Copenhagen, 03/04/2001 (Agence Europe) - According to the new report by the European Environment Agency (EEA), published on 30 March, the Fifteen Member States of the European Union are intensifying their pressures on the global environment through their ceaseless consumption of natural resources. The data gathered up to 1997, indicates that the results obtained by the countries of the EU in view of preventing that economic growth is translated into an increased use of natural resources have been modest.
The EEA report uses a recently developed indicator, the "Total Material Requirement" (TMR), to calculate the global burden of the EU on the global environment. Thus importance for the EEA, which is looking to develop advanced indicators in view of controlling and quantifying the EU's progress towards a more sustainable environment. The TMR indicator measures the mass of domestic and imported raw materials (except air and water) that are extracted from nature to feed human activities. It indicates the importance of indices on the environment of the extraction of resources, the consumption of materials and energy and the production of emissions and waste.
The indicator reveals that the EU's needs in raw materials have increased at a nearly equivalent pace to economic expansion. Between 1995 and 1997, the TMR increased 3%, rising from 18.1 to 18.7 billion tonnes. This increase is entirely due to the growth in imports of raw materials, notably minerals and precious metals, whose extraction leads to significant quantities of mineral waste. In percentage terms per capita, the increases was identical. 50 tonnes of raw materials have been extracted to support the way of life of each of the 373 million EU citizens. This figure is comparable to 45 tonnes/inhabitant recorded in 1988, when the EU only had 12 Member States and 323 million citizens. The report indicates that the results obtained by the EU in view of increasing the efficiency of the use of these resources have been rather modest. The increase in TMR/inhabitant (11%) between 1988 and 1997 was less significant than the economic growth/inhabitant (18%); however the EEA notes that this does not represent a significant decoupling of the TMR with economic growth. The TMR/inhabitant in the EU is clearly lower that that of the United States (84 tonnes in 1994), but is above that of Japan (45 tonnes in 1994). However, the United States and Japan have a GDP/capita significantly above that of the EU. In other words, the efficiency of raw materials in Japan is around one and a half times higher than that of Europe.