The Legacy Environmental Footprints of Manufactured Capital

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By utilizing the data and Matlab scripts made available here, one can produce all the visual components featured in the article entitled "The Legacy Environmental Footprint of Manufactured Capital." This comprehensive work is the result of collaborative research among various distinguished scholars and prestigious institutions, namely:

Ranran Wang^1*, Edgar G. Hertwich^2*, Tomer Fishman¹, Sebastiaan Deetman¹, Paul Behrens¹, Wei-qiang Chen³, Arjan de Koning¹, Ming Xu⁴, Kira Matus⁵, Hauke Ward¹, Arnold Tukker¹, Julie B. Zimmerman⁶

¹Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden University; Leiden, The Netherlands.

²Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Trondheim, Norway.

³Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Xiamen, China.

⁴School of Environment, Tsinghua University; Beijing, China.

⁵Division of Public Policy, Hongkong University of Science and Technology; Hong Kong, China.

⁶School of the Environment, Yale University; New Haven, United States.

Here is the Abstract of the article:

The foundations of today's societies are provided by manufactured capital accumulation driven by investment decisions through time. Reconceiving how the manufactured assets are harnessed in the production-consumption system is at the heart of the paradigm shifts necessary for long-term sustainability. Our research integrates 50 years of economic and environmental data to provide the global legacy environmental footprint (LEF) and unveil the historical materials extractions, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and health impacts accrued in today's manufactured capital. We show that between 1995-2019, global LEF growth outpaced GDP and population growth, and the current high level of national capital stocks has been heavily relying on global supply chains in metals. The LEF shows a larger or growing gap between developed and less-developed economies while economic returns from global asset supply chains disproportionately flow to developed economies, resulting in a double burden for less-developed economies. Our results show ensuring best-practice in asset production while prioritizing wellbeing outcomes is essential in addressing global inequalities and protecting the environment. Achieving this requires a paradigm shift in sustainability science and policy, as well as in green finance decision-making, to move beyond the focus on the resource use and emissions of daily operations of the assets and instead take into account the long-term environmental footprints of capital accumulation.