A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part I: bibliometric and conceptual mapping

By Dominik Wiedenhofer, Doris Virág, G. Kalt, Barbara Plank, J. Streeck, M. Pichler, Andreas Mayer, F. Krausmann, Paul E. Brockway, A. Schaffartzik and 6 more. Environmental Research Letters, 2020

146 citations recorded by the source corpus.

As long as economic growth is a major political goal, decoupling growth from resource use and emissions is a prerequisite for a sustainable net-zero emissions future. However, empirical evidence for absolute decoupling, i.e. decreasing resource use and emissions at the required scale despite continued economic growth, is scarce and scattered across different research streams. In this two-part systematic review, we assess how and to what extent decoupling has been observed and what can be learnt for addressing the sustainability and climate crisis. Based on a transparent approach, we systematically identify and screen more than 11 500 scientific papers, eventually analyzing full texts of 835 empirical studies on the relationship between economic growth (GDP), resource use (materials and energy) and greenhouse gas emissions. Part I of the review examines how decoupling has been investigated across three research streams: energy, materials and energy, and emissions. Part II synthesizes the empirical evidence and policy implications (Haberl et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 065003). In part I, we examine the topical, temporal and geographical scopes, methods of analysis, institutional networks and prevalent conceptual angles. We find that in this rapidly growing literature, the vast majority of studies—decomposition, ‘causality’ and Environmental Kuznets Curve analysis—approach the topic from a statistical-econometric point of view, while hardly acknowledging thermodynamic principles on the role of energy and materials for socio-economic activities. A potentially fundamental incompatibility between economic growth and systemic societal changes to address the climate crisis is rarely considered. We conclude that the existing wealth of empirical evidence merits braver conceptual advances than we have seen thus far. Future work should focus on comprehensive multi-indicator long-term analyses, conceptually grounded on the fundamental biophysical basis of socio-economic activities, incorporating the role of global supply chains as well as the wider societal role and preconditions of economic growth.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/773f6e6f5bcfc13dfd158ec0972e6617d4737975

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. T. Wiedmann
2. Klaus Hubacek
3. Robbie M. Andrew
4. D. Guan
5. J. Minx
6. G. P. Peters
7. Manfred Lenzen
8. Yong Geng

In Environmental Engineering

1. T. Wiedmann
2. Robbie M. Andrew
3. F. Krausmann
4. H. Haberl
5. G. P. Peters
6. Klaus Hubacek
7. J. Minx
8. D. Guan

Citations in the corpus

• A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part II: synthesizing the insights (2020, methodology): “In this article, we conduct an evidence synthesis for a body of the 835 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters identified in part I (Wiedenhofer et al 2020).”
• A review of trends and drivers of greenhouse gas emissions by sector from 1990 to 2018 (2021, methodology): “Data from the IEA World Energy Balances (IEA 2020c). et al 2020, Wiedenhofer et al 2020).”