A Material History of Australia

This article presents an analysis of the material history of Australia in the period 1975–2005. The values of economy‐wide indicators of material flow roughly trebled since 1975, and we identify the drivers of this change through structural decomposition analysis. The purpose of this work is to delve beneath the top‐level trends in material flow growth to investigate the structural changes in the economy that have been driving this growth. The major positive drivers of this change were the level of exports, export mix, industrial structure, affluence, and population. Only improvements in material intensity offered retardation of growth in material flow. Other structural components had only small effects at the aggregate level. At a more detailed level, however, the importance of the mineral sectors became apparent. Improvements in mining techniques have reduced material requirements, but increased consumption within the economy and increased exports have offset these reductions. The full roll out of material flow accounting through Australian society and business and a systematic response to its implications will require change in the national growth focus of the last two generations, with serious consideration needed to reverse the current volume‐focused growth of the economy and also to recast neoliberal and globalized trade policies that have dominated the globe for the past decades.     

The Raw Material Equivalents of International Trade

This article aims at estimating the raw material equivalents (RMEs)—the upstream used material flows required along the production chain—of imports and exports for some Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico. Furthermore, the United States is included in the analysis as a reference for a high‐income economy. The RME concept and the empirical evidence are articulated by use of an input?output methodology. Results are set out for the year 2003 for each of the countries and in time series for the years 1977, 1986, 1996, and 2003 in the case of Chile. The findings show not only the physical dimensions behind direct material traded but also how the previous exporter (importer) position of a country (based on standard material flow analysis indicators) deteriorates, alleviates, or changes. Implications for material consumption indicators, such as direct material consumption (DMC) and raw material consumption (RMC), are also drawn. The results suggest basing the discussion of material flows on a broader set of indicators to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the implications of international trade and its impacts on the environment.     

Double‐Counting in Life Cycle Calculations

Many popular frameworks apply life cycle calculations to examine environmental burdens occurring throughout the life cycle of products and services that are either purchased by final consumers or demanded as inputs by producers. Accounting for the full supply chain of producer items can lead to double‐counting effects when results of separate studies are added up and referenced or compared to totals. If, for instance, energy life cycle inventories were prepared for all consumer and producer items in an economy and added up, the resulting total amount of energy would be greater than national energy consumption. Although this double‐counting is inconsequential if analyses are appraised in isolation without reference to national totals, it leads to serious errors when large interconnected systems are analyzed or when results are placed into wider (e.g., regional, national, or global) contexts. The article lists a number of prominent policy and decision‐making frameworks that make use of life cycle techniques, where this double‐counting error is highly undesirable. It proposes a solution to the double‐counting problem in which supply chains in the product life cycle are split and burdens shared between the supplying and demanding sides of every transaction in the economy.     

Hybrid Framework for Managing Uncertainty in Life Cycle Inventories

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used to inform decisions related to environmental technologies and polices, such as carbon footprinting and labeling, national emission inventories, and appliance standards. However, LCA studies of the same product or service often yield very different results, affecting the perception of LCA as a reliable decision tool. This does not imply that LCA is intrinsically unreliable; we argue instead that future development of LCA requires that much more attention be paid to assessing and managing uncertainties. In this article we review past efforts to manage uncertainty and propose a hybrid approach combining process and economic input–output (I‐O) approaches to uncertainty analysis of life cycle inventories (LCI). Different categories of uncertainty are sometimes not tractable to analysis within a given model framework but can be estimated from another perspective. For instance, cutoff or truncation error induced by some processes not being included in a bottom‐up process model can be estimated via a top‐down approach such as the economic I‐O model. A categorization of uncertainty types is presented (data, cutoff, aggregation, temporal, geographic) with a quantitative discussion of methods for evaluation, particularly for assessing temporal uncertainty. A long‐term vision for LCI is proposed in which hybrid methods are employed to quantitatively estimate different uncertainty types, which are then reduced through an iterative refinement of the hybrid LCI method.     

The United Kingdom's Fossil Resource Consumption Between 1968 and 2000

This article presents the trends of two indicators measuring fossil resource consumption in the United Kingdom (UK). First, a domestic material consumption (DMC) indicator for fossil resources (DMC_fossil) in the mass unit million tonnes is calculated. DMC_fossil shows that between 1970 and 2000 UK fossil resource consumption decreased by 10%, which suggests absolute dematerialization for this resource. Investigation into the mix of fossil resources during this period highlighted the shift from the heavy fossil resource coal to the lighter, more energy‐dense natural gas, which resulted in decreased mass of resource required. Second, an alternative indicator, resource consumption by a nation (RCN) for fossil resources (RCN_fossil) was calculated, which includes the indirect fossil resources attributable to traded goods and is measured in million tonnes of oil equivalent. RCN_fossil shows that between 1970 and 2000 United Kingdom's fossil resource consumption increased by 14%, which emphasizes that even though there has been a decrease in the mass of fossil resources demanded, it has been accompanied by an increase in the volume of resource consumed. Additionally, deconstruction of RCN_fossil shows that indirectly used resources attributable to exports and imports for the United Kingdom are significant. RCN_fossil indicates that on the basis of past trends, fossil resources attributable to UK imports will overtake fossil resources attributable to its exports, which will make it dependent on imported resources. We conclude that further debate on appropriate aggregate and complementary indicators is needed.     

Water Consumption Based on a Disaggregated Social Accounting Matrix of Huesca (Spain)

Making use of the social accounting matrix (SAM) of the Spanish province of Huesca in 2002, updated following Junius and Oosterhaven's GRAS method and work by Lenzen and colleagues, we have estimated the water footprint of the region. The water footprint is defined as the volume of water needed for the production of the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants plus the direct consumption in the households. We built an open Leontief model, which gives us the water embodied in the production of goods. The valuations concern the industrial, service, and domestic sectors’ water consumption, the embodied water imported from and exported to other countries, and the agrarian water use. This agrarian sector, clearly the sector that shows the greatest water consumption, is carefully examined, so it is disaggregated for the calculations into 31 irrigation land products, dry land, and 9 livestock classifications. As a consequence, the framework enables the observation of the relationships and flows of water taking place among all the sectors and activities in the economy. Finally, we also make use of the per capita water footprint estimations to get a clear picture of how the responsibility for water use is distributed once foreign trade is taken into account.     

煤炭资源型地区产业能-水足迹效率及影响因素

我国煤炭资源型地区众多,但其资源环境等可持续发展问题形势严峻,如何针对能源和水这两种重点资源进行协同管理是解决这些问题的关键之一。基于区域不同产业能-水耦合视角,采用投入产出分析对2002—2012年山西省不同产业的能-水足迹效率进行评价,并采用结构分解分析能-水耦合的影响因素,主要结论有:(1)研究期间,山西省各产业能-水足迹都呈上升趋势,能源足迹的增加主要表现为各产业间接消耗能源的增加,而水足迹的增加主要表现为各产业直接消耗水资源的增加。(2)不同行业能-水足迹效率差异很大,足迹较大的产业其足迹效率都较低。尽管研究期间各产业能-水足迹效率呈现上升趋势,但大部分产业能-水足迹效率仍处于较低水平。(3)从各产业能源足迹效率和水足迹效率的耦合情况来看,各产业能-水足迹效率耦合状况趋于优化,逐步由低水足迹效率和中等能源足迹效率(W_lE_m)为主转变为中等水足迹效率和中等能源足迹效率(W_mE_m)为主,但与发达地区相比,仍然具有一定的差距。(4)从能-水足迹效率影响因素来看,各产业技术水平的提高是导致能-水足...