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National responsibility for ecological breakdown: a fair-shares assessment of resource use, 1970–2017
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Human impacts on earth-system processes are overshooting several planetary boundaries, driving a crisis of ecological breakdown. This crisis is being caused in large part by global resource extraction, which has increased dramatically over the past half century. We propose a novel method for quantifying national responsibility for ecological breakdown by assessing nations' cumulative material use in excess of equitable and sustainable boundaries. METHODS: For this analysis, we derived national fair shares of a sustainable resource corridor. These fair shares were then subtracted from countries' actual resource use to determine the extent to which each country has overshot its fair share over the period 1970-2017. Through this approach, each country's share of responsibility for global excess resource use was calculated. FINDINGS: High-income nations are responsible for 74% of global excess material use, driven primarily by the USA (27%) and the EU-28 high-income countries (25%). China is responsible for 15% of global excess material use, and the rest of the Global South (ie, the low-income and middle-income countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia) is responsible for only 8%. Overshoot in higher-income nations is driven disproportionately by the use of abiotic materials, whereas in lower-income nations it is driven disproportionately by the use of biomass. INTERPRETATION: These results show that high-income nations are the primary drivers of global ecological breakdown and they need to urgently reduce their resource use to fair and sustainable levels. Achieving sufficient reductions will likely require high-income nations to adopt transformative post-growth and degrowth approaches. FUNDING: None.
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Metadata
- Authors
- Hickel, J., O’Neill, D. W., Fanning, A. L., & Zoomkawala, H.
- Affiliations
- Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ES)
- University of Leeds (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Hickel, Jason
- Venue
- The Lancet Planetary Health
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2022-04
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- e342-e349
- ISSN
- 2542-5196 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4223520720
- Cited by
- 229
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 41 · 2025: 37 · 2024: 75 · 2023: 57 · 2022: 19
- FWCI
- 41.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- The Lancet Planetary Health (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (acceptedVersion)
- White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) (acceptedVersion)
- London School of Economics and Political Science Theses Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (acceptedVersion)
- Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law › Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Sustainability and Ecological Systems Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Environmental Impact and Sustainability
- Keywords
- national responsibility, ecological breakdown, fair share, resource utilization (natural resources), planetary boundaries, overshoot, material utilization, equitable resource distribution, high-income countries, Global South, biomass utilization, degrowth, post-growth, resource extraction
- MeSH terms
- Africa, Asia, China, Humans, Middle East, Caribbean Region, Ecosystem, Ecological Parameter Monitoring
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