A stock take of current environmental trends makes for a litany of waste, mismanagement and unsustainable consumption. Our annual report illustrates explains how investors have both the means and the opportunity to make a difference.
Increasing resource use is the main driver of a triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Unfortunately, we as humans have failed to manage our global portfolio of assets sustainably. Estimates show that between 1992 and 2014, produced capital per person doubled, and human capital per person increased by about 13% globally; but that the stock of natural capital per person declined by nearly 40%.¹ We have been taking Nature for granted, and while humanity has prospered immensely in recent decades, the ways in which we have achieved such prosperity means that it has come at a devastating cost to nature and the environment. The main reason for such destruction has been our consumption patterns which today are characterised by a ‘buy and discard’ mentality.
Between 2000 and 2022, increasing affluence became the single largest driver of the growth of global resource use, followed by population increase. While technology previously served to decrease resource use in all seven regions across the world, it has now driven increases in two regions. If historical trends continue, global resource use would grow by 60% from 2020 levels by 2060, contrary to the target of reducing global material resource consumption by more than half by 2050.
In today’s world, our society relies on non-renewable resources, yet yearly, we directly waste or mismanage much of it.
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