Together with our German colleague Monika Dittrich, SERI researcher Stefan Giljum presented the first results of the upcoming new study “Green economies around the world? Implications of resource use for the environment and development”. The study analyses patterns of material extraction, trade, consumption and resource productivity for all countries world-wide during the past 30 years.

Around 50 participants of the World Resources Forum attended the presentation, in which Monika and Stefan talked about the alarming trends of resource use on the global level. According to our latest calculations, global annual material consumption increased from around 38 billion tonnes in 1980 to almost 70 billion tonnes in 2008. On a per capita basis, the inequalities in resource consumption are increasing. In poor countries, resource consumption is as low as 1.5 tonnes per year, while in the richest countries consumption reaches more than 50 tonnes per year. The world economy has achieved a so-called relative de-coupling of material consumption from economic growth; today, 30% less material inputs are needed to produce one Dollar of world GDP compared to 1980. However, as world GDP almost tripled in the same time period, those efficiency gains were overcompensated by the overall growth of production and consumption.

Those and other interesting results can be found in the full presentation, which can be downloaded here.