An abundance of valuable natural resources, such as oil, timber, gold, or diamonds, in a country has in recent years increasingly proven to be a cause for socio-economic and political instability rather than an engine for development. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the ‘resource...

We focus on three questions: one, what have been the quantitative dynamics and the main drivers of the global use of natural resources (energy and materials) in the past century? Two, how will these trends continue over the next decades, and what would be more sustainable scenarios? In other...