Japan s requirement is about 45 metric tons. Hidden flows matter. Overburden from mining, earth moving for construction, and soil erosion are often not considered in environmental analyses because they are not priced. Fossil fuel use is overwhelmingly the largest contributor to the Total Materials Requirement in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States and second in Japan. U.S. agricultural flows decreased as the Conservation Reserve Program paid farmers not to farm highly erodible lands and infrastructure flows shrank as the federal interstate highway system was completed.
Private construction is a growing source of U.S. flows related to infrastructure construction.
Material flows information may point to the need for new policies. To the extent that environmental damage from hidden flows is not included in the prices of commodities, the countries that benefit from using the natural resources are not the same as those paying the ecological costs of using them. For smaller countries, the proportion of the Total Materials Requirement that occurs outside the country and is usually not included in prices ranges from 35 to 70 percent. The Carnoules Declaration, issued by a group of environment and development leaders, calls for cutting global non-renewable material flows by half over 30 to 50 years. We welcome suggestions for topics and comments.