The metabolic transition of material use and carbon emissions in economically growing Asia: Evidence from 1971 to 2016

The efficient consumption of material and energy resources, with minimal carbon emissions and maximum economic output, is globally significant. This study examines the metabolic transition of resource use and CO2 emissions in nine of the largest economies of East, South, and Southeast Asia. A data envelopment model has been developed to assess the efficiency of domestic material consumption and CO2 emissions during 1971-2016 at three levels of analysis. The single-country analysis results reveal that China has made the most rapid efficiency transformation during 1971-2016 followed by Japan and South Korea, while the rest of the countries in South and Southeast Asia have not illustrated significant improvements. Results from the analysis of socio-economically grouped countries show that Japan and Bangladesh are the relatively efficient economies in East and South Asia, respectively. Among Southeast Asian countries, both Indonesia and Malaysia were found to be efficient. Based on the regional analysis comparing all nine countries, Japan has consistently remained a relatively efficient economy while China-despite rapid improvements-remains a relatively inefficient economy. To this end, Japan had the lowest material and CO2 intensities compared to all other countries. Based on our results, technological advancement, industry structure, and scale of traded goods and services were found to have a significant impact (the impact of per capita income was less pronounced) on a country's effective resource utilization and carbon mitigation.