Material-Input-Based Indicators Time Series and 1997 Material Balance of the Italian Economy

Transcription

1 NATIONAL ACCOUNTS Income distribution, sector and satellite accounts Material-Input-Based Indicators Time Series and 1997 Material Balance of the Italian Economy Giulia Barbiero, Stefano Camponeschi, Aldo Femia, Gianna Greca, Antonio Macrì, Angelica Tudini, Miriam Vannozzi Roma, March 2003

2 The project was coordinated by Aldo Femia. The different paragraphs were authored as follows: by Giulia Barbiero (IRSA); by Stefano Camponeschi (stageur Istat); 1, 2.1, 2.2.2, except , 2.2.4, 3.1, 3.2.1, , 3.2.3, 4 by Aldo Femia (Istat); , and by Gianna Greca (Istat); by Antonio Macrì (Istat); , , by Angelica Tudini (Istat); except by Miriam Vannozzi (Istat). The authors wish to thank: - Luisa Picozzi and Raffaele Malizia, as well as Alfonsina Caricchia for supporting the project; - Cesare Costantino, head of Environmental Accounting unit, for managing the project and for his continuous support and helpful suggestions; - The conspicuous number of colleagues of Istat that provided data and knowledge for the realisation of the project, and particularly Mario Adua, Ludovico Bracci, Antonella Bussi, Mara Cammarrota, Pina de Palo, Augusto Gualdi, Sonia Isabella (trainee) Federico di Leo, Natale Renato Fazio, Susanna Mantegazza, Cecilia Manzi, Pasquale Papa, Giuliano Rallo, Andrea Ridolfi (trainee) Antonio Palumbo (trainee), and Giuseppe Puglisi. - P. Cerretti, Aldo Poggi (Ministero delle Attività Produttive); Mario Contaldi, Stefania Balzamo (Environment and Territory Protection Agency - APAT); Giovanni La Gioia (Università di Bari); Prof. Giorgio Nebbia; Gianni Pastore, Mario Giampietro (Istituto per la Nutrizione); Antonella Trisorio (Istituto Nazionale di Economia Agraria - INEA); Franca Widmar (Centro di Ricerche E Studi sul Mercato Edilizio - CRESME); Rosaria Napoletano (Istituto di Servizi per il Mercato Agricolo Alimentare - ISMEA); RFI; Geom. Maestri (Ente Nazionale per le Strade - ANAS), and many others, for providing basic data for the project and useful suggestions for their elaboration. We are also particularly grateful to: - the Wuppertal Institut fuer Klima, Umwelt und Energie, and in particular to Helmut Schuetz for making available the coefficients for the calculation of indirect flows of traded goods; - Riccardo de Lauretis, of APAT, for providing basic data and explaining the methodologies used in their construction; - Carolina Ardi and Giusy Vetrella, of Istat, for a number of stimulating discussions an their helpful advices. Financial assistance was provided by the Commission of the European Communities, which is here gratefully acknowledged (DG Eurostat/B1 Grant Agreement nr ). 2

3 CONTENTS 1 Introduction The material-input-based indicators time series Main results and interpretation of the empirical evidence DMI Direct Material Input DMC Domestic Material Consumption PTB Physical Trade Balance TMR Total Material Requirement TMC - Total Material Consumption Physical Trade Balance including Indirect Flows Data sources and methods Used Domestic Extraction Fossil Fuels Minerals Metal ores Industrial minerals Construction minerals Biomass Imports and exports Unused Domestic Extraction General remarks Unused materials from mining and quarrying Unused materials from biomass harvest Unused materials from soil excavation and dredging Soil excavation for the construction of buildings Soil excavation for the construction of transport infrastructure The estimate of excavated soil as a certain minimum quantity Indirect flows associated to imports and exports The Material Balance for Main results Inputs and outputs - detailed classifications The sequence of accounts Data sources and methods Additional Inputs: memorandum items for balancing Oxygen for combustion and Nitrogen for emissions from combustion Oxygen for respiration Air for manure decomposition and Water for animal production Additional Outputs Emissions and wastes Emissions to air Waste landfilled Emissions to Water Dissipative use of products and dissipative losses Dissipative use of products Dissipative losses Memorandum items for balancing Water vapour from combustion Respiration of humans and livestock Material stock changes Infrastructures and Buildings Machinery Other durables Inventory changes Concluding remarks...46 Bibliography

