Key Topic 5 – Resource consumption

Material use has increased more than three times over the last 50 years

• It continues to grow by an average of more than 2.3 per cent per year. 
• 2024’s UNEP / IRP studies natural resources which are essential for producing goods and services to meet human needs, based on the following categories:

Global material extraction

Four main material categories, 1970 – 2024, million tonnes

Shares of material footprint

by five provision systems and regions and country income groups, 2020, percentage

Total and per capita water withdrawal

 by seven world regions and income groups, 2000 and 2020

Global intensive use of land

 1970 – 2022, million square kilometres

Strategies for the transition towards sustainable resource use

Decoupling will not happen spontaneously and will require systemic transformation

Examples of barriers and lock-ins to a transition to sustainable resource use

• Economic lock-ins
• Lifestyles and consumption
• Fragmented governance, geographically and sectoral
• Poor quality of institutions
• Skills not fully suited to the transition needs
• Information and knowledge constraints
• Rebound effects, leading to efficiency improvements being often outweighed by increasing consumption

Earth Overshoot Days

• Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.
• The graph shows the evolution of Earth Overshoot Days, recalculated with the latest data provided by the 2025 edition.

Country Overshoot Days 2025

Every year, a Country Overshoot Day marks the date when the planet’s annual biocapacity budget would be used up if everyone on Earth lived at the same level of consumption as the residents of that particular country.

Key messages from Global Resources Outlook 2024

• Increasing resource use is the main driver of the triple planetary crisis
• Material use has increased more than three times over the last 50 years
• Climate and biodiversity impacts from material extraction and processing greatly exceed targets based on staying within 1.5 degrees of climate change and avoiding biodiversity loss
• Delivering on the SDGs for all requires decoupling, so that the environmental impacts of resource use fall while the well-being contributions from resource use increase
• High-income countries use six times more materials per capita and are responsible for ten times more climate impacts per capita than low-income countries
• Compared to historical trends, it is possible to reduce resource use while growing the economy, reducing inequality, improving well-being and dramatically reducing environmental impacts.
• Bold policy action is critical to phase out unsustainable activities, speed up responsible and innovative ways of meeting human needs and promote social acceptance of the necessary transitions
• The prevailing approach of focusing almost exclusively on supply-side (production) measures must be supplemented with a much stronger focus on demand-side (consumption) measures
• The scientific community is united around the urgency of resolute action and bold evidence-based decisions that protect the interests and well-being of all, including future generations

Interactive Activity 5

Word Bank

Year, Greater, Change, Urgent, Three, Rise