The material footprint of nations

Abstract

Metrics on resource productivity currently used by governments suggest that some developed countries have increased the use of natural resources at a slower rate than economic growth (relative decoupling) or have even managed to use fewer resources over time (absolute decoupling). Using the material footprint (MF), a consumption-based indicator of resource use, we find the contrary: Achievements in decoupling in advanced economies are smaller than reported or even nonexistent. We present a time series analysis of the MF of 186 countries and identify material flows associated with global production and consumption networks in unprecedented specificity. By calculating raw material equivalents of international trade, we demonstrate that countries' use of nondomestic resources is, on average, about threefold larger than the physical quantity of traded goods. As wealth grows, countries tend to reduce their domestic portion of materials extraction through international trade, whereas the overall mass of material consumption generally increases. With every 10% increase in gross domestic product, the average national MF increases by 6%. Our findings call into question the sole use of current resource productivity indicators in policy making and suggest the necessity of an additional focus on consumption-based accounting for natural resource use.

Keywords: multiregion input–output analysis; raw material consumption; sustainable resource management.

Fig. 1.

MF of national final demand and RMEs of imports (RME_IM) and exports (RME_EX) of selected countries in 2008 (totals and per capita).

Fig. 2.

MF/cap (by four categories) and DMC/cap (total) of selected countries and regions in 1990–2008 (different scales for upper and lower rows, with the DMC/cap scale different for Chile only).

Fig. 3.

Relative changes in total resource use (MF and DMC) and GDP-PPP-2005 between 1990 and 2008 [values are plotted as ΔX = (X_t2 − X_t1)/X_t1; t₁ = 1990].