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Coupling versus Decoupling? Challenging Evidence over the Link between Economic Growth and Resource Use

With the UN indicating that climate objectives are well off track, the dependency of the economy on resources remains a crucial issue demanding holistic consideration. As a key global sustainability issue, the linkage between resource use and economic growth has long been under heated debate. The increasing amount of resources used for economic growth has elevated environmentalists’ concerns over resource scarcity and environmental impacts, suggesting the existence of coupling between resources and the economy. In contrast, the declining Material Intensity (MI)—resources needed to produce one unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—has led to optimism for many economists and decision makers with far reaching implications for resources and economic policies. Through novel divergence indicators by using long-term datasets, we find that there has been increasing divergence between total and per capita resources use and MI at both the global and the national level. This increasing divergence is due to the faster growth in the total and per capita amount of resources rather than the reduction in the amount of resources per unit of GDP (MI). These divergences indicate underappreciated challenges and opportunities for sustainable economic growth, resource management and implementation of circular economy policies.