ANALYSIS https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00708-4 The importance of resource security for poverty eradication Mathis Wackernagel 1 ✉ , Laurel Hanscom1, Priyangi Jayasinghe2, David Lin1, Adeline Murthy1, Evan Neill3 and Peter Raven4 As humanity’s demand on natural resources is increasingly exceeding Earth’s biological rate of regeneration, environmental deterioration such as greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere, ocean acidification and groundwater depletion is accel- erating. As a result, the capacity of ecosystems to renew biomass, herein referred to as ‘biocapacity’, is becoming the material bottleneck for the human economy. Yet, economic development theory and practice continue to underplay the importance of natural resources, most notably biological ones. We analysed the unequal exposure of national economies to biocapacity con- straints. We found that a growing number of people live in countries with both biocapacity deficits and below-average income. Low income thwarts these economies’ ability to compete for needed resources on the global market. By 2017, 72% of humanity lived in such countries. This trend not only erodes their possibilities for maintaining progress but also eliminates their chances for eradicating poverty, a situation we call an ‘ecological poverty trap’. his paper strengthens the case that biological resource secu- Some may perceive that economic impacts of such depletion rity is a far more influential factor contributing to lasting occur far in the future. Indeed, it is unknown how long people can Tdevelopment success than most economic development theo- overuse natural capital before economic performance is measurably ries and practices would suggest and shows how unevenly it affects affected. Therefore, the time span for which ecological overuse can distinct human populations. persist is a critical parameter, as it defines the maximum transition A fundamental ecological concept posits that net primary produc- time to a regenerative future, when (a possibly diminished) biologi- tivity of ecosystems is the basis of all life. Therefore, we investigate cal regeneration will constrict humanity’s material metabolism. how biological resource scarcity can limit economic development as There may not be a precise answer for how long overuse can per- those resources are under increasing threat1–3. We define ‘biological sist as time constants for each biological asset vary. For example, a resource security’ as the ability of a population to secure access to forest that matured over 50 years, whose trees are harvested at the their current level of biological resource demand, or a higher one if rate of 2% per year, would be left with no mature tree within 25 years. the current level does not allow them to meet their material needs. Groundwater and freshwater lakes can be radically diminished Not only people, but all life, depend on a material metabolism. within decades, as has happened in many places, from Lake Chad To secure their metabolism, people compete with other living things to Lake Aral, the Ogallala Aquifer and the California Central Valley. for the biological productivity of ecosystems. The metabolism Overfishing has led to fisheries collapse16, and carbon emissions encompasses basic life-support functions, including food, clean from fossil fuel combustion have contributed to an accumulation of water, waste absorption and shelter. While this has always been the atmospheric greenhouse gases. Concentrations have increased from case, the Anthropocene epoch has marked a new era characterized 280 ppm CO2-equivalent (CO2e) before the industrial revolution in 17 by Homo sapiens’ global dominance. Within this new context, con- 1750 to over 500 ppm CO2e as of 2019 . The current concentra- servative estimates indicate that in 2020, the demand of biological tion is higher than the 450 ppm CO2e needed to have a moderate resources of all people combined exceeded the amount Earth’s eco- chance of limiting global average warming less than 2 °C above systems produce by at least 56%4. Given this massive overuse, also pre-industrial levels, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on called ecological overshoot, biological resource security is no longer Climate Change18. This means that the atmospheric carbon sink guaranteed, making biological productivity, our planet’s capacity to limits associated with a stable climate have already been breached, regenerate biomass, a material bottleneck for the human economy1,2. even though the effects have not yet fully played out. Avoiding the Overuse is by definition a time-limited condition—it cannot go threat of an unstable climate would require rapidly eliminating on forever3,5–7. Thus, global ecological overshoot erodes biologi- the use of fossil fuels, which now provide 80% of humanity’s com- cal resource sustainability and, therefore, security. Paradoxically, mercial energy use19. It would also necessitate additional carbon because of accumulated resource stocks, it has still been possible for sequestration. humanity, even during the past decades of global ecological over- Accordingly, the impacts of biological overuse are not only shoot, to continuously increase total demand8,9. Increased overshoot already present, but also have, in some domains, exceeded the tol- has accelerated the depletion of the biosphere’s ecological assets, erable margins. Other domains may be breached within decades, resulting in increased biodiversity loss10–12, climate change13, forest not centuries1. In addition, since demand for and availability of bio- destruction14 and freshwater scarcity15. Delayed impact and weak logical resources are unevenly distributed around the planet, not feedback amplify future resource security challenges by further everyone will be affected equally. Certainly, damaging effects on depleting natural capital. the integrity of ecosystems, especially because of the extinction of 1Global Footprint Network, Oakland, CA, USA. 2Munasinghe Institute for Development, Colombo, Sri Lanka. 3Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. 4Missouri Botanical Garden, St Louis, MO, USA. ✉e-mail: [email protected] NatURE SUstaINABILITY | www.nature.com/natsustain ANALYSIS NATURE SUSTAINABILITY species, are already under way at an unsustainable rate, with largely Biocapacity unpredictable but certainly highly damaging effects on human reserve futures20. Economic activities require material inputs, including energy. Given overshoot, these inputs will unavoidably have to be reduced, a process called ‘dematerialization’. Such dematerialization, however, LR HR will challenge, to different degrees, the continuity of these economic Low High activities. Some activities can be partially dematerialized, but this is income income less of an option for economic activities in conjunction with pov- LD HD erty eradication. Those activities, which include long-term security in food, energy, water and sanitation infrastructure, and shelter, require more material input to achieve better socioeconomic out- comes because ‘poverty eradication’ means eliminating poverty for- Biocapacity ever, or at least for several generations, as defined by the Sustainable deficit Development Goal 1. We examine the implications for poverty eradication when over- Fig. 1 | Countries are mapped on four quadrants. The dividing line between shoot (living off the depletion of biological capital) is no longer low and high income is world-average income per person. Clockwise from an option. In that era, humanity’s physical metabolism must stem the top left: L and R; H and R; H and D; and L and D. entirely from Earth’s biological regeneration. Conventional development strategies, promoted by key interna- tional institutions or leading development economics textbooks21–25, future resource challenges. Even under the best scenarios, national are silent on this question. In fact, they tend to largely ignore biolog- and global sustainability transitions face extensive time delays for ical resource constraints despite the vast academic literature from improving resource security because the lock-in effect of existing natural sciences about resource-related subjects3,5,18. Despite econo- infrastructure determines large portions of future production and mies’ growing resource dependence8,9,26, effective resource security consumption patterns. strategies are also absent in mainstream economic debates. This Apart from deliberate resource efficiency strategies, which is exemplified by the World Economic Forum’s prominent annual take years if not decades to achieve, there are two mechanisms for Global Competitiveness Report, which rates countries’ competitive- populations to secure sufficient flows of resources within those ness using 103 indicators, none of which reflects any aspect of bio- time frames while avoiding using less (since it would conflict with logical resource security27. poverty eradication among lowest-income populations): either a Overlooking resource conditions in efforts to reduce, and eventu- country has sufficient regeneration within its boundaries or it can ally eradicate, poverty may have been acceptable or even reasonable obtain those regenerated resources, including waste-absorptive ser- in the past when resource constraints where not a limiting factor, but vices, from somewhere else. ‘Having them’ means that the biological this assumption no longer holds. The research presented here exam- assets within the country (minus those permanently leased to actors ines how