Introduction
This chapter will analytically review the contribution made by the International Resource Panel (IRP)2 to our understanding of the dynamics of the deep transition discussed in Chapter 4. The South African Government nominated me to be a member of this body in 2007, the year it was founded. UNEP (as it was then called) decided to establish the IRP in the wake of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that won the Nobel Prize in 2007. This report argued that the decarbonization of the global economy would only be possible if it was transformed. However, climate science cannot provide the framework for how to do this.
After serving three four-year terms, my participation will end in 2019. I have been involved from the start in shaping the IRP’s intellectual project, in particular through its founding report on decoupling of which I was co-lead author. The IRP can be understood as a collaborative effort by a diverse group of researchers to document the socio-metabolic case for why the industrial epoch has effec-tively reached the end of its 250-year historical cycle. Although this documentary evidence suggests that the necessary conditions are in place for a socio-metabolic transition to a more sustainable epoch (as part of a wider deep transition), this by no means implies that the IRP has developed a view on whether sufficient conditions exist for such a transition to happen. Now that the Sustainable Devel-opment Goals (SDGs) have been approved, this may provide the context for such a task. The IRP has yet to pay attention to the key factors that will determine the nature of such a transition, namely the social actors, their networks and the highly complex dynamics of the institutions that make up the polities of each nation-state.
The IRP was established by UNEP – now known as United Nations Environ-ment (UNE)3 – in 2007. By 2017 it had 24 members from 26 countries. It is not constituted like the IPCC as an intergovernmental expert panel. Instead, it is a panel of experts funded by governments and UNE. It has a Steering Committee com-prised of government representatives who consider the scientific reports of the Panel members but without the requirement that reports must first be approved by the Steering Committee before they are published. The Steering Committee, how-ever, does have the power to approve the initiation of reports. The Panel members come from a wide range of scientific disciplines and intellectual traditions, with some closely allied to their respective governments while others are thoroughly independent and even oppositional within their domestic policy environments.
The original objectives of the IRP were to:
• provide independent, coherent and authoritative scientific assessments of pol-icy relevance on the sustainable use of natural resources and their environmen-tal impacts over the full life cycle;
• contribute to a better understanding of how to decouple economic growth rates from the rate of resource use and environmental degradation.
Energy, resources and human civilization
There is growing acceptance across a wide range of audiences that ‘modern soci-ety’ is currently facing historically unprecedented challenges. The advent of the
‘Anthropocene’ comes with an all-pervasive sense that landscape pressures like cli-mate change, resource depletion and ecosystem breakdown threaten the conditions of existence of human life as we know it (Crutzen, 2002). The result of the con-verging techno-economic, socio-technical and socio-metabolic crises discussed in Chapter 4 is an interregnum Edgar Morin has usefully called a ‘polycrisis’ (Morin, 1999:73).
This chapter aims to deepen our understanding of the complex interactions between two primary complex adaptive systems (with their own interdependent myriad of subsystems): the socio-economic systems that comprise industrial moder-nity (or what Ahmed calls “human civilization” (2017)) and the biophysical sys-tems that these socio-economic syssys-tems depend on for energy and resources. These interactions are understood here from a socio-metabolic transition perspective. This means I am interested in what Giampietro et al. refer to as the “metabolic pattern of society” (Giampietro, Mayumi and Sorman, 2012), namely the flow of exergy and resources through the global social-ecological system from natural systems into the economies that make up the global economy and back out into natural systems in context-specific ways. To increase capacities to extract, retain and deploy energy and resources over time in the real world, increasingly complex adaptive systems – with increasingly sophisticated institutional/regulatory capacities and technological capabilities – get assembled and extended for managing these dissipative structures (see Chapter 2) (Giampietro, Mayumi and Sorman, 2012; Ahmed, 2017). Following
the argument in Chapter 2, they operate thermodynamically far from equilibrium because up to a certain point there is an ever-increasing flow of exergy and materi-als through them. However, there comes a point where no matter the capacity to further extend the complexity of a given set of socio-economic systems (e.g. via IT systems to increase efficiencies), there is no escaping the biophysical thermody-namic limits to the energy and materials that have been over-exploited over time.
