcomes of this research include policy recommendations for limiting the overexploitation of natural resources and sustaining economic growth in the BRICS countries.
... In addition, the excessive consumption of stocks of natural resources reduces it, which is dangerous for future generations. Therefore, considering other clean, renewable energy sources has become an urgent necessity [4]. ...
This article addresses the problem of fault early detection in photovoltaic systems. In the production field, solar power plants consist of many photovoltaic arrays, which may suffer from many different types of malfunctions over time. Hence, fault early detection before it affects PV systems and leads to a full system failure is essential to monitor these systems. The fields of control and monitoring of systems have been extensively approached by many researchers using various fault detection methods. Despite all this research, to early detect and locate faults in a very large photovoltaic power plant, we must, in particular, think of an effective method that allows us to do so at the lowest costs and time. Thus, we propose a new robust technique based on the inverse of the belonging individual Gaussian probability (IBIGP) to early detect and locate faults in the power curve as well as in the Infrared image of the photovoltaic systems. While most fault detection methods are well incorporated in other domains, the IBIGP technique is still in its infancy in the photovoltaic field. We will show, however, in this work that the IBIGP technique is a very promising tool for fault early detection enhancement.
Ecosystems are experiencing significant pressure from human activities, with 1 million species at risk of extinction. This is threatening to undermine the resilience of ecosystems, which provide multiple benefits to support human existence and are essential for the support of life on Earth. A number of conceptual frameworks have been developed as a guide for the assessment of ecosystem services (ESs) and nature’s contributions to people (NCPs), including Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity report, France’s National Ecosystems Assessment, the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services, and the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. In this paper, we compare the existing conceptual frameworks for the assessment of ESs and NCPs and derive a unified structural framework. Several indicators for characterizing the ESs/NCPs
provided are selected and integrated through normalization. On this basis, and enriched by a number of culture-specific indicators, we conduct a mapping exercise illustrating the ES/NCP provision for the whole of France in a spatially explicit form based on a 1 × 1 km scale. Finally, we generate integrated maps depicting distribution patterns of different services and contributions across the landscapes of France focusing on economic, social and ecological dimensions. The results indicate that a non-monetary assessment of the complexity and diversity of NCPs is feasible and presents tangible advantages as compared to monetary frameworks. The paper concludes that provisioning, regulating and cultural services and contributions are geographically unevenly distributed and further analysis is required to assess the degree of complementarity, feedback loops and tipping points among different services. Our pilot research clearly illustrated the feasibility of conducting a highly disaggregated multidimensional assessment of ESS/NCPs at the national scale to inform decision making.
The circular economy is an economic concept opposite to the current linear system. One of its main principles is to seek to minimise waste by reusing seemingly useless raw materials. Biogas plants are places where energy can be recovered from waste. In order to boost the environmental benefits of this concept, it is important to rely on local systems (including supply chains). Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine whether biogas plants in Poland operate in a circular manner from the perspective of locality. The analysis was based on questionnaire surveys concerning the nature of the facilities’ operations, divided into biogas plants located at sewage treatment plants, biogas plants based on municipal waste and agricultural biogas plants. On the basis of the data obtained, statistical and spatial analyses were carried out to verify the installed capacity of the facilities, the distance from which they obtain their substrate and the use of the biogas produced. The results of the study confirm that the functioning of biogas plants located in Poland is, in most cases, of a local character, fitting into the objectives of a circular economy. Biogas plants that are characterised by the lowest transportation needs are biogas plants located next to sewage treatment plants.
