From Resource Abundance to Responsible Scarcity: Rethinking Natural Resource Utilization in the Age of Hyper-Consumption

Abstract

In an era marked by accelerating ecological degradation and widening global inequalities, prevailing patterns of resource extraction and consumption are proving increasingly unsustainable. Driven by hyper-consumption and entrenched linear production models, the global economy continues to exert immense pressure on planetary systems. This communication article calls for a fundamental paradigm shift from the long-standing assumption of resource abundance to a framework of responsible scarcity. Drawing from recent data on material throughput, on the transgression of planetary boundaries, and on the structural and geopolitical disparities underlying global resource use, this article highlights the urgent need to realign natural resource governance with ecological limits and social justice. A conceptual framework is proposed to support this transition, grounded in principles of ecological constraint, functional sufficiency, equity, and long-term resilience. The article concludes by outlining a forward-thinking research and policy agenda aimed at fostering sustainable and just modes of resource utilization in the face of growing environmental and socio-economic challenges.

1. Introduction

The global economy is experiencing a dramatic and historically unprecedented increase in natural resource extraction and material throughput. Between 1970 and 2020, the total global material extraction increased from 27 billion to approximately 106 billion tons, driven by accelerated industrialization, demographic expansion, and increasingly consumption-intensive economic systems, often described as hyper-consumption regimes [1,2]. Despite widespread acknowledgment of environmental degradation and climate instability, material productivity (measured as the ratio of GDP to domestic material consumption) has stagnated since the early 2000s, underscoring the continued structural coupling between economic output and resource use [3]. As Figure 1 illustrates, GDP per capita has maintained a consistent upward trend, tightly mirroring the rise in material consumption per person [4].

This expansion in material demand is not evenly distributed. In 2017, the material footprint (i.e., the total amount of raw materials extracted worldwide to meet the final consumption demands of a country, including imports and upstream supply chains) per capita in high-income countries averaged 27 tons, compared to low-income countries which averaged less than 2 tons [5]. According to Wiedmann et al. [6], the wealthiest 10 percent of the global population accounts for more than 50 percent of global environmental impacts, including disproportionate levels of resource consumption. These disparities reflect entrenched geopolitical asymmetries and a global trade structure that externalizes environmental costs to the Global South.

Hyper-consumption also produces substantial social effects, which compound environmental risks. Air pollution resulting from material-intensive production and transport systems is responsible for over 8 million premature deaths, annually, including more than 4 million from outdoor particulate matter exposure [7]. Vulnerable groups are also disproportionately affected: in 2021, more than 700,000 deaths of children under five occurred due to pollution-related diseases [7,8]. In high-income regions, rising rates of stress, anxiety, and diminished psychological well-being have been linked to consumerist pressures and socio-economic fragmentation [9]. These impacts not only burden public health systems but also weaken community cohesion and resilience, reinforcing the need for integrated governance that addresses both ecological and social thresholds.

Scientific evidence indicates that human activities are pushing planetary systems beyond their safe operating limits. The planetary boundaries framework identifies nine essential biophysical thresholds required to maintain the stability of the Earth system. In the most recent assessment, it was noted that six of these thresholds have been transgressed, including those relating to climate change, biosphere integrity, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, land-system change, and the release of novel entities such as synthetic chemicals and microplastics [10,11,12]. Alarmingly, approximately 130,000 square kilometers of tropical forests are lost annually, while 15 percent of ocean reserves have been depleted. Water scarcity is reaching catastrophic levels in arid regions such as Central and West Asia and North Africa [13,14]. Moreover, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, intensifying climate change and biosphere destabilization [15].

Recent research has broadened our understanding of how structural factors influence these dynamics. Wang et al. [16], for example, demonstrated that in QUAD economies (Australia, Japan, India, and the United States), renewable energy adoption and technological innovation only contribute to transport-related CO₂ mitigation when supported by consistent policy and infrastructural alignment. Similarly, Zhang et al. [17] showed that energy efficiency and the sharing of economic strategies can enhance sustainable development in China, but only when considered alongside urbanization and the industrial structure. These findings suggest that technology and economic instruments, while important, are insufficient in isolation.

Digitalization and fintech are also reshaping environmental governance frameworks. Sibt-e-Ali et al. [18] emphasized that the convergence of digital finance, institutional governance, and SDG 13 (climate action) are essential to long-term environmental conservation in emerging economies. Furthermore, industrial upgrading and the deployment of environmental technologies have been identified as effective levers in the improvement of ecological performance, especially when supported by green finance and human capital investment [19]. In service-based sectors, Liu et al. [20] found that tourism can contribute to sustainability goals, but only when mediated by coherent growth strategies that align with inclusive development.

These contributions converge on a critical insight: the prevailing paradigm of resource abundance (rooted in the industrial revolution and institutionalized in economic modeling and policy) has become obsolete [21,22]. This worldview presumes limitless supply and perpetual substitutability, enabling the expansion of extractivist practices while sidelining ecological constraints. In the Anthropocene, where human activity is a dominant force in planetary dynamics, such assumptions are not only flawed but dangerous [23]. While circular economy initiatives and efficiency-driven innovation have gained prominence, they rarely address the underlying structures of hyper-consumption and material inequality.

In response to these challenges, this article proposes the conceptual framework of responsible scarcity. This paradigm reframes resource governance by explicitly recognizing the finitude of ecological systems and by foregrounding ethical imperatives of sufficiency, intergenerational justice, and distributive equity. Unlike approaches centered on optimization or green growth, responsible scarcity situates material use (the total amount of raw materials physically used by an economy, including biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores, and non-metallic minerals) within biophysical limits while confronting geopolitical and socio-economic asymmetries.

The contribution of this article is twofold. First, it synthesizes empirical and theoretical developments across ecological economics, sustainability science, and political ecology to articulate the need for a paradigmatic shift in how natural resources are conceptualized and managed. Secondly, it advances a normative agenda that links planetary boundaries with social foundations, outlining a policy framework based on restraint, regeneration, and responsibility. This work fills a critical gap in sustainability discourse and offers a holistic alternative to technocentric or growth-centric approaches by positioning responsible scarcity as a central principle for future resource governance.

2. Methodology

This communication article is based on a narrative and integrative review of 69 scientific, institutional, and policy-oriented sources published between 2004 and 2025. The selected literature includes peer-reviewed journal articles, official reports from multilateral organizations (e.g., UNEP, IEA, OECD), doctoral theses, and authoritative datasets. These materials were identified through targeted searches using platforms such as Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and ScienceDirect. The materials were complemented using a manual selection of institutional websites relevant to ecological economics, resource governance, and sustainability transitions.

