Introduction

The possibility of future mineral scarcity is an important concern of environmental activists, those desiring to limit population growth, and those concerned with wealth distribution between industrialized and developing countries. Through the years, observers from Thomas Malthus (1798) to the 1972 Club of Rome report, (Meadows and others, 1972), for example, predicted exhaustion of resources at various dates, most of which have come and gone without the dire consequences of societal collapse they envisioned.

   The static model from which these predictions came continues to inform many who choose to believe that mineral production cannot meet the material aspirations of a rapidly growing world population if consumption (one component of which is resource capitalization, which is often overlooked by these analysts) of some resources continues to increase. The perception of future scarcity, for example, motivated the Factor Ten Club, a group of resource economists, to issue the Carnoules Declaration in 1994 and 1995. The Declarations called for a swift 10-fold increase in material efficiency among industrialized countries to free materials for people in developing countries (Factor 10 Club, 1995).

The concerns of future scarcity may in part be caused by misinterpretation and (or) the misuse of published mineral reserve estimates for non-fuel mineral commodities. A reserve is that part of an in-place demonstrated resource that can be economically extracted or produced at the time of estimation (U.S. Bureau of Mines and U.S. Geological Survey, 1980). Some misinterpret the term “reserve” as an estimate of all-that-is-left.

This series, “Scarcity in the 21st Century”, addresses resource constraints and opportunities, and the effects of their interactions on resource supply. Assessing potential supply requires a whole systems approach, both in physical terms by looking at the flows of materials through the economy, and in human terms by integrating the interactive domains of economics, environment, policy, technology, and societal values.