4 1 Introduction The need for a reduction of material flows induced by man has been recognised by the European Commission and the European Parliament, which have recently called for the de-coupling of economic growth from the use of resources and have given priority to this issue in the 6th Environmental Action Programme (EAP), by entitling one of the four priority areas "sustainable use of resources and management of waste". Indeed, modern economic growth is characterised by a strong positive correlation between income and resource use 1. This has brought man to be one of the most important causes of change of the face of the earth. The quantity of earth moved yearly by man is much bigger than that naturally moved by wind, glaciers and formation of mountains, and comparable to that coming out from oceanic volcanoes, as well as to that carried by all the rivers in the world 2. Not only man is a very effective geomorphic agent, but also the major determinant of evolution in the biosphere, changing the coverage of the earth s surface and the quantities of living creatures according to its needs: no less than 35% of biological production is now appropriated by man (RIVM-UNEP, 1997; Vitousek et al. 1986). It is very unlikely that such gigantic quantitative interventions do not affect the quality of the environment, dramatically changing the equilibriums of Nature, established by millions of years of evolution, of which man himself cannot do without. This is evident for the case of fossil fuels: in a few decennia the enormous quantities of the carbon element that have been sequestrated from the atmosphere and secluded in the underground in millions of years are being brought to circulate again above the earth s surface, and mainly returned the atmosphere itself as waste products of combustion, giving rise to major climate changes that endanger the lives of billions of people around the globe. Decoupling resource use from GDP in the context of a policy aimed at ecological sustainability means that ways have to be found in order to reduce the size of material flows without reducing income (relative decoupling with GDP growing at a faster rate than material flows still means growing material flows, i.e. growing environmental burden). Whether this is possible or not, is an open question. The issue of the size of human systems of material transformation, next to those of their quality and spatial distribution, is nevertheless a crucial one for long-term environmental concerns, i.e. for the quality of human life on this planet and its very sustainability. The latter can be assessed only in terms of relative dimension of the human system with respect to the earth s and biosphere s dimension, and this in turn can be done only if the absolute size of the human system is known. The measurement of this absolute size requires that a common unit of measure be adopted for all the flows that are determined by man. This unit of measure must be a physical one, because it has to be compared to the quantities expressing the size of the environment, which are 1 Not only this is evident from a-priori reasoning based on the very concept of Modern Economic Growth (as defined and described by Simon Kuznets), but there is now enough data to observe this correlation as a statistical fact. 2 This is what the available estimates of the quantities of minerals moved by man on a global level, that have been proposed outside official statistics, tell us. According to Hooke (1994) water is the biggest single cause of geomorphic change and moves 53 billion tons of soil yearly, while in the 1990s humans have transported each year billion tons of rock and soil. Ryabchilkov (1975) estimates that man extracts 100 billion tons of metals, oil, rock and gravel a year; moreover, it moves (by ploughing) the surface of 3000 square km of land, dramatically increasing soil erosion. 4

