首页|Can structural changes lead to dematerialization? Lessons from the Portuguese socioeconomic metabolism between 1995 and 2017
Can structural changes lead to dematerialization? Lessons from the Portuguese socioeconomic metabolism between 1995 and 2017
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NSTL
Elsevier
While material use is a vital part of human well-being and development, it is also associated with serious environmental impacts. This is cause for concern as there has been little evidence of decoupling between well-being and material use in national economies. Therefore, a detailed understanding of material use and its im-plications on socioeconomic metabolism (SEM) is required. This paper provides insights into the dynamics of material use and economic growth by quantifying the so-cioeconomic flows associated with the structural changes that affected the Portuguese economy between 1995 and 2017. We first identify different development periods based on material flow analysis and the corresponding economic structural changes. Their impacts on the socioeconomic metabolism are quantified through the analysis of monetary and physical input-output tables. Our detailed analysis has shed light on the role of each sector in material consumption across all sectors with which their activities are intertwined. We found that the Portuguese SEM went through 5 different periods in which the construction and services sectors contributed the most to the changes in the SEM. We found that, for example, despite being a high-productivity sector per se, the development of the services sector may require the support of the construction sector through the creation of infrastructures, and this affects the potential decou-pling of material use and economic growth. Understanding these dynamics is key for the creation of policies and initiatives that will lead to a more sustainable economic development and constitutes the main focus of this paper.
NSTL
Elsevier
