After having served in leading positions within the Austrian Chapter of the Club of Rome, I am since July 2025 a member of the international Club of Rome, where my main activity is contributing to the Task force on on materials and consumption to drive sustainable resource use, in which I am mainly working on materials and conflicts.
Preliminary Abstract of my input to the task force
Human flourishing and wellbeing requires freedom for personal development, a healthy environment, a fair distribution of material wealth and living in peace and cooperation. For several decades, it seemed as these values were globally on the rise. Companies, politicians and many people stepped up their efforts to protect the environment and conserve resources. Even though the Club of Rome report „Earth4All” rightly described these efforts as “too little too late”, progress was apparent.
In 2024, the tables have turned. Not only is the path towards a more sustainable development reversed in many respects. Many other social and democratic achievements are under pressure: freedoms are being restricted, environmental protection reduced, social benefits cut, wellbeing and peace dropped as unrealistic top priorities. Instead, Europe is massively arming itself. ‘Growth through armament’ is suddenly the perspective while democracy is being jeopardised.
Global conflicts and wars jeopardize human wealth and wellbeing, health and human sense of cooperation. They waste huge amounts of natural resources and destroy incredible amounts of materials. A vicious circle. From this perspective, armed conflicts on the one hand and the need to consume fewer natural resources on the other are two sides of the same coin. Planetary peace and regenerative living must therefore be pursued at the same time—and together.
Resource conflicts are disputes over access, control, and use of natural resources—ranging from energy (oil, gas, rare earths), water, and land, to food and minerals on local, regional and geopolitical scales. These conflicts are often exacerbated by geopolitical inequalities and can escalate into armed violence, particularly when intertwined with historical grievances, poverty, and weak governance.
The Earth4All report had identified five systemic “turnarounds” necessary to ensure a just and sustainable global future. Those turnarounds are needed more than ever and must reflect the causes and escalation of resource conflicts. Benefits and burdens of materials extraction are extremely unequally distributed. There is little employment and little value added in the countries where most of the materials are extracted.
The question is who can or is allowed to ‘extract’ the raw materials, for what purpose and how. Markets are part of this distribution mechanism, but government regulations also play a decisive role. Competition often leads to real conflicts: within companies, for example, over working conditions and pay. Or in a region, when people campaign to prevent the associated destruction. And finally, between countries that use military power to enable or prevent access to certain raw material sources. This balance of power is usually very uneven. And since the underlying resource flows are mostly invisible, the conflicts we trigger with our consumption are also largely hidden to consumers as well.
Nowadays, the defense industry is often seen and presented as a growth driver in a world in which economic growth is less likely to be achieved, which leads as back to the main concern of the “limits to growth” report.. At the same time growth becomes a driver of conflict because of its limits while securing resources may often seem more of a pretext for undemocratic leaders to expanding their own sphere of power.
In 2024, global defense spending has risen by almost 10% to 2.7 trillion dollars (almost 2.5% of the world’s GDP) compared to 2023. Since as a rule of thumb one dollar spent requires around 1 kg of resources, the annual resource consumption of the military can be estimated at more than 2.5 gigatonnes per year. Apart from that it produces enourmous amounts of hazardious waste – and, of course when used, destroys nature and human lives.
Government expenditures and the connected resource consumption for military use competes with civil spending for consumption as well as investment in civil infrastructures and other topics of the future many of which are described in Earth4All as necessary changes described as levers for the turnarounds needed to achieve what has been termed as a “giant leap” . And it is precisely those turnarounds that can help to reduce, if not prevent, local, regional and geopolitical conflicts. Reducing material consumption in the global “North” is a precondition to reduce the pressure on international competition and overcome unequal resource consumption, the shift of value creation to resource-rich countries.
Coming to possible solutions in the context of this report/book/chapter, we therefore need (at least) to discuss
- economic/resource governance for reducing material use, including cooperation and resource targets, dematerialization of consumption, the circular economy or sustainable mining in the Global North,**
- new instruments of global governance, including materials targets, fair minerals deals and materials trusts and questioning the necessity of rearmament and alternatives methods of conflict resolution
- the need for a renewed international socio-environmental peace movement.
** Some of these issues are (also) developed and discussed in other chapters. We will therefore wait until after the next round of discussions before elaborating this section further.
A comprehensive dematerialization strategy would reduce reliance on primary raw materials, minimize resource exploitation, and prevent involvement in future resource conflicts, preserving neutrality and independence. Moreover, recognizing and addressing the justice dimensions of resource governance—particularly the impacts on vulnerable communities—is essential for long-term peace and sustainability.
Effective governance structures are essential to promote circularity, dematerialization, and conflict reduction in both the Global North and South. Local, regional and global resource conflicts are closely intertwined. Key questions include how to overcome unequal resource consumption, meet sustainable extraction targets, and address political and economic barriers at national, European, and global levels.
In short: we will look at regional, local, and workers conflicts to show how they are related to materials use and often intertwined with geopolitical developments from which we derive possible solutions in order to reduce both conflicts and the use of materials. The chapter is organized in three main sections. After an introduction dealing with the roots of conflicts from macro to micro (section 1), we will discuss in section 2 the role of materials in regional and international conflicts and look at armament as a driver of economic growth and economic growth in a growthless world as a driver of conflicts while section 3 presents opportunities for solving the intertwined problems of conflicts and resource use.