Resource decoupling
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In
economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the ...
and environmental fields, decoupling refers to an economy that would be able to grow without corresponding increases in environmental pressure. In many economies, increasing production (
GDP Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjective nature this measure is ofte ...
) currently raises pressure on the environment. An economy that would be able to sustain economic growth while reducing the amount of resources such as water or fossil fuels used and delink environmental deterioration at the same time would be said to be decoupled. Environmental pressure is often measured using emissions of
pollutant A pollutant or novel entity is a substance or energy introduced into the environment that has undesired effects, or adversely affects the usefulness of a resource. These can be both naturally forming (i.e. minerals or extracted compounds like o ...
s, and decoupling is often measured by the
emission intensity An emission intensity (also carbon intensity or C.I.) is the emission rate of a given pollutant relative to the intensity of a specific activity, or an industrial production process; for example grams of carbon dioxide released per megajoule o ...
of economic output. Examples of absolute long-term decoupling are rare, but recently some industrialized countries have decoupled GDP growth from both production- and, to a lesser extent, consumption-based emissions. In countries and economic markets where decoupling may be identified, one explanation could be the transition to a
service economy Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments: * The increased importance of the service sector in industrialized economies. The current list of Fortune 500 companies contains more service companies and fewer manu ...
. This hypothesis has been expanded upon by the
Environmental Kuznets curve The Kuznets curve () expresses a hypothesis advanced by economist Simon Kuznets in the 1950s and 1960s. According to this hypothesis, as an economy develops, market forces first increase and then decrease economic inequality. The Kuznets curve ...
. In 2002, the
OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...
defined the term as follows: :the term 'decoupling' refers to breaking the link between "environmental bads" and "economic goods." It explains this as having rates of increasing wealth greater than the rates of increasing impacts.


Importance of the issue of decoupling

Historically there has been a close correlation between economic growth and environmental degradation: as communities grow in size and prosperity, so the environment declines. This trend is clearly demonstrated on graphs of human population numbers, economic growth, and environmental indicators. There is a concern that, unless resource use is checked, modern global civilization will follow the path of ancient civilizations that collapsed through overexploitation of their resource base.Diamond, J. (2005). ''Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed''. New York: Viking Books. . While conventional economics is concerned largely with economic growth and the efficient allocation of resources, ecological economics has the explicit goal of sustainable scale (rather than continual growth), fair distribution and efficient allocation, in that order.Costanza, R. ''et al''. (2007).
An Introduction to Ecological Economics
'. This is an online editable text available at the Encyclopedia of Earth. First published in 1997 by St. Lucie Press and the International Society for Ecological Economics. Ch. 1, pp. 1–4, Ch.3, p. 3. .
The
World Business Council for Sustainable Development The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a CEO-led organization of over 200 international companies. The Council is also connected to 60 national and regional business councils and partner organizations. Its origins ...
states that "business cannot succeed in societies that fail." In
economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the ...
and environmental fields, the term decoupling is becoming increasingly used in the context of economic production and environmental quality. When used in this way, it refers to the ability of an economy to grow without incurring corresponding increases in environmental pressure. Ecological economics includes the study of societal metabolism, the throughput of resources that enter and exit the economic system in relation to
environmental quality "Environmental Quality" is a set of properties and characteristics of the environment, either generalized or local, as they impinge on human beings and other organisms. It is a measure of the condition of an environment relative to the requirements ...
. An economy that can sustain GDP growth without harming the environment is said to be decoupled. Exactly how, if, or to what extent this can be achieved is a subject of much debate. In 2011 the
International Resource Panel The International Resource Panel is a scientific panel of experts that aims to help nations use natural resources sustainably without compromising economic growth and human needs. It provides independent scientific assessments and expert advice on ...
, hosted by the
United Nations Environment Programme The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is responsible for coordinating responses to environmental issues within the United Nations system. It was established by Maurice Strong, its first director, after the United Nations Conference on th ...
(UNEP), warned that by 2050 the human race could be devouring 140 billion tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and biomass per year—three times its current rate of consumption—unless nations can make serious attempts at decoupling. The report noted that citizens of developed countries consume an average of 16 tons of those four key resources per capita per annum (ranging up to 40 or more tons per person in some developed countries). By comparison, the average person in India today consumes four tons per year. Sustainability studies analyse ways to reduce resource intensity (the amount of resource (e.g. water, energy, or materials) needed for the production, consumption and disposal of a unit of good or service) whether this be achieved from improved economic management, product design, or new technology. There are conflicting views on whether improvements in technological efficiency and innovation will enable a complete decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation. On the one hand, it has been claimed repeatedly by efficiency experts that resource use intensity (i.e., energy and materials use per unit
GDP Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjective nature this measure is ofte ...
) could in principle be reduced by at least four or five-fold, thereby allowing for continued economic growth without increasing resource depletion and associated pollution. On the other hand, an extensive historical analysis of technological efficiency improvements has conclusively shown that improvements in the efficiency of the use of energy and materials were almost always outpaced by economic growth, in large part because of the
rebound effect (conservation) In conservation and energy economics, the rebound effect (or take-back effect) is the reduction in expected gains from new technologies that increase the efficiency of resource use, because of behavioral or other systemic responses. These respo ...
or
Jevons Paradox In economics, the Jevons paradox (; sometimes Jevons effect) occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of ...
resulting in a net increase in resource use and associated pollution. Furthermore, there are inherent thermodynamic (i.e.,
second law of thermodynamics The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on universal experience concerning heat and energy interconversions. One simple statement of the law is that heat always moves from hotter objects to colder objects (or "downhill"), unles ...
) and practical limits to all efficiency improvements. For example, there are certain minimum unavoidable material requirements for growing food, and there are limits to making automobiles, houses, furniture, and other products lighter and thinner without the risk of losing their necessary functions. Since it is both theoretically and practically impossible to increase resource use efficiencies indefinitely, it is equally impossible to have continued and infinite economic growth without a concomitant increase in resource depletion and environmental pollution, i.e., economic growth and resource depletion can be decoupled to some degree over the short run but not the long run. Consequently, long-term sustainability requires the transition to a
steady state economy A steady-state economy is an economy made up of a constant stock of physical wealth (capital) and a constant population size. In effect, such an economy does not grow in the course of time. The term usually refers to the national economy o ...
in which total GDP remains more or less constant, as has been advocated for decades by Herman Daly and others in the ecological economics community. The
OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...
2019 Report "Environment at a Glance Indicators – Climate change" points out that the issue of diminishing GHG emissions while maintaining GDP growth is a major challenge for the forthcoming years.


