Extractive industries are responsible collectively for more than eighty percent of total biodiversity loss and over half of the world’s carbon emissions. At the same time, we are using up natural resources at unprecedented rates, running out of everything from sand to certain minerals, depleting everything from fish stocks to usable topsoil. We have moved into a world where natural resources – and the environmental impacts of their extraction, processing and poor management – have become the limiting factor of production. Changes are required to focus on resource productivity instead of throughput as the engine for our future prosperity.
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