Decoupling for ecological sustainability: A categorisation and review of research literature

Highlights

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  We reviewed 179 articles on decoupling published between 1990–2019.

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  The papers present evidence of absolute impact decoupling, mainly between CO2 and GDP.

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  No evidence of economy-wide, national/international absolute resource decoupling.

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  No evidence of the kind of decoupling needed for ecological sustainability.

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  In the absence of robust evidence, the goal of decoupling rests partly on faith.

Abstract

The idea of decoupling “environmental bads” from “economic goods” has been proposed as a path towards sustainability by organizations such as the OECD and UN. Scientific consensus reports on environmental impacts (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions) and resource use give an indication of the kind of decoupling needed for ecological sustainability: global, absolute, fast-enough and long-enough. This goal gives grounds for a categorisation of the different kinds of decoupling, with regard to their relevance. We conducted a survey of recent (1990–2019) research on decoupling on Web of Science and reviewed the results in the research according to the categorisation. The reviewed 179 articles contain evidence of absolute impact decoupling, especially between CO2 (and SOX) emissions and evidence on geographically limited (national level) cases of absolute decoupling of land and blue water use from GDP, but not of economy-wide resource decoupling, neither on national nor international scales. Evidence of the needed absolute global fast-enough decoupling is missing.