Biodiversity loss has been identified as one of the environmental impacts where humankind has been trespassing over planetary boundaries most significantly. Going beyond the pressures causing damages (calling them 'direct drivers') and analysing their underlying driving forces, IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, also identified a series of indirect drivers. The Montreal-Kunming Global Biodiversity Framework, GBF, including its suggested monitoring approach, is intended to and claims to be a policy response to such analyses. However, to assess the human impact on ecosystems as a basis for planning conservation and restoration, as foreseen in the GBF, monitoring ecosystem typologies (in the GBF with reference to the UN statistical standard SEEA ES, which, in turn, refers to the IUCN ecosystem classification) is not enough. It needs to be complemented with data on the severity of human impacts and on the history of places, i.e., how and when the current ecosystem status was brought about. In this conceptual paper, we suggest LUI, a deliberately simple ordinal scale index for land use intensity changes, to address these two gaps. It is based on the hemeroby concept, measuring the human impact as deviation from naturalness. This makes it an information collection and presentation tool for those working in landscape planning and management. LUI's simple and intuitively understandable structure makes it suitable for citizen science applications, and, thus, for participative monitoring when extensive statistical data gathering is not feasible and past data are not available. Of course, it can also be used as a simple tool for communicating when detailed statistical data series are available. While the aggregate index is expected to communicate well, its components are more relevant to motivate and help policy makers to prioritise their decisions according to the severity of recent anthropogenic ecosystem disturbances.
Efficient natural resource management prevents and reduces negative impacts, such as environmental damage, misappropriation of resources, and conflicts; several strategies can be leveraged to conserve, protect, and enhance natural resources. Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) is useful in providing solutions to addressing decision-choice problems. In this study, the natural resource under evaluation is the chestnut forest, with the objective of valorising its supply chains. The methodology applied is A'WOT, which allows previously identified factors, using a qualitative SWOT matrix, to be ordered through an objective quantification using the AHP (analytic hierarchy process), which is a multicriteria decision support method. The survey was conducted with a group of chestnut resource (n = 20) experts. The SWOT matrix identified a total of 20 factors: 6 strengths and 6 weaknesses and 4 factors each for opportunities and threats. The results express a clear stakeholder interest, which identifies the significant role of civil society in directing management choices for the provision and enhancement of ecosystem and vocational services. This study evaluated the adaptability of decision support tools applied to a real case of forest resource management to identify and order factors useful to enhance the resource and stimulate the supply chains to achieve greater added value. In a general sense, the methodological potential emerged to replicate or improve the research in other geographical regions, whether regional or extra-regional or even on a larger scale, such as on a national level.
We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a "Hothouse Earth" pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System-biosphere, climate, and societies-and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.
The World Ocean Assessment - or, to give its full title, The First Global Integrated Marine Assessment - is the outcome of the first cycle of the United Nations’ Regular Process for Global Reporting and Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment, including Socioeconomic Aspects. The Assessment provides vital, scientifically-grounded bases for the consideration of ocean issues, including climate change, by governments, intergovernmental agencies, non-governmental agencies and all other stakeholders and policymakers involved in ocean affairs. Together with future assessments and related initiatives, it will support the implementation of the recently adopted 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly its ocean-related goals. Moreover, it will also form an important reference text for marine science courses.
Household consumption is a main driver of economy and might be regarded as ultimately responsible for environmental impacts occurring over the life cycle of products and services. Given that purchase decisions are made on household levels and are highly behavior-driven, the derivation of targeted environmental measures requires an understanding of household behavior patterns and the resulting environmental impacts. To provide an appropriate basis in support of effective environmental policymaking, we propose a new approach to capture the variability of lifestyle-induced environmental impacts. Lifestyle-archetypes representing prevailing consumption patterns are derived in a two-tiered clustering that applies a Ward-clustering on top of a pre-conditioning self-organizing map. The environmental impacts associated with specific archetypical behavior are then assessed in a hybrid life cycle assessment framework. The application of this approach to the Swiss Household Budget Survey reveals a global picture of consumption that is in line with previous studies, but also demonstrates that different archetypes can be found within similar socio-economic household types. The appearance of archetypes diverging from general macro-trends indicates that the proposed approach might be useful for an enhanced understanding of consumption patterns and for the future support of policymakers in devising effective environmental measures targeting specific consumer groups.