5 necessarily of a physical measure: it must express energy, space or, as in the case of the study presented here, matter. With respect to other holistic measures of the overall burden imposed by a country on nature, which are based on energy or space, and are not and not by chance objects of official statistics, economy-wide material-flow-based indicator and balances have two clear advantages: the certainty of the aggregation basis (only physical quantities that can be intrinsically measured in weight units are aggregated, without the need of doubtful transformations) and the fact that they are meant to describe actual phenomena, without recurring in principle to what-if valuations. The knowledge of the quantities of materials directly moved and of the flows indirectly determined by a country s activities represents therefore a basic pre-requisite of every policy aimed at influencing the evolution of a complex society towards more sustainable ways of satisfying the needs of its population. Indeed, the overall size of these flows, described by time series of material-input-based indicators, provides information on how much the country at issue is contributing to changing the earth s surface and how this contribution is evolving; on the other hand, material balances, which include the final destination of matter (outputs) besides its appropriation by man (inputs), provide a framework for a coherent and comprehensive description of the particular flows that sustain the economy s metabolism, i.e. of the whole set of physical interactions between man and nature that affect the equilibrium of the latter. Material-flow based indicators and balances, moreover, are the only items of official statistics that meet the call for a general measure of these interactions, i.e. for easy-to-understand allencompassing indicators that allow to tell whether the situation is getting, in general, better or worse. They also have the exclusive feature of including an evaluation of indirect, life-cyclewide effects of a country s production or consumption, that allow to connect the quest for environmentally friendly solutions to that of a more equitable international distribution of the burdens and advantages of international exchange, also called for by important sectors of society. All this, of course, coexists with the evident flaws of aggregate measures whose meaning is made fuzzy by the infinite combinations of internal composition that can give rise to any single value a common phenomenon with aggregate indicators, by the way, the antidote to which is that the limits given by their definition are clear and that they be used together with more specific indicators. To make a parallel with a much better known case, Total Material Consumption is connected with the distance from environmental sustainability very similarly to the way that GDP is connected with welfare : it is a very loose relationship, that would be strong only under some very restrictive ceteris paribus condition (i.e. given qualitative and spatial composition, distribution ) which are not necessarily satisfied; however the relationship can be considered valid for very substantial reductions or increases, given normal quality changes and composition shifts. In other words, a reduction of one order of magnitude of aggregate material flows would surely mean that the pressures on the environment typical of the industrial age are becoming less unsustainable, while evolution towards sustainability will hardly be compatible with further increases of man-induced material flows, even if no new dangerous interactions between man and nature were emerging. The present report is organised as follows: 2.1 and 3.1 provide the results of the elaborations, respectively for the Material Flow indicators time series and for the sequence of material flow accounts of Indicators time series are presented along with some comments on their evolution, meant to the enhance the understanding of their meaning and to facilitate a correct interpretation of the indicators themselves; 2.2 and 3.2 provide details on the construction of the aggregates included in the time series and in the balance respectively, with a description of data sources and methods used to make the figures consistent with the needs of economy-wide MFA. In 4 we draw some general conclusions concerning the continuation of the work on economy-wide MFA in Italy. 5

6 2 The material-input-based indicators time series 2.1 Main results and interpretation of the empirical evidence Table 1 reports the figures resulting from our calculations of the main MFA-based indicators. It must be pointed out that these results are of provisional nature, and may change according to possible future analyses and refinements of calculation methods. On the whole, the construction of the time series has been inspired to a caution criterion: doubtful cases where more than one solution was admissible have been treated in a way that underestimation is a very likely outcome for some individual items included in the indicators, and an almost certain one for certain aggregates. This however does not influence the order of magnitude of the indicators nor their evolution through time, but only their level, and to a limited extent. It can be noted that we did not include in the table the indicator Indirect Flows Trade Balance, but substituted it with a variant (Physical Trade Balance including Indirect Flows) which we consider more interesting even if not included in Eurostat s Methodological Guide 3. 3 Eurostat,

7 Table Material Flow Based Indicators Italy - Tons DMI ACCOUNT Used domestic extraction Fossil Fuels Minerals Biomass Imports DMI - direct material input DMC ACCOUNT Direct material input Exports DMC - domestic material consumption PTB ACCOUNT Imports Exports PTB - physical trade balance TMR ACCOUNT Used domestic extraction Imports Unused domestic extraction from mining/quarrying from biomass harvest soil excavation Indirect flows associated to imports TMR - Total Material Requirement TMC ACCOUNT Total material requirement Exports Indirect flows associated to exports TMC - Total Material Consumption PHYSICAL TRADE BALANCE including INDIRECT FLOWS Imports and indirect flows connected to them Exports and indirect flows connected to them PHYSICAL TRADE BALANCE including INDIRECT FLOWS (continues) 7

8 Table 1 (continued) Material Flow Based Indicators Italy - Tons DMI ACCOUNT Used domestic extraction Fossil Fuels Minerals Biomass Imports DMI - direct material input DMC ACCOUNT Direct material input Exports DMC - domestic material consumption PTB ACCOUNT Imports Exports PTB - physical trade balance TMR ACCOUNT Used domestic extraction Imports Unused domestic extraction from mining/quarrying from biomass harvest soil excavation Indirect flows associated to imports TMR - Total Material Requirement TMC ACCOUNT Total material requirement Exports Indirect flows associated to exports TMC - Total Material Consumption PHYSICAL TRADE BALANCE including INDIRECT FLOWS Imports and indirect flows connected to them Exports and indirect flows connected to them PHYSICAL TRADE BALANCE including INDIRECT FLOWS (continues) 8

