Global inequalities in countries' demand for raw materials: Twenty years of expansion and insufficient convergence

Abstract

Understanding global patterns of resource use and their underlying drivers is crucial for environmental sustainability. Because production and consumption are globally highly interconnected, dynamic, and unequally distributed, examinations of changes in cross-country differences in resource use can shed light on questions of development, equity, and responsibility for environmental pressures.

We here examine changes in the worldwide inequality of countries' per-capita material footprint (MF_pc) over the last 20 years from 2000 to 2019, using inequality measures that enable us to apply novel decomposition techniques of their driving factors. The MF accounts for the raw material extraction occurring anywhere on the planet to provide each country's population with goods and services consumed per year, thereby accounting for raw materials “embodied” in traded goods and services. Data for 146 countries from 2000 to 2019 is sourced from the multi-regional input-output database GLORIA. Using established inequality indices (Gini, Theil), we find that inequalities decreased until 2010, after which they remained relatively stable. This latter decade was characterized by a steep increase in overall global resource use. We also find that improvements in resource efficiency have not been sufficient to counter-balance increases in GDP.

Our results suggest that the last twenty years – in particular, the last decade – can be described as an “expansion and insufficient convergence” trajectory which falls short from the “Contraction and Convergence scenario” envisaged in strategies towards the Sustainable Development Goals.