A History of Resource Extraction & Acceleration

According to figures published in the UNEP’s Global Material Flows Database, extraction of four main material groups - biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores and non-metallic minerals - has skyrocketed in the past 50 years. Where a total of 31.1 billion tonnes of these combined materials was extracted from the Earth in 1970, when the UNEP’s records began, that figure is estimated to hit 107 billion tonnes this year.

As the following chart shows, in just five decades, the world has transformed from being a predominantly biomass-extracting global society, to one that extracts even larger quantities of non-metallic minerals, i.e. materials used in products such as cement, ceramics and glass.

According to online magazine Monthly Review, there have been two major periods of resource-use acceleration in recent history, with the first occurring in 1950–70, linked to the rapid economic expansion of North America, Western Europe and Japan after the Second World War, while the second phase was between the years 2000 of 15, matching up to the rapid growth of China, India and other emerging economies. The source also highlights how, despite per capita resource-use having seemingly leveled off in the Global North in more recent years, (although remaining at an unsustainable level), this is largely due to outsourcing to the Global South as “world consumption of goods and services remains highly concentrated in the Global North.”

Analysts at the UN’s Global Resources Outlook 2024 further add that the acceleration in global material demand between 2000 and 2012 was also driven by growing material living standards in middle-income countries, particularly so in Asia.