The rapid growth of the use and disposal of plastic materials has proved to be a challenge for solid waste management systems with impacts on our environment and ocean. While recycling and the circular economy have been touted as potential solutions, upward of half of the plastic waste intended for recycling has been exported to hundreds of countries around the world. China, which has imported a cumulative 45% of plastic waste since 1992, recently implemented a new policy banning the importation of most plastic waste, begging the question of where the plastic waste will go now. We use commodity trade data for mass and value, region, and income level to illustrate that higher-income countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation have been exporting plastic waste (70% in 2016) to lower-income countries in the East Asia and Pacific for decades. An estimated 111 million metric tons of plastic waste will be displaced with the new Chinese policy by 2030. As 89% of historical exports consist of polymer groups often used in single-use plastic food packaging (polyethylene, polypropylene, and polyethylene terephthalate), bold global ideas and actions for reducing quantities of nonrecyclable materials, redesigning products, and funding domestic plastic waste management are needed.
Ambitious targets for the retention — not just formal protection — of nature are urgently needed to conserve biodiversity and to maintain crucial ecosystem services for humanity.
The Planetary Boundaries concept is a recent scientific framework, which identifies a set of nine bio-physical limits of the Earth system that should be respected in order to maintain conditions favourable to further human development. Crossing the suggested limits would lead to drastic changes in human society by disrupting some of the ecological bases that underlie the current socio-economic system. As a contribution to the international discussion, and using the case of Switzerland, this study proposes a methodology to apply the Planetary Boundaries concept on the national level. Taking such an approach allows to assess the environmental sustainability of the socio-economic activities (e.g. consumption) by the inhabitants of a country in a long-term global perspective, assuming that past, current and future populations on Earth have similar "rights" to natural resources. The performance of countries is evaluated by comparing the country limits with their environmental footprints according to a consumption-based perspective. An approach was developed to: i) better characterise the Planetary Boundaries and understand which limits can effectively be currently quantified; ii) identify related socio-economic indicators for which both country limits and footprints can be computed; iii) compute values for limits, footprints and performances (at global and country level); and iv) suggest priorities for action based on the assessment of global and national performances. It was found that Switzerland should, as a priority, act on its footprints related to Climate Change, Ocean Acidification, Biodiversity Loss and Nitrogen Loss. The methodology developed herein can be applied to the analysis of other countries or territories, as well as extended to analyse specific economic sectors.
The gap between actual carbon prices and those required to achieve ambitious climate change mitigation could be closed by enhancing the public acceptability of carbon pricing through appropriate use of the revenues raised. In this Perspective, we synthesize findings regarding the optimal use of carbon revenues from both traditional economic analyses and studies in behavioural and political science that are focused on public acceptability. We then compare real-world carbon pricing regimes with theoretical insights on distributional fairness, revenue salience, political trust and policy stability. We argue that traditional economic lessons on efficiency and equity are subsidiary to the primary challenge of garnering greater political acceptability and make recommendations for enhancing political support through appropriate revenue uses in different economic and political circumstances. Ambitious carbon pricing reform is needed to meet climate targets. This Perspective argues that effective revenue recycling schemes should prioritize behavioural considerations that are aimed at achieving greater political acceptance.
How will the global atmosphere and climate be protected? Achieving net-zero CO 2 emissions will require carbon capture and storage (CCS) to reduce current GHG emission rates, and negative emissions technology (NET) to recapture previously emitted greenhouse gases. Delivering NET requires radical cost and regulatory innovation to impact on climate mitigation. Present NET exemplars are few, are at small-scale and not deployable within a decade, with the exception of rock weathering, or direct injection of CO 2 into selected ocean water masses. To keep warming less than 2°C, bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) has been modelled but does not yet exist at industrial scale. CCS already exists in many forms and at low cost. However, CCS has no political drivers to enforce its deployment. We make a new analysis of all global CCS projects and model the build rate out to 2050, deducing this is 100 times too slow. Our projection to 2050 captures just 700 Mt CO 2 yr ⁻¹ , not the minimum 6000 Mt CO 2 yr ⁻¹ required to meet the 2°C target. Hence new policies are needed to incentivize commercial CCS. A first urgent action for all countries is to commercially assess their CO 2 storage. A second simple action is to assign a Certificate of CO 2 Storage onto producers of fossil carbon, mandating a progressively increasing proportion of CO 2 to be stored. No CCS means no 2°C.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘The Paris Agreement: understanding the physical and social challenges for a warming world of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels'.