Resource Efficiency: Economics and Outlook for China

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Publication Date: August 2013

This report finds that China’s growing affluence has made it the world’s largest consumer of primary materials. From 1970 to 2008, China’s per capita consumption of materials grew from one third to over one and a half times the world’s average levels. However, some 20% of the resource use in China goes towards the production of goods which are eventually consumed abroad. 

While that growth has lifted millions out of poverty, the report finds that it has also come with rising environmental challenges linked to the extracting, processing and use of those natural resources. The publication explores investments that China must make if a transition to a sustainable economic model is to be truly realized.