This is made worse by the fact that the dissipation of exergy and resources in the natural environment is taking place exactly when there is accelerated rising demand for energy and resources in the new emerging industrializing nations, some of whom are large developing countries. This is the empirical reality addressed in this chapter, namely the biophysical conditions that make the reconstitution of socio-economic systems an urgent necessity. The evidence suggests that biophysical conditions of existence of these socio-economic systems over the longer term can no longer be taken for granted.
How socio-economic systems – or ‘human civilization’– adapt to these con-ditions, however, is dependent on the political power dynamics of ownership of the land, resources and technology that enables the production of particular kinds of exergy and resources under capitalist conditions. This path-dependent pattern is locked in by particular configurations of institutionalized political power. Political coalitions within the polity committed to fostering deep tran-sitions (just or not) may well start taking over governments in their respective countries. How they reconfigure the polities they take over and then deploy state institutions in partnership with non-state actors with the capacity for initiating sustainability-oriented innovations is what will make all the difference. With-out such a shift in the balance of power, we are likely to see a rapid rise in the extent and frequency of resource conflicts (Swilling and Annecke, 2012:Chap-ter 7; Ahmed, 2017), on the one hand, and a spreading and deepening of incre-mentalist solutions with potential to coalesce into new regimes on the other.
The first can, of course, catalyse the latter under certain conditions. Before these political dynamics are addressed in forthcoming chapters (see Chapters 4 and 5), the summary overview of the biophysical limits to industrial modernity must be discussed in detail.
Contextualizing the work of IRP
Three conditions make this particular deep transition unique, of which only one is given sufficient emphasis in most reports. The first – which is generally recognized – is the fact that it is probably going to depend on the collective intent of specific constellations of actors who will need to collaborate at global, national and local levels. It is for this reason that the GACGC Report argues as follows:
The imminent transition must gain momentum on the basis of the sci-entific findings and knowledge regarding the risks of continuation along the resource intensive development path based on fossil fuels, and shaped
by policy-making to avoid the historical norm of a change in direction in response to crises and shocks.
(German Advisory Council on Climate Change, 2011:84) This statement clearly defines the historic role of anticipatory science as key driver of the next great transformation (Poli, 2014). This is why the work of the IRP, the IPCC, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), Future Earth and many other global scientific initiatives is sig-nificant. If they can contribute to the translation of anticipatory science into an anticipatory culture, then accumulated evidence about the risks we face and the potentials that can be exploited might just tilt the balance in favour of human sur-vival (Poli, 2014). This, however, is a big “if ”. Wider cultural and political changes will be required before this can really happen.
The co-evolutionary dynamics of anticipatory science (Poli, 2018), the network mode of organization (Castells, 2009), the ICT-enabled CBPP learning (in their capitalist and post-capitalist forms) and the reconfiguration of spaces of agglomera-tion caused by accelerated urbanizaagglomera-tion (Swilling, Hajer, Baynes, Bergesen, Labbe, et al., 2018) create conditions that make it possible to consider how the four dimen-sions of transition discussed in Chapter 4 could converge into a deep transition.
This provides the context for understanding the enormous significance of the rap-idly expanding body of work that has been generated by the IRP since 2007.
At the most simplest level, the IRP is providing the documented evidence across a range of fields that it is no longer possible to conceive of a future for modern society that rests on the assumption that there are unlimited resources available for ensuring the well-being of over 9 billion people on a finite planet by 2050. In other words, the IRP is documenting the end of the industrial socio-metabolic epoch and by implication anticipates a deep transition to a more sustainable socio-metabolic order. However, the IRP has also put in place within the global policy community a way of thinking that is different to the two other mainstream bodies of sustainability science, namely climate science and ecosystem science (Interna-tional Resource Panel, 2019b).
