Europe’s Global Footprint

Europe’s annual consumption of raw materials is many times higher than in Africa or Asia, for example, even though most of the resources for our products come from these regions. Such an unevenly distributed and global economic system has major impacts on the environment, including the high energy consumption involved in extracting resources.

Stefan Giljum, a researcher at the Institute for Ecological Economics at WU Vienna, is investigating the global cycle of raw material consumption. Since global supply chains are complex and often opaque, his international team is identifying major environmental hotspots and their effects on the surrounding regions. The findings provide important insights for businesses and policymakers, which have become increasingly important in light of current geopolitical developments such as the war in Ukraine and Donald Trump’s tariff policy.