9 Table 1 (continued) Material Flow Based Indicators Italy - Tons DMI ACCOUNT Used domestic extraction Fossil Fuels Minerals Biomass Imports DMI - direct material input DMC ACCOUNT Direct material input Exports DMC - domestic material consumption PTB ACCOUNT Imports Exports PTB - physical trade balance TMR ACCOUNT Used domestic extraction Imports Unused domestic extraction from mining/quarrying from biomass harvest soil excavation Indirect flows associated to imports TMR - Total Material Requirement TMC ACCOUNT Total material requirement Exports Indirect flows associated to exports TMC - Total Material Consumption PHYSICAL TRADE BALANCE including INDIRECT FLOWS Imports and indirect flows connected to them Exports and indirect flows connected to them PHYSICAL TRADE BALANCE including INDIRECT FLOWS (continues) 9

10 Table 1 (continued) Material Flow Based Indicators Italy - Tons DMI ACCOUNT Used domestic extraction Fossil Fuels Minerals Biomass Imports DMI - direct material input DMC ACCOUNT Direct material input Exports DMC - domestic material consumption PTB ACCOUNT Imports Exports PTB - physical trade balance TMR ACCOUNT Used domestic extraction Imports Unused domestic extraction from mining/quarrying from biomass harvest soil excavation Indirect flows associated to imports TMR - Total Material Requirement TMC ACCOUNT Total material requirement Exports Indirect flows associated to exports TMC - Total Material Consumption PHYSICAL TRADE BALANCE including INDIRECT FLOWS Imports and indirect flows connected to them Exports and indirect flows connected to them PHYSICAL TRADE BALANCE including INDIRECT FLOWS

11 2.1.1 DMI Direct Material Input Figure 1 shows the evolution of the direct input of materials by the Italian economy from 1980 to Figure 1 - Direct Material Input (DMI), Italy , tons Used Domestic Extraction Imports (direct flow) The overall level of DMI has not changed very much, floating around an average of about 920 million tons in the period considered. The peaks have been reached at its starting and closing years. It is a common practice, in the specialised literature, to compare the long-term dynamics of DMI to those of GDP, calculating the ratio of the former to the latter, in order to asses whether there is or not a decoupling of resource use from economic growth. In the period, Italy s GDP at constant 1995 prices i.e. the value that has been added to the used matter has grown by almost 40%. Looking at the question of decoupling in the usual way, therefore, we can underline a clear evidence of relative decoupling of growth from direct material inputs, though not of an absolute decoupling 4. It must be pointed out, however, that since DMI includes the weight of imports, it does not correspond to GDP (which does not include the value of imports), so that the comparison between DMI and GDP does not have a great explanatory value. A material aggregate that parallels GDP, indeed, is given by the Domestic Extraction of materials; this aggregate slightly decreased in absolute terms and therefore in this sense there has been absolute decoupling. This, however, only tells us that more value is produced in Italy with less resource extraction from Italy s environment. As shown in figure 2, the relative decrease of Used Domestic Extraction as a whole has been mainly due to biomass production, which decreased even in absolute figures, while minerals 4 Relative decoupling is defined, in relation to used materials, as decreasing DMI/GDP share; the decoupling is said to be absolute when the decrease of the ratio is achieved with decreasing DMI and non-decreasing GDP. 11

12 remained steady at around 50% of overall direct material inputs. Only a tiny share of these materials, mainly used in construction activities, is sold abroad, so that a substantial accumulation of materials into the antroposphere must take place each year, as confirmed by the detailed analysis carried out for 1997, which includes an explicit calculation of additions to stocks. 100% Figure 2 - Percentage composition of Domestic extraction, Italy % 80% 70% 60% Biomass Fossil Fuels 50% 40% 30% Minerals 20% 10% 0% A more correct comparison for DMI than that with GDP is with GDP plus the value of imports, as DMI is given by Domestic Extraction plus the weight of imports. The latter has remained on the whole stable, while the former (GDP + imports in constant prices) has grown by 53% in the period under analysis. Therefore, as far as the categories of materials considered so far are concerned (i.e. direct flows of used materials), there is a very strong relative decoupling, due also to the fact that imports have grown in value by 138% in the same period, and by only 32.3% in physical terms. Also this comparison however is not entirely satisfactory, as imports have a very different meaning from that of Domestic Extraction as far as resource use (and environmental burden) are concerned. Indeed, one unit of Domestic Extraction represents, by definition, just one unit of matter that is taken from the (national) environment. One unit of import, on the contrary, represents more than one unit of material taken from nature. Therefore, much importance must be given to the composition of DMI in the assessment of decoupling. The composition of the Italian DMI has indeed been slowly shifting in favour of imports, that have grown from 23.6% to 31% of DMI in the period covered by the time series. For an economy based on transformation and poor of natural resources like the Italian one, this is not surprising, in presence of economic growth. The growth of import s share, however, hints that the relative decoupling highlighted above is at least in part the consequence of a shift to foreign countries of the growth of environmental burden connected to the growth of Italian production, rather than of a genuine change towards greater resource efficiency in the Italian production structure. As we will see below, this shift can be fully grasped only looking at indirect flows connected to imports, the growth of which shows how in an open economy, even in presence of relative (or 12

