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Accurate assessments of global primary material extraction, trade of primary materials and products, material use, waste, and emissions support the development of policies that facilitate the decoupling of economic activity, natural resource use, and related environmental impacts. Here, we quantify all crucial aspects of global and country‐by‐country material requirements needed to fuel economic activities, covering both territorial‐ and demand‐based indicators. These data have been assembled by a consortium of research partners that compile the global material flow and resource productivity online database for the International Resource Panel, which contributes to the global dataset for the System of Environmental–Economic Accounting (SEEA) framework and is employed to monitor progress for the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators 8.4 and 12.2. We present the main findings of the 2024 update, including methodological improvements and result differences, and discuss the main findings and limitations. Since the last update, we have identified a slowing of global materials extraction since about 2014, a continuation of solid growth in direct trade of materials and products, persistent inequality in resource use between high‐ and low‐income countries, and a prolonged improvement in global material productivity. The full dataset used herein can be downloaded from the Global Material Flow Database hosted by the United Nations Environment Program International Resource Panel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extracting raw materials and processing them into products used in industry constitute a substantial source of CO2 emissions, which are currently lacking process detail in many integrated assessment models (IAMs). To broaden the space of climate change mitigation options to include material-oriented strategies such as the circular-economy and material efficiency measures in IAM scenario analysis, we develop the MESSAGEix-Materials module, representing material flows and stocks within the MESSAGEix-GLOBIOM IAM framework. We provide a fully open-source model that can assess different industry decarbonization options under various climate targets for the most energy- and emissions-intensive industries: aluminum, iron and steel, cement, and petrochemicals. We illustrate the model's operation with a baseline and mitigation 2-degrees (2 °C) scenario setup and validate base year results for 2020 against historical datasets. We also discuss the industry decarbonization pathways and material stocks of the electricity generation technologies resulting from the new model features. The next steps are to extend the model to other sectors, end uses and materials, as well as the combined modeling of various supply- and demand-side measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informed environmental‐economic policy decisions require a solid understanding of the economy's biophysical basis. Global physical input–output tables (gPIOTs) collate a vast array of information on the world economy's physical structure and its interdependence with the environment, which can help to monitor progress toward a sustainable circular economy. However, building gPIOTs requires dealing with mismatched and incomplete primary data with high uncertainties, which makes it a time‐consuming and labor‐intensive endeavor. We address this challenge by introducing the PIOLab: A virtual laboratory for building gPIOTs. This represents the newest branch of the industrial ecology virtual laboratory (IELab) concept, a cloud‐computing platform and collaborative research environment through which participants can pool resources to assemble individual input–output tables that target specific research questions. To overcome the lack of primary data, the PIOLab builds extensively upon secondary data derived from a variety of models commonly used in industrial ecology. We use the case of global iron‐steel supply chains to describe the architecture of the PIOLab and highlight its analytical capabilities. A major strength of the gPIOT is its ability to provide mass‐balanced indicators on both apparent/direct and embodied/indirect flows, for regions and disaggregated economic sectors. We present the first gPIOTs for 10 years (2008–2017), covering 32 regions, 30 processes, and 39 types of iron/steel flows. Diagnostic tests of the data reconciliation show a good level of adherence between raw data and the values realized in the gPIOT. We conclude with elaborating on how the PIOLab will be extended to cover other materials and energy flows. This article met the requirements for a Gold‐Gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To keep global heating and other negative consequences of socioeconomic activities within manageable boundaries, industrialized countries must undergo substantial decarbonization, requiring the exploitation of synergies with other environmental endeavors. Improving resource efficiency—that is, reducing the resources required to generate a unit of economic output—is a prominent goal pursued across levels of scale. How does resource efficiency relate to decarbonization? Do economies decrease their emissions as they become more efficient? We examine this relationship for Austria from 2000 to 2015 by conducting an index decomposition analysis at the sectoral level by using consumption‐based indicators from the multi‐regional input–output model Exiobase. Our analysis shows that for Austria, the currently popular pursuit of material efficiency appears to run the risk of coinciding with higher emissions, suggesting that the opportunities to achieve both decarbonization and dematerialization are limited. The Austrian service sectors could contribute to a reduction of the CO2 footprint via material efficiency improvements, but strong economic growth foils this possibility coming to fruition. The Austrian economy would do well to either curb demand for goods and services driving global CO2 emissions or to produce imported goods and services domestically in an environmentally more benign manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The international industrial ecology (IE) research community and United Nations (UN) Environment have, for the first time, agreed on an authoritative and comprehensive data set for global material extraction and trade covering 40 years of global economic activity and natural resource use. This new data set is becoming the standard information source for decision making at the UN in the context of the post‐2015 development agenda, which acknowledges the strong links between sustainable natural resource management, economic prosperity, and human well‐being. Only if economic growth and human development can become substantially decoupled from accelerating material use, waste, and emissions can the tensions inherent in the Sustainable Development Goals be resolved and inclusive human development be achieved. In this paper, we summarize the key findings of the assessment study to make the IE research community aware of this new global research resource. The global results show a massive increase in materials extraction from 22 billion tonnes (Bt) in 1970 to 70 Bt in 2010, and an acceleration in material extraction since 2000. This acceleration has occurred at a time when global population growth has slowed and global economic growth has stalled. The global surge in material extraction has been driven by growing wealth and consumption and accelerating trade. A material footprint perspective shows that demand for materials has grown even in the wealthiest parts of the world. Low‐income countries have benefited least from growing global resource availability and have continued to deliver primary materials to high‐income countries while experiencing few improvements in their domestic material living standards. Material efficiency, the amount of primary materials required per unit of economic activity, has declined since around 2000 because of a shift of global production from very material‐efficient economies to less‐efficient ones. This global trend of recoupling economic activity with material use, driven by industrialization and urbanization in the global South, most notably Asia, has negative impacts on a suite of environmental and social issues, including natural resource depletion, climate change, loss of biodiversity, and uneven economic development. This research is a good example of the IE research community providing information for evidence‐based policy making on the global stage and testament to the growing importance of IE research in achieving global sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]