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The paper reflects the hypothesis that those technological and institutional innovations survive which extend the safe operating range (SOR) of the Humans-Technologies-Institutions (HTI) system (e.g. companies, cities, regions and countries). The multidimensional SOR of a country comprises in particular safe livelihood, quality of life, security, monetary stability, supply security and quality of the environment. A "mechanism of progress" is described involving the search for higher safety and independence of constraints. With innovation and learning in a key role, the mechanism leads to a relative decoupling of resource use and economic value added and a growing share of knowledge generation in the economy. Competition of HTI systems for scarce resources may lead to independence strategies such as enhanced resource efficiency. It may also lead to cooperation of competing HTI systems facilitated by new institutions thus forming an HTI system at higher level of complexity. While the consortium could coordinate their resource consumption within the boundaries of safe operating space, the partner HTI systems would further expand their SOR. Data is provided that net resource importing countries have developed higher material productivity thus increasing their independence from resource supply, and countries with such capability have gained higher innovation capacity.
The bioeconomy is gaining growing attention as a perceived win-win strategy for environment and economy in the EU. However, the EU already has a disproportionately high global cropland footprint compared to the world average, and uses more cropland than domestically available to supply its demand for agricultural products. There is a risk that uncontrolled growth of the bioeconomy will increase land use pressures abroad. For that reason, a monitoring system is needed to account for the global land use of European consumption. The aim of this paper is to take a closer look at the tools needed to monitor global cropland footprints, as well as the targets needed to benchmark development. This paper reviews recent developments in land footprint accounting approaches and applies the method of global land use accounting to calculate the global cropland footprint of the EU-27 for the years between 2000 and 2011. It finds a slight decrease in per capita cropland footprints over the past decade (of around 1% annually, reaching 0.29 ha/cap in 2011) and advocates promoting a further decrease in per capita cropland requirements (of around 2% annually) to reach global land use targets for keeping consumption within the safe operating space of planetary boundaries by 2030. It argues that strategic land reduction targets may still go hand in hand with the growth of a smart, innovative and sustainable bioeconomy by reinforcing the need for policies that support greater efficiency across the life-cycle and reduce wasteful and excessive consumption practices. Recommendations for further improving land footprint accounting are given.
Many countries have started to develop policy programs for the sustainable use of natural resources. Indicators and targets can cover both a territorial and a life-cycle-wide global perspective. This article focuses on how a safe operating space for global material resource use can be outlined based on existing economy-wide material flow indicators. It reflects on issues such as scale and systems perspective, as the choice of indicators determines the target "valves" of the socio-industrial metabolism. It considers environmental pressures and social aspects of safe and fair resource use. Existing proposals for resource consumption targets are reviewed, partially revisited, and taken as a basis to outline potential target values for a safe operating space for the extraction and use of minerals and biomass by final consumption. A potential sustainability corridor is derived with the Total Material Consumption of abiotic resources ranging from 6 to 12 t/person, the Total Material Consumption of biotic resources not exceeding 2 t/person, and the Raw Material Consumption of used biotic and abiotic materials ranging from 3 to 6 t/person until 2050. For policy, a "10-2-5 target triplet" can provide orientation, when the three indicators are assigned values of 10, 2, and 5 t/person, respectively.