Our lifestyle and economic growth are currently involved with high environmental impacts (including climate change), a large need for primary resources, and global inequality. This is a challenge for a sustainable development. Although investments in cleaner production and resource efficiency have shown progress with the use of CRMs, much work is still needed to make other product life cycle phases (such as the end-of-life treatment of products) and current consumption patterns more sustainable. Therefore, a double decoupling is needed between economic growth, resource use, and environmental impacts. Whereas increased resource efficiency could be obtained by moving to a more circular economy, a challenge lies in aligning this transition with globally agreed targets: abating climate change and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Critical Raw Materials are currently most often defined as materials that are important for the economic growth (of developed countries) or for clean technologies, with a risk of supply disruption due to socio-economic issues in supplying countries. Identifying which materials are critical for achieving the sustainable development goals related to social functions (e.g. access to clean energy and housing), the creation of jobs and infrastructure in developing countries is an area that needs further consideration.
Learning objectives:
- An overview of current issues of global consumption patterns with regard to planetary boundaries and inequality
- Understanding of the need to decouple economic growth from resource use and environmental impacts in absolute terms and the role that CRMs play in this
- Understanding of the relevance of the Circular Economy to achieve resource efficiency
- Familiarity with the Sustainable Development Goals
- The ability to relate to the current discourse on CRMs to the Sustainable Development Goals
- A critical reflection on the potential role of CRMs in achieving the SDGs and the roles that governments and private actors could or should take
- The perspective to reframe Critical Raw Materials in the context of Sustainable Development and its Goals