13 also absolute) decoupling of DMI from GDP, the growth of the latter might still be a source of growth for material flows at the global level DMC Domestic Material Consumption Figure 3 shows the evolution of Domestic Material Consumption, which is obtained by subtracting from DMI the quantities exported. It includes the materials, extracted domestically or imported, that remain in the country and that are either accumulated in stocks or transformed into wastes, emissions, dissipative uses, and so forth. Figure 3 - Domestic Material Consumption, Italy , tons DMC Exports DMI Exports have almost doubled in the period considered, reaching 11.5% of DMI. This has caused a slightly decreasing trend in DMC, which was at end of the period around 95% of its 1980 level. The growth of exports implies that, with respect to the past, a bigger share of the stress connected with the intake of resources (whether domestic or foreign) necessary for national production is due to the satisfaction of demands of non-residents. The monetary aggregate that parallels DMC is total resources for domestic use, given by GDP plus imports minus exports. This has grown by 37.7% in the analysed period, which means there has been a strong tendency to decoupling of the weight of the materials that physically remain in the country from the value of the goods in which they are embodied and of the services for which they are used PTB Physical Trade Balance The Physical Trade Balance of an economy is the difference between the matter that flows into the country as imports and the matter that flows outside the country as exports. This indicator gives a very rough first indication on the role played by the country in the international division of the extraction of resources as well as of their use - and of connected environmental burdens - that accompanies the international division of labour. The countries that export more than import bear some pollution deriving from material production activities in favour of the countries that import material resources and use them, while the latter clearly create more output to the local environment and/or accumulate more physical capital than would be allowed by the country s 13

14 resources. The environmental consequences - not only of the extraction and use of resources but also of their transportation - change according to the nature of the traded commodities and to the distances covered by the goods. Figure 4 - Physical Trade Balance (PTB), Italy , tons Imports Exports Physical Trade Balance In the case of Italy, as can be seen from figure 4, not only the historical dependency from foreign material resources, as already seen, has increased, but also that from foreign demand of transformed products. Though in relative terms the growth of exports has been greater than that of imports, it has remained lower in absolute terms, so that the PTB has grown by 11.5%. The PTB can be compared to the monetary trade balance, which has mostly seen exports prevailing on imports (on average, of around million eurolire). This strongly confirms the importance of material transformation in the Italian economy, whose function in the international division of labour is mainly that of adding value to imported materials; these are imported as raw or semi-manufactured goods and at the same time that value is added in production, some matter is subtracted and transformed in waste and emissions on the Italian territory, so that the resulting production, and especially the portion sold abroad, has a much greater value per physical unit than the goods imported TMR Total Material Requirement Figure 5 shows the evolution of the Total Material Requirement of the Italian economy in the 1980es and 1990es. This indicator is equal to the DMI plus all the quantities of materials (excluding water and air) that have not actually been incorporated into products at any stage of national production but have been moved, in the country or abroad, in order to allow the realisation of the domestic production and consumption. 14

