Raw material consumption (RMC) per capita

Short description

Amount of Raw Material Consumption (RMC) weighted by population, expressed in Tonnes per capita. RMC expresses the raw material extraction carried out to produce the goods consumed within an economy.

Meta data

Unit:

Tonnes per capita

Methodology link:

Methodology

Original data

Data:

RMC_tonnes_percap.csv

Unit for original data:

Tonnes

Date of extraction:

Monday, April 9, 2018

Data source link:

Eora MRIO

Rationale

A country or region’s raw material consumption is the first and most important indicator of its economy’s need for raw materials and gives insight into the efficiency with which its economy uses natural resources. Raw Material Consumption (RMC) is a measure of the total amount of materials directly and indirectly used by an economy. In contrast to the more commonly used indicator of Domestic Material Consumption (DMC), RMC does not just capture the weight of domestically extracted materials and imported goods but represents imported goods in the form of “equivalents of domestic extractions that have been induced in the rest of the world to produce the respective good”.1 We present RMC by itself and in relation to GDP and per capita.2

1. Eurostat. 2013. Project: Estimates for Raw Material Consumption (RMC) and Raw Material Equivalents (RME) Conversion Factors. Eurostat. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/environmental_accoun...
2. References: Wiedmann, T. O., Schandl, H., Lenzen, M., Moran, D., Suh, S., West, J. and Kanemoto, K. (2015) The material footprint of nations. /Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences/, *112*(20), 6271-6276. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1220362110 Lenzen, M., Kanemoto, K., Moran, D. and Geschke, A. (2012) Mapping the Structure of the World Economy. /Environmental Science & Technology/, *46*(15), 8374-8381. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es300171x Lenzen, M., Moran, D., Kanemoto, K. and Geschke, A. (2013) Building Eora: A Global Multi-Region Input-Output Database at High Country and Sector Resolution. /Economic Systems Research/, *25*(1), 20-49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09535314.2013.769938

Limitations

At the economy level, the indicator provides no year-on-year insight about the effect of innovation on either material demand or efficiency. More detailed sector- or material-based analyses have the potential to provide relevant data. Longer-term trends in RMC may however show increases or decreases in material intensity, which could, at least in part, be attributable to innovation.

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The indicator is relevant to the following innovation systems on this website

Environmental governance

Environmental and resource problems call not just for technological and scientific solutions but also for reforms in governance.