In this week’s NERI blog, economist Paul Goldrick-Kelly summarises his recent report looking at the Irish economy’s relationship to nature. He finds that the Irish economy is often a poor performer, and that there is little evidence to date for a break in the historic relationship between environmental pressure and economic growth.
Humanity is operating outside of safe living space in a number of different domains. This includes, but is not limited to our impact on the global climate driven by greenhouse gas emissions.
These imbalances are driven by exchanges with the environment. The natural world is a source of input materials for production and consumption. It is also ultimately the end point for the pollution and wastes we produce. In both cases, the capacity to meet these demands while maintaining a stable earth system is limited. As Steffen and colleagues point out, we risk destabilising those systems and moving towards a new state that is far less hospitable to our societies.
Activity in Ireland contributes to this worldwide problem. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, aggregate consumption in Ireland exceeds a number of major boundaries representing a safe operating space for humanity.
The latest in the NERI report series looks at exchanges from and into the wider environment driven by the Irish economy. I also examine the relationship between measures of these exchanges and economic growth, since a continued growth strategy requires the historic link between output and environmental pressures to be cut.
On the input side, the data indicate that Ireland consumes more materials and energy than is typical in the EU, despite some decline from pre financial crisis highs. Lower levels of material input in the latest data relative to that period are largely explained by the fall in non-metallic mineral use driven by the fall in building activity. While the amount of inputs per unit of economic output has fallen, these efficiency gains have not led to sustained falls in input use. On the contrary, rather than fall in absolute terms as required to reach sustainability, inputs have tended to rise as the economy has grown.
On the output side, Ireland produces a higher than average level of emissions. Consumption based CO2 measures, which take account of the effects of trade that aren’t usually included in territorial measures, have shown some improvement. However, these improvements have been significantly offset by increases in emissions from other, more potent greenhouse gases like methane. There is some evidence of absolute decoupling – economic growth with falls in emissions.
Ireland’s outputs into the environment also include waste products. These flows into the environment are above EU averages in most cases, with the exception of landfilled materials which are significantly below typical levels. Landfilled material flows have declined since 2010 and have showed absolute decoupling with growth as a result, though declines slowed as the economy recovered.
The other measured categories: emissions of gases and particulates, flows into bodies of water, and flows of materials arising from product use (so called dissipative flows) have increased over time. The Irish economy is also a poor performer in terms of the circular economy – the proportion of ,material inputs drawn from recycled materials – ranking 26th of 27 EU states.
To date, absolute decoupling – which is required if economic growth is to be consistent with environmental sustainability – has been rare and insufficiently maintained where it has occurred. Policy must focus on bringing Ireland’s environmental footprint down to safe operating levels in a number of areas. These efforts must be sensitive to the differential impact different groups within the economy have on the planet, focusing in particular on the disproportionate damage associated with wealthier groups.