15 Figure 5 - Total Material Requirement, Italy , tons Domestic extraction Flows due to Imports Indirect Unused Used Direct The TMR of the Italian economy has grown by almost 30% in the analysed period. This growth is almost exclusively due to the indirect flows connected to imports component. Indeed, the Italian imports required the abstraction from nature in foreign countries of an ever bigger quantity of materials. This is due not just to the growth of the matter directly embodied in imports themselves, but also, as figure 6 shows, to that of the indirect flows connected on average to each unit of matter actually imported. This is an interesting feature of Italian foreign trade, which clearly is the effect of changing composition of imports in favour of the ones with higher upstream flows, which could mean either more elaborated goods, or more primary goods requiring the removal of unused materials for their extraction. Figure 6 also shows the ratio between unused domestic materials and used ones. This ratio has decreased in the period analysed, mainly due to the decrease of its soil excavation component, due in turn to the slowdown of construction activities. Also TMR is usually compared to GDP. This comparison would show a relative decoupling, as GDP has grown more than TMR. As already pointed out, however, physical indicators that comprise import flows (whether actual or indirect) are more sensibly compared to monetary indicators comprising their value. Thus considered the relationship between monetary and physical measures, the relative decoupling is even more evident, since as already seen GDP plus the value of imports has grown by 53%. It must be underlined, nevertheless that this decoupling is only relative, being the 30% growth of total inputs of the Italian economy per se the most important feature for considerations on the environmental implications of economic growth. 15

16 Figure 6 - Ratios between unused and used domestic extraction and between indirect and direct flows of imports, Italy unused/used domestic flows 0,20 0,15 0,10 0,05-4,50 4,00 3,50 3,00 2,50 2,00 1,50 1,00 0, TMC - Total Material Consumption Total Material Consumption is obtained by subtracting from TMR both the exports and the indirect flows connected to them. Notwithstanding the growth of the latter two items, the TMC time series displays a clear upwards trend in the analysed period, with an overall growth of 15.2% in the period. It is interesting to note that this trend is opposite to that of the corresponding direct flows, measured by DMC. When the indirect flows are included, it appears clearly that the de-materialisation of the Italian final domestic demands which has taken place in terms of direct flows of used materials, does not correspond to a de-materialisation of the whole production chain, but rather, on the contrary, to a growth of the overall stress imposed on natural resources at the global level Figure 7 - Total Material Consumption, Italy , tons TMR Direct and indirect flows due to exports TMC indirect/direct import flows Ratio between unused and used domestic flows Ratio between indirect and direct import flows 16

17 As far as the comparison with monetary aggregates is concerned, we have already seen that the growth of the resources available for domestic use has been of almost 38% ( 2.1.2), so also in this case there is a strong evidence for de-coupling, but only in relative terms. The Italians have consumed and invested more (in value units), directly using less materials for that, but requiring more materials to be moved abroad for the same purpose, though not as much more as if there had been growth in fixed proportions Physical Trade Balance including Indirect Flows The purpose of this indicator is to highlight the position of the country in international trade with respect to its effects on the worldwide movements of materials that support modern economies 5. It is given by the virtual physical balance of foreign trade that can be calculated considering, besides the direct flows comprised in the PTB, also the flows indirectly due to international trade. This is a total flows kind of measure, that parallels PTB in the same way as TMR parallels DMI. The time series of this indicator, which is particularly meaningful for transformation economies like the Italian one, is presented in figure 8. Figure 8 - Physical Trade Balance including Indirect Flows of imports/exports, Italy , tons Imports plus their indirect flows Exports plus their indirect flows Physical Trade Balance including Indirect Flows of imports/exports Imports plus indirect flows connected to them have grown by 73.5% in the period covered by the times series, while exports plus indirect flows connected to them have grown by 144.6% in The growth of total flows related to exports, though faster in relative terms, has however been sensibly lower in absolute terms than the growth of total flows related to imports; thus the gap between the natural resources demanded to the rest of the world in order to satisfy national demand and those necessary to produce the goods supplied to the rest of the world, which was already as high as 600 million tons, has grown by 52.6% in the same period; in other 5 As pointed out above, the methodological guide does not include this indicator among the ones proposed, but we think it is a very interesting one. It can be considered as a modified version of the balance of the Indirect Flows Trade Balance Account (see page 60 of the guide), from which it is derived by including direct flows, or in other words summing the PTB to it. 17

