Within the context of Earth's limited natural resources and assimilation capacity, the current environmental footprint of humankind is not sustainable. Assessing land, water, energy, material, and ...other footprints along supply chains is paramount in understanding the sustainability, efficiency, and equity of resource use from the perspective of producers, consumers, and government. We review current footprints and relate those to maximum sustainable levels, highlighting the need for future work on combining footprints, assessing trade-offs between them, improving computational techniques, estimating maximum sustainable footprint levels, and benchmarking efficiency of resource use. Ultimately, major transformative changes in the global economy are necessary to reduce humanity's environmental footprint to sustainable levels.
material footprint of nations Wiedmann, Thomas O.; Schandl, Heinz; Lenzen, Manfred ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
05/2015, Letnik:
112, Številka:
20
Journal Article
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Significance This original research paper addresses a key issue in sustainability science: How many and which natural resources are needed to sustain modern economies? Simple as it may seem, this ...question is far from trivial to answer and has indeed not been addressed satisfactorily in the scholarly literature. We use the most comprehensive and most highly resolved economic input–output framework of the world economy together with a detailed database of global material flows to calculate the full material requirements of all countries covering a period of two decades. Called the “material footprint,” this indicator provides a consumption perspective of resource use and new insights into the actual resource productivity of nations.
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.
Summary
Cities are thought to be associated with most of humanity's consumption of natural resources and impacts on the environment. Cities not only constitute major centers of economic activity, ...knowledge, innovation, and governance—they are also said to be linked to approximately 70% to 80% of global carbon dioxide emissions. This makes cities primary agents of change in a resource‐ and carbon‐constraint world. In order to set meaningful targets, design successful policies, and implement effective mitigation strategies, it is important that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting for cities is accurate, comparable, comprehensive, and complete. Despite recent developments in the standardization of city GHG accounting, there is still a lack of consistent guidelines regarding out‐of‐boundary emissions, thus hampering efforts to identify mitigation priorities and responsibilities. We introduce a new conceptual framework—based on environmental input‐output analysis—that allows for a consistent and complete reconciliation of direct and indirect GHG emissions from a city. The “city carbon map” shows local, regional, national, and global origins and destinations of flows of embodied emissions. We test the carbon map concept by applying it to the greater metropolitan area of Melbourne, Australia. We discuss the results and limitations of the approach in the light of possible mitigation strategies and policies by different urban stakeholders.
Summary
The use of global, multiregional input‐output (MRIO) analysis for consumption‐based (footprint) accounting has expanded significantly over the last decade. Most of the global studies on ...environmental and social impacts associated with consumption or embodied in international trade would have been impossible without the rapid development of extended MRIO databases. We present an overview of the developments in the field of MRIO analysis, in particular as applied to consumption‐based environmental and social footprints. We first provide a discussion of research published on various global MRIO databases and the differences between them, before focusing on the virtual laboratory computing infrastructure for potentially making MRIO databases more accessible for collaborative research, and also for supporting greater sectoral and regional detail. We discuss work that includes a broader range of extensions, in particular the inclusion of social indicators in consumption‐based accounting. We conclude by discussing the need for the development of detailed nested MRIO tables for investigating linkages between regions of different countries, and the applications of the rapidly growing field of global MRIO analysis for assessing a country's performance toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Future energy technologies will be key for a successful reduction of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. With demand for electricity projected to increase significantly in the future, climate policy ...goals of limiting the effects of global atmospheric warming can only be achieved if power generation processes are profoundly decarbonized. Energy models, however, have ignored the fact that upstream emissions are associated with any energy technology. In this work we explore methodological options for hybrid life cycle assessment (hybrid LCA) to account for the indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of energy technologies using wind power generation in the UK as a case study. We develop and compare two different approaches using a multiregion input-output modeling framework – Input-Output-based Hybrid LCA and Integrated Hybrid LCA. The latter utilizes the full-sized Ecoinvent process database. We discuss significance and reliability of the results and suggest ways to improve the accuracy of the calculations. The comparison of hybrid LCA methodologies provides valuable insight into the availability and robustness of approaches for informing energy and environmental policy.