By thinking of socio-technical and techno-economic systems as socio-met-abolic systems that consume, transform and dispose of resources extracted from natural systems, the IRP has put in place a key conceptual framework for imagining the dimensions and modalities of the deep transition. The notion that we need to decouple economic development and well-being from the rising rate of resource consumption is potentially a very radical idea, especially if this implies massive reduc-tions in resource use per capita for people living in rich countries and a redefinition of development for those policymakers in poorer countries committed to poverty eradication. It is a notion, however, that has been robustly criticized for legiti-mizing ‘economic growth’ ( Jackson, 2009; Naess and Hoyer, 2009; Ward, Sutton, Werner, Costanza, Mohr, et al., 2016). Used to imply that the current economic
system can be ‘greened’, this criticism is valid. But a sustainable future based on ever-rising extraction of natural resources is inconceivable. How we build a more equitable world of over 9 billion people by 2050 without destroying the planet will not only depend on the mainstreaming of an appropriate political economy to replace neoliberalism (Picketty, 2014; Mason, 2015; Mazzucato, 2016) but will also mean imagining a deep transition premised on fundamentally reconfiguring the flow of non-renewable and renewable resources through our socio-technical and techno-economic systems. The research assessments generated by the IRP since 2007 provide a significant starting point and partial foundation for imagining this deep transition.
Overview of the work of the IRP
Unlike the IPCC, up until 2019 when the Global Resources Outlook was pro-duced, the IRP has not produced an integrated report at specific points in time.
Instead, the IRP publishes reports as and when they have been produced by one or more members of the IRP and their respective research teams. This means there is no integrated synthesis of the IRP’s body of knowledge. For the pur-poses of this chapter, the work of the panel has been divided into the following categories4:
• global resource perspectives, with special reference to decoupling rates of eco-nomic growth from rates of resource use by focusing on the importance of resource productivity (Decoupling 1 and Decoupling 2), the environmental impacts of products and materials and the beginnings of scenario thinking;
• nexus themes, including cities, food, trade and GHG mitigation technologies;
• specific resource challenges with respect to two clusters of issues, namely metals (both stocks-in-use and recycling) and ecosystem services (including water and land use/soils)5; and
• governance with respect to mineral resources, SDGs and cities.
The global resource perspectives define the IRP’s commitment to focus on the resource inputs into the global economy and, therefore, on how future economic trajectories (whether growth-oriented or not) can be decoupled from the prevail-ing risprevail-ing level of resource use over time. Without this kind of decouplprevail-ing, a deep transition will be unlikely. Nexus themes are about specific spheres of action con-stituted by highly complex socio-technical systems where the potential for decou-pling exists. Specific resource challenges are about resource regimes that are under threat from, for example, rising demand and prices and can also be potential threats to larger systems that are dependent on them. The recent emergence of reports on governance represents the start of the IRP’s shift into thinking about transition. At its 24th meeting in early 2019 (which took place in Nairobi), it approved a Terms of Reference submitted by myself to prepare a ‘think piece’ on transition.
Global resource perspectives
The environmental science of pollution, climate science and ecosystem science have traditionally been the three underlying bodies of science that have supported the claims of the environmental movement. In recent years, material flow analysis has emerged as the fourth body of science, with roots in industrial ecology, resource economics and political economy (Fischer-Kowalski, 1998, 1999). Major historical reinterpretations of agricultural and industrial economic transitions have now been written that are clearly extremely useful for anticipating the dynamics of future transitions (Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl, 2007; Giampietro, Mayumi and Sorman, 2012; Smil, 2014). The focus has shifted from the negative environmental impacts of the outputs of industrial processes to the material inputs into a global economy that depends on a finite set of material resources. This is the discursive framework within which the work of the IRP should be located.
One of the first reports produced by the IRP (generally referred to as ‘Decou-pling 1’) entitled Decou‘Decou-pling Natural Resource Use and Environmental Impacts from Eco-nomic Growth presented evidence on the use of four categories of resources: biomass (everything from agricultural products to clothing material like cotton to forest products), fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas), construction minerals (essentially cement, building sand, etc.) and ores and industrial minerals (Fischer-Kowalski and Swilling, 2011). The Decoupling 1 Report showed that by the start of the twenty-first century, the global economy consumed between 47 and 59 billion metric tons of resources per annum (which is equal to half of what is physically extracted from the crust of the earth). During 1900–2005, total material extraction increased by a factor of 8 and annual GDP increased by a factor of 23. The result is relative decoupling between rates of resource use and global growth rates (Fischer-Kowalski and Swill-ing, 2011).
