Óscar Carpintero

Metabolism and environmental impacts of household consumption: : A review on the assessment, methodology, and drivers

The focus when analyzing the environmental requirements and impacts of the economic system is usually placed on production activities. But all production is associated with final consumption, and recently many studies have also been dedicated to final consumption. This article comprehensively reviews the biophysical assessment of households from the point of view of materials and energy required and emissions and wastes resulting from household consumption patterns. Although the aggregation bias and methodological variability make comparisons difficult, some patterns can be recognized. Results show that for many Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and a few developing countries, household metabolism has been mainly assessed from the energetic perspective, stressing household responsibility for emissions of greenhouse effect gases and climate change. Few studies deal with other emissions and wastes. There is a lack of information about material requirements, too. Environmental input‐output (I‐O) analysis and life cycle assessment are the methods usually employed, together with the use of economic, environmental, and expenditure information. Information about direct inputs and outputs is complemented with data on the environmental requirements associated with the consumption of goods and services. Multiregional I‐O techniques have been used to capture upstream requirements in an attempt to avoid errors owing to truncation and domestic technology assumptions. Housing, food, and mobility are the most important consumption categories, but the shares of these categories in the requirements are different according to environmental, socioeconomic, and demographic factors. Finally, challenges for further research are discussed based on the need for new methodological developments, as well as the potential of the metabolic narrative to elaborate information relevant to sustainable consumption policies.

Regional Material Flow Accounting and Environmental Pressures: The Spanish Case

This paper explores potential contributions of regional material flow accounting to the characterization of environmental pressures. With this aim, patterns of material extraction, trade, consumption, and productivity for the Spanish regions were studied within the 1996-2010 period. The main methodological variation as compared to whole-country based approaches is the inclusion of interregional trade, which can be separately assessed from the international exchanges. Each region was additionally profiled regarding its commercial exchanges with the rest of the regions and the rest of the world and the related environmental pressures. Given its magnitude, interregional trade is a significant source of environmental pressure. Most of the exchanges occur across regions and different extractive and trading patterns also arise at this scale. These differences are particularly great for construction minerals, which in Spain represent the largest share of extracted and consumed materials but do not cover long distances, so their impact is visible mainly at the regional level. During the housing bubble, economic growth did not improve material productivity.

The New Scramble for Africa: BRICS Strategies in a Multipolar World

The aim of this paper is to analyse the recent changes in the role played by Africa as a traditional natural resources supplier for the world economy in a multipolar context. We highlight, on the one hand, how Africa remains a prominent supplier of critical minerals needed for information and communication technologies (ICT), including platinum, vanadium, coltan, chromium, manganese, zirconium, etc., and how the boomerang effect results in Africa also importing electronic waste. On the other hand, we show how the BRICS’ growth model, based on a very intensive use of natural resources acquired through international trade, is now being fuelled by Africa too. BRICS countries (especially China and India) are making foreign direct investments in Africa using their state companies to ensure the supply of natural resources under favourable economic terms. Thus, Africa appears as a disputed territory between the old domination of the advanced capitalist countries and emerging powers like the BRICS. However, this should not mask the fact that the European Union and North America are still the dominant foreign powers in the continent. Finally, we discuss which scenarios are open to further this multipolar moment, particularly in the wake of the great crisis.

Economic Aspects of Climate Change

Although economists have often disagreed on economic aspects of global warming, views, such as those expressed in the Stern Review, which purports global warming as a major economic problem carrying risks of disaster and demanding the use of major resources, are increasingly common. The idea that with development and technological progress, total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or emissions per capita would decrease has now been refuted, as a link between increased economic activity and greater emissions has been established. In general, global emissions of CO2 have increased at rates correlated with the annual increase of world GDP (WGDP). Furthermore, the annual increase in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 is correlated with the growth of WGDP. Impacts of climate change and strategies to mitigate them have often been subjected to integrated assessment models (IAMs). For global warming of above 2°C or 3°C, IAMs agree that there will be a reduction in long-term social well-being and a negative impact suffered mostly by low-income regions, but different IAMs strongly disagree on the level of human-induced damage, with estimates ranging from <1% to >10% of WGDP. Direct emissions of GHG related to agriculture are mainly emissions of CH4 and NO2. Indirect emissions of GHG from agriculture include large CO2 emissions from land-use change, i.e., conversion of natural ecosystems into cultivated land. The sum of direct and indirect emissions may represent annually one-fourth of global GHG emissions, with about three-fourths of agricultural GHG emissions coming from low-income countries. Mitigation measures focused on soil carbon sequestration by modifying practices of intensive agriculture and moving toward agroecology or low-carbon agriculture are needed. Permit trading and the implementation of a carbon tax are the major options in the public debate to mitigate climate change. The European Trading Scheme implemented in 2005 has failed to reduce emissions. A carbon tax would reduce emissions by discouraging consumption of “carbon-rich” commodities and, therefore, promoting recycling, reuse, and innovation toward production and consumption of “carbon-poor” commodities, but there have only been some timid steps to implement such a tax in some countries, and there is strong opposition to it.