Australia in resource tool development
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- Saturday, 11 December 2021
Australian researchers working with the United Nations have developed a tool to drive practical change in the world’s global resource consumption through better understanding of how many resources each country consumes.
The tool tracks and monitors reporting done by each country on international material supply chains to deliver credible, science-based information on countries’ material footprints, and was described in Nature Sustainability today.
The research shows the global material footprint has quadrupled since 1970 and it is not projected to decline significantly for decades.
A country’s material footprint captures the raw materials they consume domestically, showing where those resources come from globally. For example, materials used to make cars in Japan that are exported to Australia go into Australia’s material footprint.
Doctor Heinz Schandl, CSIRO group leader for Urban and Industrial Transformations, the paper’s coordinating author said: “The size of our global material footprint has consequences for climate mitigation, biodiversity, and waste and pollution outcomes.
“Net zero carbon can only be achieved if supported by a significant change in material composition reducing the share of carbon intensive materials, for example, in construction and transport.
“Australian governments can rely on the material footprint measure and the new global capability to inform resource productivity, recycling and clean energy, net zero and waste reduction efforts. This places Australia as a global leader to inform the decoupling of economic growth and living standards from adverse environmental and climate impacts.”