The inclusion criteria focus on three different sources: (1) a source that provides empirical evidence on global material flows, on planetary boundary transgressions, or on ecological degradation; (2) a source that examines the structural drivers of hyper-consumption and socio-environmental inequality; (3) a source that proposes theoretical or normative frameworks related to sustainable resource governance. Particular attention was given to the literature that bridges ecological science with social justice and long-term resilience.

The reviewed documents were categorized into five thematic areas: (i) historical underpinnings of the abundance paradigm, (ii) trends in global material use and consumption, (iii) the planetary boundaries framework and resource overuse, (iv) geopolitical and socio-environmental inequalities, and (v) the emerging concept of responsible scarcity. This categorization not only supported a critical synthesis of current knowledge but also informed the article’s conceptual development.

Rather than conducting a systematic review or meta-analysis, the methodological approach emphasizes conceptual integration and normative articulation. In line with the aims of a communication article, this methodology seeks to consolidate interdisciplinary findings and propose a forward-thinking research and policy agenda aligned with ecological thresholds and distributive justice.

This methodological approach was selected due to its ability to bridge fragmented insights across disciplines and scales, enabling a coherent interpretation of how resource overuse, inequality, and planetary limits intersect. The method also directly supports the article’s objective to construct a normative framework of responsible scarcity that aligns resource governance with ecological thresholds and social equity by privileging conceptual integration over data aggregation.

3. Global Material Use and Consumption Trends

Material use in the global economy exhibits increasingly complex patterns that are not only defined by volumetric growth but also by structural shifts in sectoral demand, trade interdependencies, and material composition [24]. Rather than focusing solely on extraction volumes, understanding these underlying dynamics is essential to assess systemic vulnerabilities and opportunities for sustainable transformation.

A key trend in recent decades is the intensification of material throughput per unit of the final demand in sectors linked to infrastructure, energy, and technology manufacturing [25]. Input–output analyses reveal that the construction sector alone is responsible for more than 40 percent of the total material inputs in most industrialized economies, primarily through the consumption of non-metallic minerals and steel [26]. However, this contribution becomes even more critical in emerging economies that are experiencing rapid urban expansion. China’s material intensity per square meter of every new building area was nearly twice that of the OECD average during the peak of its urbanization drive in the 2000s and early 2010s. This highlights the role of development models in shaping material intensity [27].

At the international level, the embedded material content of traded goods has grown at a faster rate than domestic extraction in many regions [28]. The concept of a material footprint, which accounts for raw materials used along the global supply chains regardless of origin, has become central to measuring actual consumption pressures [29]. Between 2000 and 2015, the material footprint of many high-income countries not only remained stable, but it also increased despite domestic extraction plateauing [30]. This suggests an outsourcing of material-intensive production to lower-income regions by reinforcing patterns of ecological unequal exchange.

The diversification of material types has also accelerated [31]. While the twentieth-century economy was dominated by a relatively limited set of bulk materials such as coal, iron, cement, and oil, the twenty-first-century economy depends on a broader spectrum of metals and composite materials, many of which are critical for emerging technologies [32,33]. The transition to renewable energy systems and digital infrastructure has led to an exponential growth in demand for materials such as lithium, cobalt, indium, high-purity silicon, and other rare earth elements [34]. These materials often have low substitutability, are geologically scarce or geopolitically concentrated, and their extraction is associated with substantial environmental and social externalities.

Material use trends also exhibit signs of diminishing returns in terms of human well-being [35]. Empirical studies based on socio-metabolic research indicate that beyond a certain threshold (estimated around 6 to 8 tons of material use per capita per year), increases in resource throughput do not correlate with significant improvements in life expectancy, education, or subjective well-being [36]. Most high-income countries already operate well above this level, implying that further increases in material use deliver marginal or even negative social returns while amplifying environmental risks.

Furthermore, material use is increasingly linked to systemic risks across industrial supply chains. Global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and extreme climate phenomena have exposed the fragility of international supply networks and their dependence on uninterrupted access to specific resource flows [37]. The volatility in the prices of energy carriers and strategic minerals has amplified concerns around material security, leading to a resurgence of policy efforts in resource nationalism, stockpiling strategies, and nearshoring critical industries.

Another critical aspect is the declining material circularity of the global economy. Although circular economic policies have gained political traction, recent global assessments show that the percentage of secondary material use decreased from 9.1 percent in 2018 to 7.2 percent in 2023 [38]. This decline is partially due to the rapid growth in raw material demand outpacing improvements in recycling and reuse, but it also reflects structural challenges such as product design limitations, economic disincentives, and limited technological capacity in the recovery of complex materials such as in electronics and composites.

Given the rapid evolution of material use patterns and ongoing policy developments, future assessments will be essential to determine whether the downward trend in global material circularity observed up to 2023 persists or if it has reversed. This highlights the importance of continuous and transparent monitoring to inform the effectiveness of circular economic strategies.

Global material use trends reveal a shift from purely volumetric growth toward increasingly specialized, geographically uneven, and risk-prone patterns of consumption. These dynamics underscore the need to move beyond aggregate metrics and engage with the qualitative aspects of material demand, including composition, embedded value, systemic relevance, and exposure to disruption. Understanding these dimensions is essential to design policies that address not only the quantity of resource use but also its strategic function in the economy and its alignment with broader sustainability goals.

4. Quantifying the Burden: Planetary Boundaries and Resource Overuse

The planetary boundaries framework, first proposed by Rockström et al. [10] and further developed by Steffen et al. [11], represents a scientific approach to defining humanity’s safe operating space. It identifies nine Earth system processes that are essential to maintain the relative stability of the Holocene epoch, a period that enabled modern civilization to flourish [39]. These processes include climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus cycles), ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading, stratospheric ozone depletion, and novel issues such as synthetic chemicals and microplastics [40].

Each boundary is associated with one or more quantifiable control variables, which can be measured to assess whether human activities are pushing the Earth system beyond safe ecological thresholds [41]. The boundary for climate change includes atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, with a safe level set at 350 parts per million, and an energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere, with a boundary of 1 watt per square meter [42]. These indicators are based on paleoclimatic data, Earth system modeling, and expert consensus.

As of the latest assessment by Richardson et al. [12], six of the nine planetary boundaries have been transgressed. These boundaries are climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, biogeochemical flows, freshwater use, and the introduction of novel entities. Each of these transgressions is closely linked to global patterns of resource extraction, processing, and consumption, making material use a central variable in understanding ecological overshoot.

