Eco-economic decoupling


In economic and environmental fields, decoupling refers to an economy that would be able to grow without corresponding increases in environmental pressure. In many economies, increasing production currently raises pressure on the environment. An economy that would be able to sustain economic growth while reducing the amount of resources such as water or fossil fuels used and delink environmental deterioration at the same time would be said to be decoupled. Environmental pressure is often measured using emissions of pollutants, and decoupling is often measured by the emission intensity of economic output.
The OECD defines the term as follows:

Overview

In 2011, the International Resource Panel, hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme warned that by 2050, the human race could use up 140 billion tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and biomass per year – three times its current appetite – unless nations can start decoupling economic growth rates from the rate of natural resource consumption. It noted that developed country citizens consume an average of 16 tons of those four key resources per capita. By comparison, the average person in India today consumes four tons per year.

Policies

Policies have been proposed for creating the conditions that enable widespread investments in resource productivity. According to Mark Patton a global leading expert, Such potential policies include the raising of resource prices in line with increases in energy or resource productivity, a shift in revenue-raising onto resource prices through resource taxation at source or in relation to product imports, with recycling of revenues back to the economy,...

Technologies

Several technologies have been described in the Decoupling 2 report, including:
In 2014, the same International Resource Panel published a second report, "Decoupling 2", which "highlights existing technological possibilities and opportunities for both developing and developed countries to accelerate decoupling and reap the environmental and economic benefits of increased resource productivity." The lead coordinating author of this report was Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker.
In 2016, the International Resource Panel published a report indicating that "global material productivity has declined since about the year 2000 and the global economy now needs more materials per unit of GDP than it did at the turn of the century" as a result of shifts in production from high-income to middle-income countries. That is to say, the growth of material flows has been stronger than the growth of gross domestic product. This is the opposite of decoupling, a situation that some people call overcoupling.

Terminology

Resource and impact decoupling

Resource decoupling refers to reducing the rate of resource use per unit of economic activity. The "dematerialization" is based on using less material, energy, water and land resources for the same economic input. Impact decoupling required increasing economic output while reducing negative environmental impacts. These impacts arise from the extraction of resources.

Relative and absolute decoupling

, author of Prosperity Without Growth, stresses the importance of differentiating between relative and absolute decoupling:
Jackson points out that an economy can correctly claim that it has relatively decoupled its economy in terms of energy inputs per unit of GDP. However, in this situation, total environmental impacts would still be increasing, albeit at a slower pace of growth than in GDP.
Jackson uses this distinction to caution against technology-optimists who use the term decoupling as an "escape route from the dilemma of growth." He points out that "there is quite a lot of evidence to support the existence of " in global economies, however "evidence for is harder to find."
Similarly, ecological economist and steady-state theorist Herman Daly stated in 1991:
Relative decouplingAbsolute decoupling
DescriptionDecline in the resource intensity per unit of economic outputResource use decline in absolute terms while economic output rise
ExampleIncreased carbon efficiency Increased carbon efficiency higher than economic growth
Link with I = PATCarbon intensity decline Carbon intensity decline >
Evidence for carbon emissionsYes: 34% decrease between 1965 and 2015 No: 300% increase between 1965 and 2015
Evidence for resource extractionNo: resource use increases more than GDP No: resource use increases overall

Between 1990 and 2015, the carbon intensity per $GDP declined of 0.6 percent per year, but the population grew of 1.3 percent per year and the income per capita also grew of 1.3 percent per year. That is to say, the carbon emissions grew of 1.3 + 1.3 − 0.6 = 2 percent per year, leading to a 62% increase in 25 years. According to Tim Jackson:
On economic growth and environmental degradation, Donella Meadows wrote:

Criticism

There is no empirical evidence supporting the existence of an eco-economic decoupling near the scale needed to avoid environmental degradation, and it is unlikely to happen in the future. Environmental pressures can only be reduced by rethinking green growth policies, where a sufficiency approach complements greater efficiency.