EU warns wasting environmental resources could spark new recession

The EU environment commissioner Janez Potočnik
The EU environment commissioner Janez Potočnik says resources like water, fish and precious metals need to be used more responsibly. Photograph: Georges Gobet/AFP/Getty Images







Potočnik gave notice that his department was scouring through existing regulations and proposed new ones in order to ensure that none would encourage resources to be used profligately, and to safeguard the EU's natural resources for the future.




"This is an issue of competitiveness," Potočnik said. "China is understanding that this is a megatrend. We can't ignore it."

Resources are under increasing constraint, as developing countries lift more of their population out of poverty. "If our current living standards are to be maintained, and the aspirations of developing countries satisfied, then the global economy will need to be changed drastically," Potočnik said.

"If we want things to stay the same, things will have to change." He added: "This will be an enormous pressure on resources, which we are already overusing."

Labour costs now make up a much smaller proportion of most manufacturers' overheads than the cost of raw materials and energy, according to Potočnik. A greater proportion of those resources is also coming from overseas, with the attendant potential problems around security of supply. "Europe is importing more than half its resource use in many areas," he said.




"There are real problems with security of supply and this is not yet on the radar screen," Potočnik said.

Potočnik called for resource use to become a "mainstream" issue in economics. Recalling his own education as an economist, he noted: "I was taught that water was a free commodity, like air. We really do need to have the internalisation of these costs."