In the same way, it is recognized that social well-being consists of ensuring everyone has the opportunity to live a dignified life without exceeding the planetary boundaries to protect the Earth’s life-sustaining systems [43]. There are twelve internationally agreed upon “social foundations” as minimum standards for human well-being. These standards (water, food, health, education, income and work, peace and justice, political voice, social equity, gender equality, housing, networks, and energy) [44] are also part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) created by the United Nations.

The planetary boundaries and social foundations can be seen in a doughnut chart below (Figure 2). The doughnut’s inner border consists of the social foundation (minimum thresholds), while the outer edge is an ecological ceiling constituted by the planetary boundaries (maximum thresholds); between these two limits exists a safe and just environment for human flourishment, also called a “safe and just operating space” [45]. Exceeding planetary boundary thresholds causes irreparable environmental damage, while failing to meet social foundation minimum thresholds leads to a lack of fundamental living standards.

In 2015, countries around the world established a shared vision for peace and prosperity for everyone. This shared vision, called the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, is an urgent call to action for both industrialized and developing countries. The Agenda recognizes that eradicating poverty and inequality, promoting health and education, stimulating economic growth, as well as addressing climate change and working to protect oceans and forests, are all actions that must be taken to protect our planet [46].

Nevertheless, the overuse of materials directly contributes to multiple planetary pressures. According to the International Resource Panel, the extraction and processing of natural resources account for over 90 percent of global biodiversity loss and water stress, and roughly 50 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions [47]. These figures are based on integrated assessment models combining an environmentally extended input–output analysis and life-cycle inventories. The implications are clear: the way societies use materials is a principal driver of planetary-scale environmental degradation.

Among the most critically affected boundaries are the biogeochemical cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus [48]. Anthropogenic nitrogen fixation, largely through the Haber–Bosch process for synthetic fertilizers, exceeds 150 million tons per year, globally. This is well above the estimated planetary boundary of 62 million tons per year [11]. Similarly, the phosphorus application to agricultural soils is causing widespread eutrophication of freshwater and coastal systems, with many regions surpassing their regional boundaries by an order of magnitude [49]. These nutrient imbalances degrade aquatic ecosystems, disrupt food networks, and create hypoxic zones that reduce fishing productivity.

Land-system change is another major factor linked to material flows [50]. The expansion of agricultural land, infrastructure, and extractive industries has led to the loss of approximately one-third of the Earth’s original forest cover, undermining the regulatory functions of terrestrial ecosystems. The planetary boundary suggests that at least 75 percent of the global forest cover should be maintained to preserve carbon sinks and biodiversity [7]. Current estimates place global forest cover at around 62 percent of its pre-industrial extent, with ongoing deforestation particularly concentrated in the Amazon basin, Southeast Asia, and Central Africa [51].

The boundary for novel entities, including persistent pollutants, synthetic compounds, and plastic waste, lacks a universally agreed threshold due to the diversity and complexity of the substances involved. Nonetheless, Persson et al. [52] concluded that this boundary has been exceeded based on the growing production and dispersion of hazardous chemicals whose long-term effects on the biosphere are poorly understood and largely irreversible. Annual global plastic production now exceeds 350 million tons, with microplastics detected in marine organisms, in soils, in drinking water, and in human blood [53].

Freshwater use, though globally below the aggregate threshold of 4000 cubic kilometers per year, shows dangerous regional excesses [54]. In river basins such as in the Ganges River, the Indus River, the Yellow River, and the Colorado River, water withdrawals have consistently surpassed sustainable limits, driven by agricultural demand and inefficient irrigation systems [55]. These localized breaches feed into global systemic risks, particularly in the water–energy–food nexus regions sensitive to climatic variability.

The planetary boundaries framework is not designed as a regulatory instrument but as a scientific tool to assess an Earth system functioning under anthropogenic pressures. However, its integration into material governance remains limited. Most national and corporate strategies still rely on economic indicators that ignore ecological limits. The incorporation of planetary thresholds into material policy would allow for a transition from quantity-based management toward strategies that respect biophysical constraints, support long-term resilience, and reduce intergenerational risk.

Ultimately, quantifying the burden of material use through the planetary boundaries lens reveals that current socio-economic models are misaligned with Earth’s capacity. The continued expansion of material throughput not only undermines ecological integrity but also reduces the adaptive space available for future generations. A paradigm shift toward sufficiency, precaution, and ecological accounting is necessary to reposition material systems within safe and just operating spaces.

While the doughnut model provides a compelling conceptual framework to reconcile ecological ceilings and social foundations, its empirical application remains limited. To strengthen its operational relevance, the following section presents quantitative case studies that illustrate how selected countries are attempting to balance social development with ecological sustainability.

4.1. Quantitative Case Studies of Doughnut Application

To reinforce the empirical grounding of the doughnut framework, this section presents regional applications that quantitatively balance social foundations and ecological limits.

4.1.1. National-Level Analysis: Thailand

Using the Sustainability Window method, Luukkanen et al. [56] demonstrated that Thailand achieved, from 2006 to 2014, key social foundation targets such as healthy life years, food sufficiency, and access to sanitation. However, under strong sustainability criteria, the country simultaneously exceeded, over the same period, the consumption of global hectares and in CO₂ emissions. The ASA doughnut analysis confirms that while Thailand’s real GDP growth was sufficient to meet social sustainability thresholds, it surpassed the ecological maximum, violating environmental boundaries. This misalignment indicates that Thailand’s development trajectory, though socially progressive, remained ecologically unsustainable.

4.1.2. Cross-Country Comparison: Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam

A comparative application of the Sustainability Window method to Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam reveals distinct positions within the safe and just operating space framework. According to Reyes et al. [57], all three countries met core social foundation thresholds between 2010 and 2019, especially in clean water access, adult literacy, and life expectancy. However, only Malaysia and Vietnam remained within the defined ecological ceilings, while the Philippines breached environmental limits, primarily due to excessive fossil fuel use and poor waste management performance. This divergence was further reflected in CO₂ emission intensities per unit of GDP: Vietnam and Malaysia reported 0.32 kg and 0.37 kg of CO₂ per international dollar (2017 PPP), respectively, staying below the modeled sustainability limit, whereas the Philippines reached 0.43 kg/USD, surpassing the threshold. These findings align with the broader ASEAN-level analysis by Kaivo-oja et al. [58], which emphasizes the role of national environmental efficiency in achieving integrated sustainability. The comparison underscores the importance of policy coherence in balancing socio-economic gains with environmental responsibility in emerging economies.