18 words, the decrease of national demand s share of responsibility for material movements due to the growth of exports, has been more than compensated by the shift towards imports that are more material-intensive, even if only indirectly. 2.2 Data sources and methods The description of the sources and methods used in the construction of the indicators time series will follow an incremental pattern, i.e. each item will be described as it first appears on the scene of the accounts Used Domestic Extraction Fossil Fuels The time series for fossil fuels is based on data from Istat s surveys, published yearly in the Annuario Statistico Italiano ; these data have been integrated with Ministry of Industry data for Coal and GPL. Methane is reported in official statistics in terms of cubic meters. This has been transformed into weight units using a factor of 0,705 kg per cubic meter, supplied by the Italian Environment and Territory Protection Agency (APAT, formerly ANPA). As for peat, the data are incomplete as they come from the results of a joint Istat-Ministry of Industry survey on the production of quarries and peat fields, which covered from 1980 to 1998 on average 69% of the number of Italian provinces. The extracted quantities reported for this material are very small, and it is clear that even with complete data, the total of domestic fossil fuel extraction would not change much Minerals Metal ores Also for Metal ores, the sources are Istat s surveys results and the Ministry of Industry. The former source has been privileged in case of discrepancy between the data supplied by the two Industrial minerals The sources are the same as for metal ores, but for marine salt, for which data have been provided by the Ministry of Finance, State Monopoles Construction minerals 6 The figures calculated in the present study for construction minerals result from two different estimation procedures that exploit information from various sources, trying to integrate them as to have a complete coverage of extraction activities concerning these materials. We will describe here mainly the procedure concerning materials extracted from quarries, which gives on average 95% of total construction minerals input. The remaining 5% is soil from excavation activities which is reused in construction. We will report here only the final step of this calculation, which 6 All products of NACE groups 14.1 and 14.2 are included under the present heading, irrespective of their actual final destination, which might in some cases be different from constructions in a strict sense. 18

19 is based on the estimate of total excavated soil, described in the unused materials section of the present report. The estimation procedure adopted for the construction of the time series builds on the results of a regression model that has already been used in past applications (in particular, for the resource intake modules of the Italian NAMEAs), integrating these results with the better knowledge of the phenomenon provided by the PRODCOM survey, whose results are available for the latest years of the period. The regression model describes the data on quantities extracted, aggregated at the province level, that have been reported through the years by the producers in the survey on the production of quarries and peat fields, already mentioned above about peat production. These data were reported until 1986 in a publication of the Ministry of Industry ( Relazione sul servizio minerario e statistica delle industrie estrattive in Italia ), that was no more compiled after the regulatory powers on these activities were handed over to the Regions. Thereafter, the questionnaires that fed the Relazione continued flowing in at the Ministry and at Istat from a slowly dwindling number of provinces, and were thus available for the download of the basic data. This survey, serving mainly administrative purposes, is no longer the main source of information on the phenomenon, as nowadays more complete information on quarries production is supplied by the PRODCOM survey. It is indeed the availability of both these questionnaires and of PRODCOM results for the last years of the period that makes an integration of the two sources possible. The regression step of the estimation procedure adopted has consisted in the reconstruction of the missing data (concerning the province/year couples for which no data were reported), made by extending the statistical regularities that could be observed in the available data, with reference to the relationship between the quantities of extracted materials that had been declared and relevant supply and demand variables (number of employees of the quarries, value of public works realised, buildings growth in cubic meters). The following step of the estimation procedure has consisted in the comparison of the results with those of the PRODCOM survey, which were available for 1997 and 1998, and had in turn been adapted in order to cover extraction sites with less than three employees, not covered by the PRODCOM survey. This comparison resulted in the discovery of a substantial hole in the estimate based on administrative data, which however were the only available source for the years before The corrected PRODCOM data have therefore been adopted for the last two years of the time series, and a further correction has been made to the results of the regression model for the previous years, rescaling everything to make it consistent with 1997 and Therefore, the level of the series is dictated by the PRODCOM results, while its profile is determined by the results of the regression model. As far as reused soil from excavation is concerned, we extrapolated to the whole period the information given for 1997 by the waste statistics published by the Italian Environment Protection Agency (ANPA, now APAT). According to our calculations, based on the data provided by this source, the percentage of reused waste soil resulted to be 28,4%. The total quantity of excavated soil, on which the estimate of the reused quantity is based, was in turn derived by a procedure which is described in the unused flows part of this chapter (see ). 19

