Decoupling is a myth – their models don’t account for outsourcing of production and extraction to developing countries – our evidence cites multiple meta-analyses of empirical studies.

Recent literature argues that there is little or no evidence in terms of absolute decoupling looking into embodied energy in trade, material consumption, resource use, and emissions.

Akizu-Gardoki et al. (2018) devise an alternative “Decoupling Index” that uses 126 countries’ total primary energy footprints (rather than total primary energy supplies), taking into account embodied energy imported with goods and services. Within a 14-year period of analysis (2000–2014), the authors empirically show that 93 countries7 disprove decoupling; while 27 show absolute decoupling for the analysis period, with only 6 countries (ESP, ITA, HUN, GBR, JPN, and FRA) with a Human Development Index of 0.8 above maintain absolute decoupling over time (ibid.).

Regarding global material flows covering over half a century of analysis (1950–2010) Schaffartzik et al. (2014) reveal that although industrial metabolic profiles stabilise over time with equal shares of biomass, fossil energy, and construction minerals; they are surpassed by other regions like Asia, replicating patterns of industrial growth engines. However, this does not translate into "per capita" affuence or material consumption and instead adds to the growing bubble of global resource use and extraction (ibid.). On a similar note, after an analysis of 40 years of resource productivity analysis Krausmann et al. (2017) summarise that although some countries may be decoupling in absolute terms, this value is cancelled out when trade is taken into account. Wood et al. (2018) confrm that impacts embodied in trade, especially regarding material goods, led by clothing and footwear, are growing tremendously, with energy and GHG emissions following in a less pronounced manner. Wu et al. (2018) highlight the differences in a decoupling index, where “developed countries” primarily continue to develop high-tech and higheffciency GDP growth drivers, whereas “developing countries” have not undergone a transformation to absolute decoupling due to a lack in energy effciency measures, disorganised industrial structures, and absence of Information Technologies (IT) in capital investment. These studies highlight a threefold causality: (1) we have lengthened commodity supply chains due to the abundance of readily available transport fuel; (2) this has been made possible by notably shifting and outsourcing more signifcant impacts to developing regions that take on primary extractive and secondary industries; (3) meanwhile, we have bought into the promise of circularity regarding the reuse of materials. Hass et al. (2015) illustrate that circularity is low mainly because most materials are not available for recycling in the frst place and that the growth of materials injection into our systems outpaces any potential recycling attempt (See Sect. 15.4 for more details).

Similarly, recently conducted reviews of empirical research conclude no robust evidence regarding decoupling. (For an exhaustive literature review of decoupling literature, see Parrique et al., 2019; Koirala et al., 2011; Mardani et al., 2019 among others). The Decoupling Debunked document (Parrique et al., 2019) concludes that there is no indication of decoupling that is absolute, global, permanent, and suffciently fast and large enough both in terms of resources or impacts. Likewise, a review of 179 decoupling articles (Vadén et al., 2020) that appeared between 1990 and 2019 concluded with no evidence of economy-wide, national/international absolute resource decoupling and reckons that “the goal of decoupling rests partly on faith.” A recent exhaustive review, composed of a bibliometric mapping of 835 peer-reviewed articles (published in two parts, part I (Wiedenhofer et al., 2020) and part II (Haberl et al., 2020)) also highlight the need for substantial advances in both theoretical and empirical research required while also being complemented by alternative goals and ambitions.

With unsuccessful robust and systemic evidence, reaffrming the fndings of Hickel and Kallis (2020), absolute decoupling from resource use cannot be achieved on a global scale against a global scale backdrop of continued economic growth.