Simulating sustainability: a resources perspective

Abstract

A global population–economy–resource model explores the future impact of declining resource availability on the world economy. The model tracks the likely future consumption of renewable resources, fossil fuels and non-renewable materials and the economic impact of availability. Scarcity will likely become evident during the latter part of this century and constrain economic production, reducing income per capita, living standards and ultimately population. Policy interventions involving a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, reduced resource intensity and materials recycling are necessary to correct this trajectory and facilitate ongoing improvements in global average living standards.

Keywords:

• sustainability
• population
• resources
• scarcity
• limits
• systems

Notes

1. As the name implies, there was also a World 1 model, developed earlier by Forrester at the behest of the Club of Rome to help investigate ‘the predicament of mankind’.

2. An explanation of causal loop diagrams is included in Appendix 2 and further explanation is available at http://www.public.asu.edu/~kirkwood/sysdyn/SDIntro/ch-1.pdf.

3. Kaldor’s six ‘stylized facts’ are empirical observations related to economic growth that appear to apply to the economic trends in many different industrialized countries.

4. Resource flows (and hence consumption of resources) are constrained as the stock of resources is diminished.

5. In fact SERI reports these figures as ‘used extraction’ which approximates consumption.

6. 500 years is an arbitrary figure chosen to reflect the possibility that considerable ecological reserves may remain even after the ecological footprint exceeds 1, beginning in the 1980s.

7. GDP per capita and living standards begin to rise around 2250 but only because declining population reduces more quickly than declining GDP.

8. Noting that the carbon footprint is the amount of productive land and sea area required to sequester carbon dioxide emissions. The required quantity of land and sea is the ‘resource’ in this case.

9. http://new.unep.org/resourcepanel/.

10. It is not physically possible to completely decouple economic production and resource use. The thrust of the report is really about reducing the economic intensity of resource use.