20 Biomass from Agriculture The data concerning this item come from Istat s surveys on agricultural production; these data can be found in publications such as the Annuario delle statistiche dell agricoltura, which supply data that are complete and available with a great richness of detail. A quite raw ad-hoc hypothesis has allowed to include among the used materials the straw used in animal production: following Bringezu and Schuetz (2001a), we assumed that half of the straw produced has been used, while the rest is part of the unused flows of agriculture. Like most other unused biomasses, the total quantity has been calculated by the application of technical coefficients to harvested plant production. These coefficients are discussed in , along with the others concerning unused biomasses. from Forestry The source for forestry production data are Istat surveys results, published yearly in the volumes Annuario delle statistiche forestali, Coltivazioni agricole e forestali and Annuario delle statistiche dell agricoltura. Data comprise the main non-wood products gathered in the forests as well as the timber felled. The latter is expressed in volume units, and has been transformed in weight using a coefficient of 0.7 and 0.8 tons per cubic meter for resinous and broad-leaved species respectively. from Fishing Also for fishing the source are Istat s surveys, whose results are published in the Annuario Statistico Italiano. from Hunting No data are available on this component of domestic extraction, which however is quantitatively irrelevant in Italy, nor it seems possible to produce an estimate that be something more of a pure guess. from other activities (Honey gathering, Mushrooms etc.) Mushrooms and other forest non-wood products to be reported under this heading are included in forestry statistics. It was possible to include honey production only for the years after Imports and exports Data on foreign trade are available in physical units, and published by Istat in the Statistica del commercio con l estero. It must be pointed out, however, that these data do not comprise all packaging crossing borders along with goods. The hypothesis has been considered, of an ad hoc study for the calculation, via extrapolation of the evidence provided by the available data, of packaging associated to imports, but the existing evidence has been considered too scant for such an exercise to have enough hopes of being successful, in the face of its relatively high costs Unused Domestic Extraction General remarks The items that have to be added to DMI in order to compile the TMR are among the most uncertain and difficult to calculate. It has been possible, however, to carry out estimates which give a clear idea of the order of magnitude of some environmentally relevant flows, usually neglected by statistics. 20

21 While plenty of statistical surveys, as well as reports by companies and studies in the economic literature are readily available that allow to determine with a certain precision the useful production realised in the different fields of economic activity, it is very difficult to find information about the «materials extracted or otherwise moved on a nation s territory on purpose and by means of technology which are not fit or intended for use» 7. The reason is probably that these materials are wastes, and due to the lack of economic importance, knowing their amount has not been until recently of great interest. Nevertheless in recent years the environmental relevance of these flows, as well as their impact on the economic system, i.e. the costs connected to their movement and disposal, have become more and more clear; as a consequence, new sources of information have been made available towards the later years of the period covered by our time series. This new information allows us to propose estimation procedures suited to determine also past flows though very approximately and under relatively strong assumptions of invariance of ratios between used and unused quantities of materials. Clearly, these procedures, based on the extrapolation of an evidence that is available for some years only, do not provide date suited for assessing the effects of the changes in extraction techniques in the period under analysis, but nevertheless allow to observe the effects on total unused quantities of the changes in the relative importance of the different kinds of used materials extracted. On the whole, the latter is the most important source of change of total unused materials: if not really fixed, indeed, the relation of the unused flows to the used ones in connection to which they arise, is not much variable, due to the way the materials that are useful or unuseful (for humans) find themselves mixed in nature. The work on the flows included in the Domestic Unused Extraction item has been carried out in two phases. In the first one, a base estimate has been produced by using default technical coefficients which can be found in the literature, and in particular, the minimum values among those present in the technical report Total Material Requirement of European Union published by European Environment Agency 8 ; in the second one, in order to replace these default estimates by more accurate evaluations, studies have been carried out on the most important flows of unused materials, which have been recalculated on the basis of the specific knowledge thus acquired about the Italian case Unused materials from mining and quarrying The present paragraph describes how we determined the coefficients used to express the amount of unused materials in relation to the domestic material extractions from mining and quarrying activities, and applied to available production data in order to construct the time series. In general, whenever such coefficients could be constructed on the basis of evidence from the Italian case, they have been calculated as the ratio between the quantities of wastes arising from specific productions, reported in surveys or company reports, and the total physical quantity of used production from the corresponding set of economic activities. When this was not possible, figures found in the literature have been adopted. Coefficients are indeed available from other case studies at the European or world level, but it is clear that the results obtained by applying the same coefficient to different countries could be misleading as in each country there are different geological conditions which affect the ease or the difficulty in carrying out minerals extraction. The use of common coefficients therefore could bias the results of the analysis. 7 Definition from Eurostat s methodological guide (Eurostat, 2001), Bringezu and Schetz (2001a). 21