4.1.3. City-Level Assessment: Amsterdam

Amsterdam’s municipal implementation of the doughnut economy framework adapted global sustainability boundaries and social thresholds to the city scale, creating a localized dashboard for policy action. The assessment revealed that several key social indicators (such as access to affordable housing, social equity, and civic engagement) remained below minimum desired thresholds, while consumption-based CO₂ emissions far exceeded the city’s fair share of planetary carbon budgets. This approach exemplifies how cities can implement the doughnut framework to identify local sustainability gaps and inform integrated planning strategies [59].

These real-world cases (from national through urban scales) demonstrate the practical applicability of the doughnut framework. Quantitative mapping of social shortfalls against ecological overshoots allows policymakers to identify domain-specific trade-offs and develop targeted interventions.

5. Structural Drivers of Hyper-Consumption

Hyper-consumption, characterized by the persistent growth of material and energy demand beyond social or ecological necessity, is not an accidental outcome of modern economies [60]. It is structurally embedded in socio-economic systems through institutional, technological, and cultural mechanisms that incentivize the continuous expansion of production and consumption. These drivers operate across multiple scales and are reinforced by policies, business models, and dominant ideologies of progress.

One of the most influential structural drivers is the prevailing model of economic growth, which equates national prosperity with a continuous increase in GDP. Under this paradigm, efficiency gains in resource use are often outpaced by the rebound effect, where improvements in efficiency lower costs and increase consumption. For instance, while global energy intensity (energy use per unit of GDP) has improved by about 1.5 percent annually over the past two decades, total final energy consumption grew from 386 exajoules in 2000 to over 439 exajoules in 2019, according to the International Energy Agency [61]. This decoupling failure indicates that structural economic growth continues to drive resource use upwards, even amid efficiency improvements.

Another key driver is the financial system, which relies on debt-based expansion and short-term returns. Corporate profitability depends on accelerating sales and product turnover, a mechanism often facilitated by planned obsolescence and aggressive marketing. In consumer electronics, smartphones have an average replacement cycle of less than two years in high-income economies, despite devices having a potential technical lifespan exceeding five years. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation [62] estimates that less than 20 percent of e-waste is formally recycled, reinforcing material throughput and environmental pressure.

Urbanization patterns also contribute significantly to hyper-consumption. The current model of urban growth is often land- and material-intensive, driven by car-centric infrastructure, low-density expansion, and globalized construction supply chains [63]. Between 2000 and 2020, the global urban population increased by 50 percent, yet the urban land area expanded by more than 80 percent [64], indicating a decoupling between demographic and spatial growth. This expansion increases the demand for steel, cement, glass, and plastics, and locks societies into high-resource infrastructure that is costly to maintain and difficult to retrofit. Thus, natural resources will become increasingly scarce if the world’s population grows by more than 2 billion between 2010 and 2050 [65].

Cultural drivers, including consumerist value systems and identity formation through material possession, further reinforce hyper-consumption. Advertising expenditures worldwide exceeded USD 700 billion in 2023 [66], a significant proportion of which is directed toward creating artificial needs and promoting status-based consumption. Digital platforms and social media accelerate this dynamic by targeting consumers with personalized content and real-time incentives to buy. The psychological and behavioral effects of constant exposure to curated consumption norms result in increased purchase frequency and decreased product lifespan.

Global supply chains and trade liberalization also play a central role. The fragmentation of production across regions enables resource-intensive manufacturing to remain hidden from consumers in final-use countries. High-income countries often import products whose environmental and material costs are externalized to lower-income producers. According to the International Resource Panel, nearly one-third of the material footprint of OECD countries is embodied in imported goods [67]. This geographic disconnect reduces consumer accountability and hampers national efforts to regulate extraction and emissions.

Digitalization and the platform economy introduce new layers of hyper-consumption, especially through just-in-time logistics, algorithmic retailing, and frictionless payment systems. E-commerce has grown exponentially, with global online retail sales reaching USD 5.8 trillion in 2023 [68]. While digital platforms offer efficiency, they also encourage impulse buying, shorten consumption cycles, and intensify packaging waste and energy use across distribution networks.

Policy frameworks often subsidize or ignore the material intensity of economic activities. Fossil fuel subsidies, estimated at USD 7 trillion in 2022 [69], artificially lower the cost of production and transportation, masking the true environmental cost of goods and services. Taxation systems tend to favor labor over resource use, and few countries implement material-based taxation or enforce strong eco-design regulations.

Hyper-consumption is not merely a cultural or individual phenomenon but a structurally induced condition of modern economic systems. It emerges from the interaction between economic incentives, institutional inertia, technological lock-ins, and social norms that collectively drive an unsustainable material demand. Addressing this condition requires reconfiguring systemic drivers rather than relying on isolated behavioral interventions or technological fixes. Figure 3 depicts the structural drivers of hyper-consumption analyzed before.

The structural drivers of hyper-consumption depicted in Figure 3 are not isolated mechanisms but interdependent and mutually reinforcing components of a systemic dynamic. The prevailing economic growth paradigm (01) stimulates debt-based expansion within financial systems (02), which in turn pressures firms to pursue rapid product turnover, often through planned obsolescence. This demand for continual sales growth is spatially manifested in urbanization patterns (03) relying on high levels of resource input for infrastructure and housing by locking societies into material-intensive life cycles. These spatial and financial dynamics fuel and are sustained by cultural consumption norms (04), reinforced by global marketing strategies and credit accessibility. In this way, the feedback loop between production incentives, financial mechanisms, and consumer behavior intensifies the aggregate demand for material goods.

Moreover, global supply chains (05) and the platform economy (06) amplify the throughput of material and energy by externalizing environmental costs to low-income regions and reducing friction in consumption decisions. The combined effect of digital platforms, targeted advertising, and instantaneous logistics strengthens status-based consumption norms while diminishing user awareness of environmental consequences. As a result, consumption becomes more frequent, spontaneous, and spatially dislocated from its material origins. These drivers, though analytically distinguishable, co-evolve within a broader political economy that prioritizes GDP growth, neglects material throughput limits, and incentivizes demand stimulation over sufficiency. Understanding these causal linkages is essential to developing interventions that do not simply target symptoms (e.g., overconsumption) but transform the foundational logics of current economic systems.

6. Geopolitical and Socio-Environmental Inequalities in Resource Utilization

The global distribution and utilization of natural resources are marked by profound geopolitical and socio-environmental inequalities [70]. High-income countries, representing a minority of the global population, consume a disproportionate share of materials and energy, while the environmental and social burdens of extraction are predominantly borne by low- and middle-income countries. This asymmetry is rooted in historical patterns of colonialism and persists through contemporary economic structures and trade relations.