As the Decoupling 1 Report shows, rising global resource use during the course of the twentieth century (including the socio-metabolic shift that took place from mid-century onwards as non-renewables grew and dependence on renewable bio-mass declined in relative terms) corresponded with declining real resource prices – a trend that came to an end in 2000–2002. Since 2000–2002, the macro trend in real resource prices has been upwards (notwithstanding dips along the way).
The data on global resource flows in the IRP’s 2011 Decoupling Report was updated in the IRP’s 2016 report entitled Global Material Flows and Resource Pro-ductivity (Schandl, Fischer-Kowalski, West, Giljum, Dittrich, et al., 2016). According to this report, “annual global extraction grew from 22 billion metric tons in 1970 to around 70 billion metric tons in 2010”. Unsurprisingly, given the extent of the second urbanization wave, the resources with the highest growth rate were the non-metallic minerals used in construction (mainly building sand and cement).
Equally unsurprising is the fact that the growth in domestic material extrac-tion has grown faster in the Asia/Pacific compared to other regions. If Africa had addressed its development challenges as successfully as the Asian nations, domestic extraction (DE) in Africa also would have been far higher.
The McKinsey Global Institute report (which was published after the IRP report) generally confirms the trends identified by the Decoupling 1 Report. This report also demonstrates that resource prices increased by 147% over the decade starting in 2000. As a result investments in resource productivity over the long-term can generate returns of 10%, more if the $1.1 trillion “resource subsidies” are removed (McKinsey Global Institute, 2011).
When it comes to assessing the significance of material flows from a just transition perspective, much depends on the measurements used. The aforementioned figures respectively reflect global extraction and DE, that is, the total quantity of resources extracted globally and then the total quantity extracted per country aggregated into world regions. However, DE does not equal what is consumed because there are nations that export a significant proportion of their extracted resources and there are nations that import a significant proportion of their extracted resources.
Domestic Material Consumption (DMC) refers to what is actually consumed within a country, which includes DE minus exports plus imports. However, what this calculation masks is the quantity of material resources that goes into the pro-duction of exports that are consumed in other countries.
Using DMC as its main indicator, Decoupling 1 effectively employed a producer perspective that allocated the ‘ecological rucksack’ (i.e. materials used to produce exports) of imported goods to the exporting country. If, however, the ecologi-cal rucksack is attributed to the importing country, apparent decoupling by bur-den shifting is no longer possible (Wiedman, Schandl, Lenzen, Moran, Suh, et al., 2013). Indeed, Wiedman, Schandl, Lenzen, et al. calculated that 40% of domestically extracted resources were used to enable the exports of goods and services to other countries (Ibid). Figure 3.1 reflects the material footprint of nations (in tons/cap)
FIGURE 3.1 The material footprint of nations.
Source: Schandl, Fischer-Kowalski, West, Giljum, Dittrich, et al., 2016
where ecological rucksacks are attributed to the consumer and not to the producer country.
This is problematic when looking at a region like Europe. From a DMC per-spective, Europe appears to be decoupling its growth rates from rates of increase in DMC. In reality, however, this is because it is importing more finished products produced elsewhere. Imports into Europe, therefore, can be understood to have a resource ‘rucksack’, that is, the resources used to produce the imports that are attributed to the country of origin. To remedy this problem, Wiedman et al. devel-oped the notion of a ‘material footprint’ which attributes the resources used to produce imports to the importing nation (Wiedman, Schandl, Lenzen, Moran, Suh, et al., 2013). The result of this calculation is that there is no evidence of decoupling in developed nations that depend on imports, and major developing nations that are large exporters (like China) look far more sustainable (in terms of resource use per capita or per unit of economic output) than would otherwise be the case.
Figure 3.1 reflects the global material footprints of all nations. Unsurprisingly, this map correlates with what a global map of material wealth levels would look like.
A key conclusion of the Decoupling 1 Report is that a transition to a more sustainable global economy will depend on “absolute resource reduction” in the
A key conclusion of the Decoupling 1 Report is that a transition to a more sustainable global economy will depend on “absolute resource reduction” in the