Abstract
Besides the major concern with climate change, it is increasingly evident that the natural resource base is one of the major issues of international environmental economics and policy. This paper argues that resource productivity – that is the efficiency of using natural resources to produce goods and services in the economy – will be one of the key determinants of economic success and human well-being in the upcoming years and decades. Deviating from ongoing political struggle about burden sharing and abatement costs, our paper underlines that international economic policy shall promote resource productivity not only as a source of future competitive advantage as well as a pillar for the transition to a low fossil carbon economy.
A similar version has been previously published in International Economics and Economic Policy, Special Issue on “International Economics of Resources and Resource Policy”, Volume 7, Numbers 2–3/August 2010.
A previous version has been presented at the “Shanghai Forum 2010”, Subforum on the “Emerging Energy and Low Carbon Economy: the Engine for Asia Economic Transformation”, May 29–31, 2010. We wish to thank the participants as well as Meghan O’Brian for useful comments.
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Notes
- 1.
The notion of a “low carbon economy” is increasingly popular. One should however also take into account opportunities to re-use carbon for other purposes in the future; see e.g. Bringezu (2009).
- 2.
- 3.
Biomass might be an exception; however biomass gasification and other related technologies also demand metals for the production of useful energy.
- 4.
LED stands for light-emitting dioxide.
- 5.
See e.g. the European Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking at: http://ec.europa.eu/research/fch/index_en.cfm and the World Hydrogen Conference at: http://www.whec2010.com.
- 6.
See also the contribution written by Christian Hagelücken in this book.
- 7.
Evidence from EU projects such as INDI-LINK, CALCAS, Sustainability A-Test, MATISSE, FORESCENE; see also Bringezu and Bleischwitz 2009, Chap. 2.
- 8.
We use the term material productivity if the denominator is DMC or DMI and resource productivity for the more inclusive measurement approaches with TMR/TMC and for general purposes.
- 9.
- 10.
Based on Eurostat and ten minerals, but no semi-final goods; the share actually is higher than the analysis of de Bruyn et al. (2009) suggests.
- 11.
See also the paper written by Tomoo Machiba “Framing Eco Innovation for Resource Efficiency and Green Growth”.
- 12.
In Germany, ten sectors induce more than 75% of the TMR; see Acosta et al. (2007).
- 13.
See also the contributions made by Rene Kemp and Paul Ekins in this book.
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Bleischwitz, R., Bringezu, S. (2011). The Resources of Economies and the Productivity of Materials: Relevance, Measurement, Empirical Trends, Innovation, Resource Policies. In: Bleischwitz, R., Welfens, P., Zhang, Z. (eds) International Economics of Resource Efficiency. Physica-Verlag HD. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2601-2_4
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