The concept of an ecologically unequal exchange elucidates how affluent countries externalize the environmental costs of their consumption to less-developed regions. Dorninger et al. [71] demonstrated that high-income countries are net importers of embodied materials, energy, land, and labor, effectively outsourcing environmental degradation and resource depletion to the Global South. This dynamic perpetuates a cycle where resource-rich but economically disadvantaged countries experience environmental harm without commensurate economic benefits. A salient example is the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which supplies approximately two-thirds of the world’s cobalt, a critical component in batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage [72]. Despite this, the DRC remains one of the world’s poorest countries, with widespread reports of labor abuses and environmental degradation in mining regions. This paradox underscores the disconnect between resource wealth and human development in many extractive economies.

The energy transition, while essential for mitigating climate change, risks replicating these inequalities [73]. The surge in demand for critical minerals like lithium, nickel, and rare earth elements has intensified competition for resources, often at the expense of environmental safeguards and local communities [74]. African leaders have called for equitable benefit-sharing and local value addition in mineral extraction to avoid repeating the exploitative patterns of the fossil fuel era [75].

Moreover, environmental justice concerns arise when marginalized communities disproportionately suffer from the negative impacts of resource extraction. Studies have shown that Indigenous people and other minorities are more likely to live near hazardous sites, to face displacement, and to experience health issues related to pollution [76,77]. These injustices are not incidental but are often the result of systemic policies and practices that prioritize economic gains over the rights and well-being of vulnerable populations.

The phenomenon of resource nationalism has emerged as countries seek greater control over their natural assets. While this can empower countries to negotiate better terms and retain more value domestically, it also introduces geopolitical tensions. For instance, recent trade disputes between major economies over access to critical minerals have led to protectionist measures, potentially disrupting global supply chains and exacerbating inequalities.

A notable case involves the trade tensions between China and Australia, which escalated in 2020 after Australia called for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19. In response, China imposed restrictions on several Australian exports, including coal, barley, and wine. Although lithium was not directly targeted, the situation raised concerns about the vulnerability of critical mineral supply chains, given that Australia is the world’s largest lithium producer, while China dominates the refining and battery manufacturing stages. According to the International Energy Agency, China accounted for nearly 60 percent of the global lithium chemical production in 2021, while Australia supplied over 50 percent of the lithium mine output [78]. These interdependencies illustrate how geopolitical tensions can threaten the stability of clean energy transitions and exacerbate inequalities between raw material suppliers and technology manufacturers.

Addressing these disparities requires a multifaceted approach that includes the following:

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Implementing fair trade policies that ensure equitable compensation for resource-rich countries and communities.

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Strengthening environmental regulations to protect ecosystems and public health in extraction zones.

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Promoting transparency and accountability in supply chains to prevent labor abuses and environmental harm.

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Investing in local processing and value addition to enable resource-exporting countries to capture more economic benefits.

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Fostering international cooperation to balance the demands of the energy transition with the principles of justice and sustainability.

The current patterns of resource utilization reflect and reinforce geopolitical and socio-environmental inequalities. Without deliberate efforts to address these imbalances, the pursuit of sustainability may inadvertently perpetuate the very injustices it seeks to resolve.

7. Conceptual Framework: From Resource Abundance to Responsible Scarcity

The prevailing global development model is historically rooted in the assumption of an open, abundant biosphere where resource inputs and environmental outputs are treated as largely external to economic systems [79]. This “abundance paradigm” has dominated policy, trade, and industrial design since the industrial revolution, shaping extractivist practices and linear consumption models [80]. However, the cumulative evidence of biospheric degradation, planetary boundary transgressions, and growing socio-environmental inequalities reveals a profound misalignment between this paradigm and the biophysical realities of the Anthropocene.

This section introduces the conceptual transition from resource abundance to responsible scarcity, not as a rhetorical device but as a normative and analytical framework for restructuring how societies perceive, manage, and value natural resources. Responsible scarcity posits that natural resources are limited in both quantity and regenerative capacity. This effective governance requires the integration of ecological thresholds, long-term temporal scales, and ethical imperatives for intra- and intergenerational equity.

This conceptual shift is distinct from efficiency or innovation-driven sustainability approaches. While technological progress remains important, responsible scarcity explicitly challenges the notion that human ingenuity can indefinitely substitute or overcome ecological constraints, building on interdisciplinary insights from ecological economics, Earth system science, political ecology, and post-growth scholarship to redefine the foundations of material governance.

A fundamental premise of this framework is that scarcity is not merely a condition imposed by nature, but a social-ecological construct influenced by political decisions, institutional arrangements, and cultural expectations. For instance, the global allocation of materials is not determined solely by geological availability but by infrastructure, capital flows, geopolitical access, and trade regimes. Responsible scarcity thus reframes resource management not only as a technical challenge but also as a question of distribution, prioritization, and ethical restraint.

This approach is supported by recent developments in material footprint accounting and planetary boundaries science. O’Neill et al. [81] demonstrated that a country has yet to achieve high levels of social development within planetary boundaries, indicating that current models of well-being are structurally dependent on overconsumption. The concept of a “safe and just operating space,” integrating ecological limits with social thresholds, emerges as a foundational element of responsible scarcity, emphasizing the need for sufficiency-based provisioning systems over throughput maximization.

Key components of this conceptual framework include the following:

• Threshold-oriented governance: Policies should be explicitly designed to keep resource use within scientifically defined ecological boundaries, rather than treating environmental impacts as externalities. This includes material caps, carbon budgets, and land-use ceilings based on Earth system thresholds.
• Functional sufficiency and provisioning systems: Rather than prioritizing aggregate consumption growth, responsible scarcity promotes meeting core human needs through low-impact, high-efficiency systems. The literature on “universal basic services” and “needs-based sustainability” suggests that many societies can provide quality health, education, housing, and mobility with significantly lower material inputs [82].
• Temporal ethics and intergenerational justice: Resource use decisions must account for the long-term consequences on ecological resilience and human security. Concepts such as environmental debt, depletion-adjusted indicators, and precautionary governance become central to policy and planning.
• Dematerialization of value creation: This dimension focuses on transitioning economic value generation away from material-intensive sectors toward knowledge, care, maintenance, and cultural production. This does not imply de-industrialization, but rather a reorientation of industrial priorities.
• Decentralized and polycentric governance: In contrast to centralized technocratic management, responsible scarcity supports distributed decision-making systems that are context-sensitive, inclusive, and capable of integrating diverse epistemologies, particularly Indigenous and place-based knowledge systems that emphasize ecological reciprocity and stewardship.
• Re-politicization of scarcity: This element challenges the depoliticized framing of scarcity as a purely technical issue, as it asserts that decisions about who gets what, when, and how, must be made transparently and democratically, with attention to structural injustices and power asymmetries in global resource flows.

Several alternative governance models have emerged in response to the unsustainability of growth-based systems. Among them, degrowth has gained traction as a normative and empirical framework advocating for a planned reduction in material and energy throughput to achieve ecological sustainability and social equity. Degrowth emphasizes downscaling production and consumption in high-income countries, while enhancing well-being through redistribution, care economies, and non-market provisioning. Empirical evidence from European case studies suggests that well-being can be maintained or improved despite lower GDP, especially when accompanied by universal basic services and strong social safety nets [83]. However, critics of degrowth point to challenges in political feasibility, employment transitions, and international equity, particularly in Global South contexts where development needs remain pressing.

Steady-state economics, as proposed by Herman Daly, offers another alternative centered on maintaining a stable stock of physical capital and population within the ecological carrying capacity [84]. It advocates caps on resource use, redistributive policies, and the replacement of GDP with ecological indicators. While conceptually aligned with responsible scarcity, steady-state models often rely on top-down regulatory mechanisms and assume static equilibrium conditions, which may not reflect the dynamic feedback and path dependencies emphasized in Earth system science.

A more recent innovation is blockchain-based transparent governance, which proposes decentralized and immutable ledgers to enhance traceability, accountability, and stakeholder participation in resource governance. Applications in energy trading, supply chain transparency (e.g., ethical sourcing of cobalt) [85], and environmental finance have demonstrated the potential for improving trust and reducing corruption. Nonetheless, blockchain systems face significant limitations, including high energy consumption (especially in proof-of-work models), digital divides, and regulatory uncertainties. Moreover, technological transparency does not inherently guarantee democratic legitimacy or distributive justice.

In contrast, the responsible scarcity framework builds upon the strengths of these models, such as ecological limits (degrowth), provisioning focus (steady-state), and decentralization (blockchain), but situates them within a broader normative structure that prioritizes threshold-based governance, equity, and institutional transformation. Rather than offering a single blueprint, it provides a pluralistic and adaptive approach capable of integrating diverse strategies based on context, scale, and historical legacies.

Unlike models that frame sustainability transitions around decoupling or market-based instruments alone, responsible scarcity calls for a normative transformation (a redefinition of what constitutes progress, prosperity, and security) in a resource-constrained world. This normative transformation is not anti-technology, but it resists technological optimism that ignores rebound effects, extractive externalities, and sociopolitical lock-ins.

In operational terms, the framework has implications for national resource strategies, corporate sustainability reporting, urban metabolism management, and trade agreements. Integrating material footprint indicators into national accounting systems, enforcing binding material caps, and prioritizing domestic circular flows over the global outsourcing of resource-intensive production are all potential entry points for a policy anchored in responsible scarcity.

Ultimately, the transition from resource abundance to responsible scarcity is not only a technical or managerial adjustment but a profound shift in worldview. It requires dismantling the ideological foundations of extractivism and reorienting societies toward planetary stewardship, sufficiency, and care. This framework provides a scientifically grounded, ethically coherent, and operationally actionable basis for aligning material use with ecological limits and human dignity.

The applicability of the responsible scarcity framework is particularly salient in resource-exporting countries of the Global South, where ecological thresholds intersect with extractive dependency and structural inequality. For instance, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which supplies over 70 percent of the world’s cobalt (a critical material for batteries and renewable technologies) has faced widespread environmental degradation, labor exploitation, and governance challenges linked to artisanal and industrial mining operations [86]. Despite its strategic role in the global energy transition, cobalt extraction in the DRC has generated localized scarcity, social dislocation, and health hazards, underscoring the need for threshold-oriented governance and re-politicized decision-making. Similarly, Brazil’s forest conservation policies in the Amazon, including the use of protected areas and Indigenous territories, represent attempts to reconcile ecological limits with social rights [87]. However, recent surges in deforestation driven by agribusiness expansion and policy rollbacks reveal the fragility of such arrangements. These cases illustrate how responsible scarcity must integrate place-based knowledge, equity considerations, and institutional resilience to be effective in contexts marked by historical marginalization and resource asymmetries.

The analysis developed throughout the manuscript reveals consistent patterns of ecological overshoot, structural inequality, and diminishing returns to material consumption. These patterns point to a misalignment between current resource use models and the biophysical and ethical conditions necessary for long-term sustainability. Rather than isolated trends, the findings reflect systemic conditions that call for a reconceptualization of material governance.

The decline in global material circularity, the continued outsourcing of environmental burdens, and the rebound effects associated with technological efficiency all indicate that current policy instruments remain insufficient. These dynamics confirm the limitations of growth-based and market-driven strategies to contain resource overuse, and they highlight the relevance of adopting threshold-oriented and sufficiency-based approaches.

The framework of responsible scarcity proposed in this article provides a structured response to these findings. By integrating ecological thresholds, social provisioning principles, and political economy considerations, it offers a normative and operational lens for guiding national and international strategies. The implications extend to fiscal instruments, industrial planning, and trade governance, affirming that a shift in values, priorities, and institutional design is essential to realign material flows with environmental resilience and social justice.

8. Research Agenda and Policy Implications

The transition toward responsible scarcity requires a coherent and multidisciplinary research agenda capable of informing actionable policy in a context of biophysical constraints and social complexity. Understanding how to govern material flows within ecological limits while ensuring social equity demands moving beyond traditional efficiency paradigms and toward systems-based approaches that incorporate dynamic feedback, behavioral heterogeneity, and institutional evolution.

One of the most urgent research frontiers involves modeling the interactions between resource use, environmental thresholds, and socio-economic systems. Integrated assessment models and complex systems frameworks are needed to simulate non-linearities, tipping points, and trade-offs that emerge when biophysical limits interact with economic growth, infrastructure expansion, and technological innovation. Such models must move beyond aggregated indicators and explore disaggregated impacts across space, time, and social groups. A particular emphasis should be placed on dynamic material footprint accounting, which can help policymakers anticipate the long-term systemic implications of current policy trajectories.

Parallel to these efforts, the behavioral dimension of resource consumption remains underexplored in policy design. While macroeconomic structures shape the overall demand, individual and collective behaviors influence how materials are used, valued, and wasted. Research is needed to understand the role of social norms, cultural expectations, and psychological drivers in perpetuating high-consumption lifestyles. This includes assessing the effectiveness of interventions such as feedback-based policies, peer-to-peer comparisons, and public awareness campaigns that can nudge our behavior toward sufficiency-oriented practices.

Another critical avenue of inquiry lies in the justice implications of resource governance under scarcity. Responsible scarcity cannot be addressed without recognizing that ecological degradation and material excesses are unevenly distributed. Research should examine how material use intersects with power, access, and vulnerability, particularly across axes of class, race, gender, and geography. Methodologies such as environmental justice mapping, participatory policy evaluation, and distributive impact modeling can illuminate which communities bear the greatest burdens and which benefit most from resource-intensive systems. This perspective is essential to ensuring that transitions are not only ecologically sustainable but also socially just.

Technological innovation, often heralded as a solution to resource scarcity, requires careful scrutiny. Research should focus not only on the development of cleaner technologies but also on their scalability, rebound effects, and potential to reinforce existing inequalities. The expansion of renewable energy technologies, for example, must be analyzed in terms of their material inputs, geopolitical supply risks, and implications for circularity. Interdisciplinary studies that integrate engineering, policy, and political economic perspectives are crucial in order to avoid blind spots in technology-driven transition strategies.

From a policy standpoint, the implications of this research agenda are significant. Policymakers must move beyond incremental adjustments and adopt a governance approach that is both adaptive and precautionary. This involves designing institutions that can respond flexibly to new information and that can modify their conditions while being anchored in long-term ecological thresholds. Policies must also be anticipatory, accounting for lagged effects, systemic delays, and the deep uncertainty associated with socio-environmental transitions.

Fiscal instruments such as resource taxes, eco-modulated product charges, and material use quotas can serve as important levers for change if implemented with strong regulatory oversight and redistributive mechanisms. Simultaneously, public investment should prioritize low-impact infrastructure, universal basic services, and community-scale provisioning systems that reduce structural dependence on high-throughput material flows.

International cooperation plays a key role in addressing global material inequalities. Agreements that go beyond emissions accounting and include material footprint metrics, critical mineral governance, and global resource caps are necessary to avoid simply outsourcing environmental impacts through trade. This also implies the need to reform trade and investment rules that will prioritize ecological integrity and unbiased access to essential resources in the Global South.

A forward-thinking research and policy agenda must treat resource scarcity not as a constraint to be circumvented but as a structural condition around which new economic, institutional, and cultural models must be built. This requires confronting uncomfortable questions about entitlement, responsibility, and the redistribution of wealth in a resource-constrained world. Policies must also recede from short-term optimization and embrace transformative planning rooted in resilience, fairness, and planetary realism.

In this context, a preliminary assessment of the economic implications of proposed instruments such as material taxes, eco-modulated charges, or global resource caps is essential to inform of their political and social feasibility. Evidence from OECD and UNEP studies suggests that while such policies may lead to short-term shifts in GDP composition or sectoral employment, they can be offset by gains in efficiency, in innovation, and in the creation of green jobs if accompanied by proper redistributive measures [67]. Moreover, global resource caps (though politically challenging) are increasingly viewed as necessary to align trade and investment with ecological boundaries, particularly in high-consumption economies.

Recent empirical studies from China further underscore the need for regionally differentiated sector-specific models that can inform sustainable transitions in resource governance. For instance, Li et al. [88] identified the persistence of the “Mezzogiorno Trap” in China’s agricultural economy, demonstrating that despite extensive state support, underperforming regions often regress once their aid is withdrawn, highlighting the limits of externally driven development strategies. Complementing this, Guo et al. [89] evaluated the efficiency of China’s agricultural circular economy under the rural revitalization strategy using a DEA–Malmquist–Tobit framework, revealing that financial support significantly boosts efficiency but is sensitive to structural conditions. Similarly, Ding et al. [90] assessed the cultural industry in Jiangsu province and exposed how diminishing returns, scale inefficiencies, and urbanization challenges hinder its sustainable development despite strong policy backing. These studies collectively illustrate the value of disaggregated modeling approaches that integrate spatial, economic, and policy variables to better understand and govern material and institutional transitions.

The research agenda would benefit from a clearer distinction between short-term priorities and long-term transformations. Immediate actions might include behavioral interventions, sufficiency campaigns, and support for low-impact infrastructure, while long-term goals require robust system modeling, institutional redesign, and cross-national governance frameworks. Clarifying this temporal horizon ensures that research efforts are strategically sequenced and policy pathways remain adaptive to emerging knowledge and socio-ecological feedback.

8.1. Policy Proposals for Country-Level Implementation

Translating the responsible scarcity framework into actionable national policy requires differentiated strategies tailored to the socio-economic conditions, ecological contexts, and governance capacities of countries. The following proposals are grouped into three primary country categories (high-income, emerging economies, and resource-rich developing countries) in alignment with the sustainability literature and global policy debates.

8.1.1. High-Income Countries: Reducing Excess Throughput and Enabling Systemic Transition

For high-income countries, which consistently exceed per capita material thresholds and are responsible for a disproportionate share of global environmental pressures, the policy imperative is to reduce absolute material throughput while preserving social well-being. Governments should adopt legally binding material footprint reduction targets, similar to carbon budgets, to cap consumption within planetary boundaries. The European Commission has already proposed such frameworks under the European Green Deal and Circular Economy Action Plan [91].

To achieve this, fiscal instruments such as material-based taxation (e.g., taxes on primary raw material inputs or environmental externalities) can incentivize dematerialization. Product longevity and reparability standards, like those included in the EU’s Eco-design Directive [92], should be enforced and expanded across sectors. Public procurement policies must prioritize low-footprint goods and services. Additionally, high-income countries should invest in education and behavioral change programs to promote sufficiency-oriented lifestyles, leveraging existing models such as Sweden’s One Planet Living initiative [93].

Public spending must shift toward infrastructures that reduce structural dependence on material-intensive provisioning: compact urban design, high-quality public transit, community-scale renewable energy systems, and universal basic services (health, housing, mobility, and digital access). These shifts will not only reduce material demand, but they will also increase social resilience in the face of ecological uncertainty.

8.1.2. Emerging Economies: Avoiding Material Lock-In and Enabling Sustainable Leapfrogging

Emerging economies face a dual challenge as they must meet developmental needs while avoiding the historical trap of material-intensive industrialization. Policies should enable sustainable leapfrogging through green industrial strategies, supported by international technology transfer and domestic innovation ecosystems. The Green Growth Knowledge Platform and UNIDO’s Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Development framework provide tested models for aligning industrial policy with sustainability goals [94].

National development plans should integrate material intensity benchmarks, and governments should adopt regional material budgeting to monitor and manage sector-specific flows (e.g., construction, mobility, energy). Infrastructure investments (particularly in transport, housing, and energy) should be conditioned on life cycle assessments and long-term ecological viability. Development banks and multilateral lenders can play a pivotal role by tying financing to planetary boundary compliance and circularity metrics.

To support local industries, eco-design regulations and fiscal incentives for secondary material use (e.g., tax credits, R&D subsidies) must be scaled. In urban areas, decentralized circular hubs (such as reuse and repair centers, community composting, and shared mobility platforms) can reduce resource lock-in. These efforts should be underpinned by capacity building for local governments and statistical agencies to integrate sustainability indicators in policymaking.

8.1.3. Resource-Rich Developing Countries: Enhancing Value Capture and Environmental Justice

For countries with significant natural resource endowments but limited economic diversification, policies must aim to retain value domestically and prevent environmental degradation. Legal frameworks should mandate domestic processing or value addition prior to export, following the example of Indonesia’s mineral ore export ban, which has successfully expanded local smelting and industrial capacity [95].

Revenue from natural resource rents should be channeled into sovereign wealth funds (e.g., Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global) with mandates for intergenerational equity and green investment. Environmental licensing and enforcement mechanisms must be strengthened, with mandatory environmental impact assessments (EIAs) [96], social safeguards, and community consultation processes, particularly in Indigenous and marginalized territories. Tools such as environmental justice mapping can guide resource zoning and risk mitigation.

International support is essential. Financial and technical assistance should prioritize the development of domestic capabilities in monitoring, regulation, and low-impact extraction technologies. Initiatives like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and the African Mining Vision offer governance blueprints that can be scaled with global collaboration [97]. Moreover, multilateral trade agreements must include binding provisions for labor rights, biodiversity protection, and equitable benefit-sharing mechanisms.

In all country categories, effective implementation requires polycentric governance, inclusive stakeholder engagement, and the alignment of short-term economic instruments with long-term planetary goals. Integrating responsible scarcity principles into national development strategies, fiscal policy, education, and international cooperation frameworks is not only feasible, but necessary to build a fair and ecologically viable future.

9. Conclusions

Addressing the unsustainable trajectory of global resource use requires more than incremental adjustments or technocratic fixes. It demands a fundamental reconsideration of the epistemological and institutional foundations that have historically shaped how societies relate to material resources. This communication article has argued that the longstanding paradigm of resource abundance (under which the biosphere is treated as a passive supplier of inputs and sink wastes) is incompatible with the biophysical realities of the twenty-first century. In its place, we propose the framework of responsible scarcity as a normative and analytical foundation for guiding the next generation of sustainability research and policy.

What is evident throughout this analysis is that the problem is not uniquely about volume, but of systemic misalignment. Resource overuse is not a collateral effect but an embedded feature of economic models that prioritize throughput, expansion, and extraction over balance, resilience, and sufficiency. The empirical evidence (ranging from the transgression of planetary boundaries to the intensification of global material inequalities) suggests that the current organization of production, consumption, and trade is structurally incapable of delivering ecological stability or distributive justice.

The transition toward responsible scarcity does not imply a retreat from modernity, but rather a recalibration of what constitutes prosperity and progress. It calls for a new ethic of governance that respects ecological limits, that values long-term system stability over short-term returns, and that highlights equity as a condition for sustainability, recognizing that material throughput must be managed not only in terms of efficiency, but also in terms of legitimacy, sufficiency, and necessity.

A key insight from this work is that the governance of materials cannot simply be reduced to questions of optimization or decoupling. Instead, it must grapple with the deeper political and cultural forces that drive hyper-consumption, marginalize alternative knowledge systems, and obscure the socio-ecological costs of material provisioning. Without a shift in the underlying goals of economic systems, sustainability strategies will remain constrained by the very paradigms they seek to reform.

Despite its conceptual relevance, the responsible scarcity framework faces practical limitations that must be acknowledged. Implementation may encounter significant political resistance, particularly in economies structurally reliant on resource-intensive sectors or growth-driven metrics. Its operationalization is also highly data-dependent, requiring robust, disaggregated, and timely indicators across social and environmental dimensions, which remain unavailable in many regions. Additionally, cultural heterogeneity poses challenges in the adoption of universal thresholds or sufficiency standards, as perceptions of necessity and well-being vary across contexts. To address these constraints, strategies such as localized policy adaptation, inclusive stakeholder engagement, and strengthened international cooperation are essential. These measures can enhance institutional legitimacy and feasibility, allowing the framework to be tailored without compromising its core normative principles.

Policy responses, therefore, must go beyond managing scarcity to reshape its social meaning. This entails moving away from technocratic narratives that treat scarcity as a temporary disruption or market anomaly, and toward democratic deliberation about what and how much is sufficient. It also requires the redistribution of wealth; income; and access to biophysical space, ecological sinks, and decision-making power.

Finally, this analysis points to the need for intellectual humility in the face of planetary complexity. The limits we face are not merely scientific constructs, but ethical frontiers that test the boundaries of what societies are willing to confront and transform. Responsible scarcity is thus not only a matter of material limits but also a challenge to the dominant cultural logics of excess, entitlement, and disposability.

Rather than offering definitive solutions, this contribution aims to create a conceptual and political space in order to rethink how resource use is framed, contested, and governed in an age of ecological overshoot. Only by embracing the structural nature of the crisis (and by centering ecological integrity and justice in our institutional responses) can we begin to craft sustainable futures that are both viable and fair.

Implications for Policy and Governance

The conceptual and empirical contributions of this article have significant implications across multiple domains. Regarding policy, the responsible scarcity framework offers a withdrawal from throughput-based models toward governance approaches rooted in ecological thresholds, sufficiency, and distributive justice. National governments can apply this perspective to design material footprint-reduction targets, circular economy strategies that prioritize need-based provisioning, and long-term planning instruments that respect planetary boundaries. Regarding research, this framework encourages interdisciplinary work that bridges ecological economics, political ecology, and systems modeling to better understand the structural nature of resource overuse. It also supports the development of new metrics and indicators that integrate biophysical constraints with equity concerns. Regarding governance, the findings highlight the importance of participatory and polycentric approaches capable of integrating diverse knowledge systems (especially those grounded in Indigenous and local ecological practices) into mainstream decision-making. These implications collectively underscore the urgency of aligning institutional responses with the depth and complexity of the resource use crisis.