RESOURCE DECOUPLING: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM BRAZIL

In 2008, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) launched the Green Economy Initiative, which comprises a set of recommendations aimed at stimulating economic growth, while simultaneously achieving social inclusion and... [ view full abstract ]

In 2008, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) launched the Green Economy Initiative, which comprises a set of recommendations aimed at stimulating economic growth, while simultaneously achieving social inclusion and environmental sustainability. UNEP has been using the key-concept of decoupling for achieving these goals. It means dissociating the economic output of the environmental pressure with the increase of well-being of society. Some developed countries have shown decoupling of economic growth from natural resource consumption and environmental impacts, building a trajectory towards a green economy. However, a portion of this resource decoupling may be related to environmental pressure in developing countries, such as Latin American and Caribbean countries, whose economic development model is intensive in natural resources and based on exports of low value-added products. This article aims to investigate the long-term relationship between economic growth and the environment in Brazil based on resource decoupling indicators. To this end, indicators of resource use according to Material Flow Accounting method (MFA) are measured for all categories of materials (biomass, fossil fuels carriers, non-metallic minerals and metallic minerals) from 1970 to 2013 (these indicators are being updated for more recent years). The results show that there was no resource decoupling in Brazil in the 44 years of this study, due to the increase in resource per capita consumption from 7.8 tons in 1970 to 23.6 tons in 2013. Furthermore, there was an increase of 26% in material intensity. Brazil has a Physical Trade Balance deficit especially caused by exports of biomass (soybean, sugarcane) and metal ores (iron), while it is still dependent on imports of fossil fuels and chemical minerals (fertilizer). Empirical evidence for decoupling in Brazil corroborate the studies on material resources consumption in Latin American and Caribbean countries, indicating that the resource intensive economic development model followed by these economies are directly related to dramatic increase in the natural resources exploitation in the region.

Keywords: decoupling indicators; natural resources; economic growth; environmental impacts.