Policies

Policies have been proposed for creating the conditions that enable widespread investments in resource productivity. According to Mark Patton a global leading expert, Such potential policies include the raising of resource prices in line with increases in energy or resource productivity, a shift in revenue-raising onto resource prices through resource taxation at source or in relation to product imports, with recycling of revenues back to the economy, ...


Technologies

Several technologies have been described in the Decoupling 2 report, including: * Technologies to save energy (technologies directly reducing fossil fuel consumption, saving electricity in industry, reducing fossil-fuel demand in transportation, ...) * Technologies saving metals and minerals (technologies reducing metal use, saving materials from waste streams, ...) * Technologies saving freshwater and biotic resources (technologies saving freshwater extraction, protecting soil fertility, saving biotic resources, ...)Decoupling 2: technologies, opportunities and policy options
A Report of the Working Group on Decoupling to the International Resource Panel. von Weizsäcker, E.U., de Larderel, J, Hargroves, K., Hudson, C., Smith, M., Rodrigues, M., 2014


Documentation

In 2014, the same
International Resource Panel The International Resource Panel is a scientific panel of experts that aims to help nations use natural resources sustainably without compromising economic growth and human needs. It provides independent scientific assessments and expert advice on ...
published a second report, "Decoupling 2", which "highlights existing technological possibilities and opportunities for both developing and developed countries to accelerate decoupling and reap the environmental and economic benefits of increased resource productivity." The lead coordinating author of this report was
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker (born 25 June 1939) is a German scientist and politician ( SPD). He was a member of the German Bundestag and served as co-president of the Club of Rome jointly with Anders Wijkman 2011 – 2019. Family A member of ...
. In 2016, the
International Resource Panel The International Resource Panel is a scientific panel of experts that aims to help nations use natural resources sustainably without compromising economic growth and human needs. It provides independent scientific assessments and expert advice on ...
published a report indicating that "global material productivity has declined since about the year 2000 and the global economy now needs more materials per unit of GDP than it did at the turn of the century" as a result of shifts in production from high-income to middle-income countries."Global material flows and resource productivity. An assessment study of the UNEP International Resource Panel"
United Nations Environment Programme The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is responsible for coordinating responses to environmental issues within the United Nations system. It was established by Maurice Strong, its first director, after the United Nations Conference on th ...
, 2016 (page visited on 12 October 2018).
That is to say, the growth of material flows has been stronger than the growth of gross domestic product. This is the opposite of decoupling, a situation that some people call overcoupling.


