Global Resources Outlook 2019: Natural Resources for the Future We Want
About this book
Global Resources Outlook 2019: Natural Resources for the Future We Want, published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) International Resource Panel in 2019, provides the first comprehensive assessment of global material resource use, its environmental impacts, and the policy options for transitioning toward a resource-efficient global economy. Produced by an interdisciplinary team of 23 authors from 15 countries, this report represents the most authoritative global synthesis of material flows and their environmental consequences. The report documents a fundamental and unsustainable trend in global material extraction: total material extraction has tripled since 1970, rising from approximately 27 billion tonnes to 92 billion tonnes per year, with projections to 190 billion tonnes per year by 2060 under a business-as-usual scenario.
This expansion encompasses four major material categories: biomass (food, feed, fibre, wood), fossil fuels, metal ores, and non-metallic minerals (sand, gravel, limestone, clays). The environmental implications are assessed across three major impact categories. Climate change: material extraction and processing (including transportation and manufacturing) are responsible for approximately 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Biodiversity loss: land-use change associated with material extraction is the primary driver of biodiversity decline, with approximately 90% of biodiversity loss and water stress linked to resource extraction and processing. Land and water degradation: agricultural expansion, mining, and quarrying alter approximately 55 million km² of the Earth's land surface. A key finding with profound equity implications is the extraordinary disparity in per-capita material consumption.
High-income countries consume approximately 28 tonnes of materials per person per year, compared to 9 tonnes in lower-middle-income countries and only 2.2 tonnes per person in low-income countries. The material consumption required for developing countries to reach high-income living standards under current economic structures would be physically impossible within planetary limits. The report presents a resource efficiency policy framework: industrial ecology and circular economy approaches that maintain materials at highest value for longest duration, substitution of high-impact materials with lower-impact alternatives, and demand-side policies that shift consumption patterns.
It argues that material efficiency, properly incentivised, can decouple economic growth from resource consumption — allowing the global economy to grow while reducing absolute material throughput.