Carbon, ecological, and water footprints (CF, EF, and WF) are accounting tools that can be used to understand the connection between consumption activities and environmental pressures on the Earth's ...atmosphere, bioproductive areas, and freshwater resources. These indicators have been gaining acceptance from researchers and policymakers but are not harmonized with one another, and ecological and water footprints are lacking in their representation of product supply chains. In this paper we integrate existing methods for calculating EF and WF within a multi-regional input–output (MRIO) modelling framework that has already been successfully applied for CF estimation. We introduce a new MRIO method for conserving the high degree of product detail found in existing physical EF and WF accounts. Calculating EF and WF in this way is consistent with the current best practice for CF accounting, making results more reliable and easier to compare across the three indicators. We discuss alternatives for linking the MRIO model and the footprint datasets and the implications for results. The model presented here is novel and offers significant improvements in EF and WF accounting through harmonization of methods with CF accounting, preservation of product-level detail, comprehensive inclusion of sectors of the global economy, and clear representation of flows along supply chains and international trade linkages. The matrix organization of the model improves transparency and provides a structure upon which further improvements in footprint calculation can be built. The model described here is the first environmentally extended MRIO model that harmonizes EF and WF accounts and aligns physical unit data of product use with standard economic and environmental accounting.
Abstract
Transforming China’s economic growth pattern from investment-driven to consumption-driven can significantly change global CO
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emissions. This study is the first to analyse the impacts of ...changes in China’s saving rates on global CO
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emissions both theoretically and empirically. Here, we show that the increase in the saving rates of Chinese regions has led to increments of global industrial CO
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emissions by 189 million tonnes (Mt) during 2007–2012. A 15-percentage-point decrease in the saving rate of China can lower global CO
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emissions by 186 Mt, or 0.7% of global industrial CO
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emissions. Greener consumption in China can lead to a further 14% reduction in global industrial CO
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emissions. In particular, decreasing the saving rate of Shandong has the most massive potential for global CO
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reductions, while that of Inner Mongolia has adverse effects. Removing economic frictions to allow the production system to fit China’s increased consumption can facilitate global CO
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mitigation.
Achieving forest sustainability is a declared sustainable development goal (SDG 15). Measuring the safe operating spaceplanetary boundariesof global forests is essential to determine global forest ...pressure and manage forests sustainably. Here, we quantify the forestry planetary boundary (FPB) and national forestry boundaries. Results show that, in 2015, the FPB was 7.1 billion m3 of forest stock increments. Global timber harvests account for 58.7% of the FPB. Timber harvests of 47 nations, mostly in Africa and Asia, have exceeded their national forestry boundaries. Their boundary-exceeding timber harvest is mainly driven by the final demand of developed nations (e.g., the United States and Japan) and emerging economies (e.g., India and China) through global supply chains. This study highlights the importance of the FPB in global forest management and trade-related policymaking. The findings can guide global and national forest harvesting activities and help promote international cooperation to mitigate global deforestation.
Nutrition guidelines now consider the environmental impact of food choices as well as maintaining health. In Australia there is insufficient data quantifying the environmental impact of diets, ...limiting our ability to make evidence-based recommendations. This paper used an environmentally extended input-output model of the economy to estimate greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe) for different food sectors. These data were augmented with food intake estimates from the 1995 Australian National Nutrition Survey. The GHGe of the average Australian diet was 14.5 kg carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) per person per day. The recommended dietary patterns in the Australian Dietary Guidelines are nutrient rich and have the lowest GHGe (~25% lower than the average diet). Food groups that made the greatest contribution to diet-related GHGe were red meat (8.0 kg CO2e per person per day) and energy-dense, nutrient poor "non-core" foods (3.9 kg CO2e). Non-core foods accounted for 27% of the diet-related emissions. A reduction in non-core foods and consuming the recommended serves of core foods are strategies which may achieve benefits for population health and the environment. These data will enable comparisons between changes in dietary intake and GHGe over time, and provide a reference point for diets which meet population nutrient requirements and have the lowest GHGe.
Companies on the Scale Wiedmann, Thomas O; Lenzen, Manfred; Barrett, John R
Journal of industrial ecology,
06/2009, Letnik:
13, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
A determination of the sustainability performance of a company ought to fulfill certain requirements. It has to take into account the direct impacts from on-site processes as well as indirect impacts ...embodied in the supply chains of a company. This life cycle thinking is the common theme of popular footprint analyses, such as carbon, ecological, or water footprinting. All these indicators can be incorporated into one common and consistent accounting and reporting scheme based on economic input-output analysis, extended with data from all three dimensions of sustainability. We introduce such a triple-bottom-line accounting framework and software tool and apply it in a case study of a small company in the United Kingdom. Results include absolute impacts and relative intensities of indicators and are put into perspective by a benchmark comparison with the economic sector to which the company belongs. Production layer decomposition and structural path analysis provide further valuable detail, identifying the amount and location of triple-bottom-line impacts in individual upstream supply chains. The concept of shared responsibility has been applied to avoid double-counting and noncomparability of results. Although in this work we employ a single-region model for the sake of illustration, we discuss how to extend our ideas to international supply chains. We discuss the limitations of the approach and the implications for corporate sustainability. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
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