The “International Relations and Security Network” based in Zurich, Switzerland, invited SERI researcher Stefan Giljum for an interview on issues related to scarcities of natural resources as part of a “Special
Report on Scarcity” recently published by the network.

Stefan Giljum presented some of SERI’s recent work in the field of trends in global resource use, inequalities in resource consumption between different world regions and the environmental impacts of increasing digitalisation and new technologies. He argued that upcoming issues of resource scarcities are a unique challenge in the history of humanity and international competition over scarce resources will increase in the future due to the growth dynamics of the global economy. He also provided a critical review of current EU resource policies, pointing to missing policy targets for increasing resource productivity and missing policy instruments to improve Europe’s performance.

The full interview with Stefan Giljum is available as a podcast (lifestream or mp3 download) here.