Terminology


Relative and absolute decoupling

Tim Jackson, author of ''
Prosperity Without Growth ''Prosperity Without Growth'' is a book by author and economist Tim Jackson. It was originally released as a report by the Sustainable Development Commission. The study rapidly became the most downloaded report in the Commission's nine-year ...
'', stresses the importance of differentiating between ''relative'' and ''absolute'' decoupling: * Relative decoupling refers to a decline in the ecological intensity per unit of economic output. In this situation, resource impacts decline relative to the
GDP Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjective nature this measure is ofte ...
, which could itself still be rising. * Absolute decoupling refers to a situation in which resource impacts decline in absolute terms. Resource efficiencies must increase at least as fast as economic output does and must continue to improve as the economy grows, if absolute decoupling is to occur. Jackson points out that an economy can correctly claim that it has ''relatively'' decoupled its economy in terms of energy inputs per unit of GDP. However, in this situation, total environmental impacts ''would still be increasing'', albeit at a slower pace of growth than in GDP. Jackson uses this distinction to caution against technology-optimists who use the term ''decoupling'' as an "escape route from the dilemma of growth." He points out that "there is quite a lot of evidence to support the existence of elative decoupling in global economies, however "evidence for bsolute decouplingis harder to find." Similarly, ecological economist and steady-state theorist Herman Daly stated in 1991: Between 1990 and 2015, the carbon intensity per $GDP declined of 0.6 percent per year (relative decoupling), but the population grew of 1.3 percent per year and the income per capita also grew of 1.3 percent per year. That is to say, the carbon emissions grew of 1.3 + 1.3 − 0.6 = 2 percent per year, leading to a 62% increase in 25 years (the data reflect no absolute decoupling). According to Tim Jackson: On economic growth and environmental degradation, Donella Meadows wrote:


Resource and impact decoupling

Resource decoupling refers to reducing the rate of resource use per unit of economic activity. The "dematerialization" is based on using less material, energy, water and land resources for the same economic input. Impact decoupling required increasing economic output while reducing negative environmental impacts. These impacts arise from the extraction of resources.


Lack of evidence for decoupling

There is no empirical evidence supporting the existence of an eco-economic decoupling near the scale needed to avoid environmental degradation, and it is unlikely to happen in the future. Environmental pressures can only be reduced by rethinking green growth policies, where a sufficiency approach complements greater efficiency.Decoupling debunked: Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability
2019 (page visited on 17 March 2020)
According to scientist and author
Vaclav Smil Vaclav Smil (; born 9 December 1943) is a Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His interdisciplinary researc ...
, ''"Without a biosphere in a good shape, there is no life on the planet. It’s very simple. That’s all you need to know. The economists will tell you we can decouple growth from material consumption, but that is total nonsense. The options are quite clear from the historical evidence. If you don’t manage decline, then you succumb to it and you are gone. The best hope is that you find some way to manage it."'' In 2020, a
meta-analysis A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting me ...
of 180
scientific studies The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific m ...
notes that there is "No evidence of the kind of decoupling needed for ecological sustainability" and that "in the absence of robust evidence, the goal of decoupling rests partly on faith".T. Vadén, V. Lähde, A. Majava, P. Järvensivu, T. Toivanen, E. Hakala and J. T. Eronen, "Decoupling for ecological sustainability: a categorisation and review of research literature", ''Environmental Science & Policy'', volume 112, 2020, pages 236-244.


See also

* Eco-innovation * Energy conservation * Economics of climate change mitigation *
Green growth Green growth is a term to describe a hypothetical path of economic growth that is environmentally sustainable. It is based on the understanding that as long as economic growth remains a predominant goal, a decoupling of economic growth from resou ...
*
Jevons paradox In economics, the Jevons paradox (; sometimes Jevons effect) occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of ...
*
Kaya identity The Kaya identity is a mathematical identity stating that the total emission level of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide can be expressed as the product of four factors: human population, GDP per capita, energy intensity (per unit of GDP), and carb ...
*
Rebound effect (conservation) In conservation and energy economics, the rebound effect (or take-back effect) is the reduction in expected gains from new technologies that increase the efficiency of resource use, because of behavioral or other systemic responses. These respo ...
* Steady-state economy * Sustainability


Notes and references


External links


2015 article by George Monbiot
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