Total Material Requirement of Growing China: 1995–2008

Heming Wang,Stefan Bringezu,Helmut Schuetz,Zhongwu Lu,Qiang Yue

doi:10.3390/resources2030270

Abstract

This article presents the accounts of China’s Total Material Requirement (TMR) during 1995–2008, which were compiled under the guidelines of Eurostat (2009) and with the Hidden Flow (HF) coefficients developed by the Wuppertal Institute. Subsequently, comparisons with previous studies are conducted. Using decomposition, we finally examine the influential factors that have changed the TMR of China. The main findings are the following: (1) During 1995–2008 China’s TMR increased from 32.7 Gt to 57.0 Gt. Domestic extraction dominated China’s TMR, but a continuous decrease of its shares can be observed. In terms of material types, excavation constituted the biggest component of China’s TMR, and a shift from biomass to metallic minerals is apparent; (2) Compared with two previous studies on China’s TMR, the amounts of TMR in this study are similar to the others, whereas the amounts of the used part of TMR (Direct Material Input, DMI) are quite different as a result of following different guidelines; (3) Compared with developed countries, China’s TMR per capita was much lower, but a continuous increase of this indicator can be observed; (4) Factors of Affluence (A) and Material Intensity (T), respectively, contributed the most to the increase and decrease of TMR, but the overall decrease effect is limited.

Highlights

The remarkable economic and population growth of the 20th century was closely coupled to substantial increases in the extraction of natural resources, leading to increasing environmental impact [1]
Economy-wide material flow analysis (EW-MFA) has been regarded as a more and more important method of accounting for resource use [3,4]. These derived indicators, with their strength of generating highly aggregated information, can provide us with the basis to examine the resource use conditions, though the meaning of them is often questioned [5]. This contribution will focus on the input indicators, the total material requirement (TMR) and its main components, direct material input (DMI) and hidden flows (HF)
The TMR of national economies comprises two major components: domestic resource flows and foreign resource flows [7,8], which can be further subdivided into direct material input (DMI) and hidden material flows

Summary

Introduction

The remarkable economic and population growth of the 20th century was closely coupled to substantial increases in the extraction of natural resources, leading to increasing environmental impact [1]. Economy-wide material flow analysis (EW-MFA) has been regarded as a more and more important method of accounting for resource use [3,4] These derived indicators, with their strength of generating highly aggregated information, can provide us with the basis to examine the resource use conditions, though the meaning of them is often questioned [5]. This contribution will focus on the input indicators, the total material requirement (TMR) and its main components, direct material input (DMI) and hidden flows (HF). The TMR of national economies comprises two major components: domestic resource flows and foreign resource flows [7,8], which can be further subdivided into direct material input (DMI) and hidden material flows (or ecological rucksacks [9])

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion