Responsibility of consumers for mining capacity: decomposition analysis of scarcity-weighted metal footprints in the case of Japan

Ryosuke Yokoi; Keisuke Nansai; Kenichi Nakajima; Takuma Watari; Masaharu Motoshita

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2020.102025

Responsibility of consumers for mining capacity: decomposition analysis of scarcity-weighted metal footprints in the case of Japan

iScience. 2020 Dec 31;24(1):102025. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2020.102025. eCollection 2021 Jan 22.

Authors

Ryosuke Yokoi¹, Keisuke Nansai^{2

3}, Kenichi Nakajima^{2

4}, Takuma Watari^{2

4}, Masaharu Motoshita¹

Affiliations

¹ Research Institute of Science for Safety and Sustainability, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 16-1 Onogawa, Tsukuba 305-8569, Japan.
² Center for Material Cycles and Waste Management Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies, 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba 305-8506, Japan.
³ ISA, School of Physics, Faculty of Science, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
⁴ Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8563, Japan.

Abstract

Metal-consuming countries depend on mining activity in other countries, which may impose potential pressure on sustainable metal supply. This study proposes an approach to analyze the responsibility of consuming countries for mining activities based on the decomposition analysis of scarcity-weighted metal footprints (S-MFs) of Japan. The application results to the Japanese final demand (iron, copper, and nickel) demonstrate the significance of country- and metal-specific conditions in terms of metal footprints and mining capacity in assessing the responsibility of consuming countries. Consuming countries can identify influential factors to reduce their S-MFs based on the decomposition analysis by discriminating the directly controllable and uncontrollable factors for consuming countries, which can help to plan different countermeasures depending on the types of the identified influential factors. The proposed approach supports metal-consuming countries to determine the effective options for reducing the responsibility for the sustainability of metal supply.

Keywords: Earth Sciences; Environmental Policy; Materials Science; Metals; Mining Geology.