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Grant support

This work was financially supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) through its projects DP0985522, DP130101293, DP190102277, LE160100066 and DP200102585 (M. Lenzen, A.G., J.F. and A.M.), as well as the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources project (NeCTAR) through its Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory infrastructure VL 201 (M. Lenzen, A.G., J.F., A.M. and T.W.), by the United Nations Environment Programme International Resource Panel (IRP) work stream on metrics, data and indicators (M. Lenzen, A.G., J.W. and H.S.), by the United Nations Environment Programme Life Cycle Initiative that-together with the One Planet Network and the UN-IRP-commissioned the development of the online tool SCP-HAT (Agreement ref. DTIE17-SC052, DTIE19-SC042, DTIE20-SC042) (M. Lenzen, A.G., S.G., P.P., S.L., M.S. and H.S.) and by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 725525) (S.G. and S.L.) . We thank S. Juraszek for expertly managing the Global MRIO Lab's advanced computation requirements, C. Jarabak for help with collecting data and K. Hosking for editorial services. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the various affiliated organisations.

Analysis of institutional authors

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Article

Implementing the material footprint to measure progress towards Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 12

Publicated to:Nature Sustainability. 5 (2): 157-166 - 2022-01-01 5(2), DOI: 10.1038/s41893-021-00811-6

Authors: Lenzen, M; Geschke, A; West, J; Fry, J; Malik, A; Giljum, S; Canals, LMI; Pinero, P; Lutter, S; Wiedmann, T; Li, MY; Sevenster, M; Potocnik, J; Teixeira, I; Van Voore, M; Nansai, K; Schandl, H

Affiliations

CSIRO, Canberra, ACT, Australia - Author
Int Resource Panel, United Nations Environm Program UNEP, Paris, France - Author
Natl Inst Environm Studies, Mat Cycles Div, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan - Author
United Nations Environm Programme, Paris, France - Author
Univ New South Wales UNSW, Sch Civil & Environm Engn, Sustainabil Assessment Program, Sydney, NSW, Australia - Author
Univ Politecn Madrid, Res Ctr Management Agr & Environm Risks CEIGRAM, Madrid, Spain - Author
Univ Sydney, Sch Phys, Discipline Accounting, Sydney, NSW, Australia - Author
Univ Sydney, Sch Phys, Integrated Sustainabil Anal, Sydney, NSW, Australia - Author
Vienna Univ Econ & Business, Inst Ecol Econ, Vienna, Austria - Author
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Abstract

Despite the wide acceptance of the role of the material footprint indicator in sustainability, no reporting facility at present provides sufficient information on countries' material footprints. This study presents a new research platform that regularly provides detailed global material footprint accounts.Sustainable development depends on decoupling economic growth from resource use. The material footprint indicator accounts for environmental pressure related to a country's final demand. It measures material use across global supply-chain networks linking production and consumption. For this reason, it has been used as an indicator for two Sustainable Development Goals: 8.4 'resource efficiency improvements' and 12.2 'sustainable management of natural resources'. Currently, no reporting facility exists that provides global, detailed and timely information on countries' material footprints. We present a new collaborative research platform, based on multiregional input-output analysis, that enables countries to regularly produce, update and report detailed global material footprint accounts and monitor progress towards Sustainable Development Goals 8.4 and 12.2. We show that the global material footprint has quadrupled since 1970, driven mainly by emerging economies in the Asia-Pacific region, but with an indication of plateauing since 2014. Capital investments increasingly dominate over household consumption as the main driver. At current trends, absolute decoupling is unlikely to occur over the next few decades. The new collaborative research platform allows to elevate the material footprint to Tier I status in the SDG indicator framework and paves the way to broaden application of the platform to other environmental footprint indicators.

Keywords

AggregationCollaborative researchConsumptionDecompositionDecouplingsEconomic growthsEnvironmental pressuresEoraFrameworksGlobal supply chain networkIndicatorsInequalityInput-output databaseInvestmentsMaterial useNetwork linkingPlanningProduction and consumptionResearch platformsResource footprintsResource useSupply chainsSustainable development

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal Nature Sustainability due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency WoS (JCR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2022, it was in position 4/275, thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Environmental Studies. Notably, the journal is positioned above the 90th percentile.

From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from World Citations provided by WoS (ESI, Clarivate), it yields a value for the citation normalization relative to the expected citation rate of: 1.17. This indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: ESI Nov 14, 2024)

This information is reinforced by other indicators of the same type, which, although dynamic over time and dependent on the set of average global citations at the time of their calculation, consistently position the work at some point among the top 50% most cited in its field:

  • Weighted Average of Normalized Impact by the Scopus agency: 11.98 (source consulted: FECYT Feb 2024)
  • Field Citation Ratio (FCR) from Dimensions: 30.07 (source consulted: Dimensions Jun 2025)

Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-06-13, the following number of citations:

  • WoS: 14
  • Scopus: 145
  • OpenCitations: 93

Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-06-13:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 247.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 246 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 176.7.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 26 (Altmetric).
  • The number of mentions in news outlets: 19 (Altmetric).

Leadership analysis of institutional authors

This work has been carried out with international collaboration, specifically with researchers from: Australia; Austria; France; Japan; United Kingdom.