In the appeal “Transformation by Design not by Disaster”, almost 60 civil society organisations call for resource protection to be enshrined in law. In its coalition agreement, the current traffic light government has created a window of opportunity in which it could initiate the reduction of primary resource consumption. But one year after taking office, little has been done in terms of resource protection.
The average consumption of metallic, fossil, mineral and renewable resources in Germany is far too high. The ecological and social consequences resulting from this along the value chain can no longer be cushioned. The far too high consumption is particularly at the expense of the people in the raw material producing countries of the Global South as well as future generations. The high resource consumption of countries in the Global North often goes hand in hand with human rights violations elsewhere and manifests global injustices. Global asymmetries in resource extraction manifest colonial patterns.
In their appeal, the organisations show for four major industrially used material flows that a “business-as-usual” approach to resource use inevitably leads to a dead end. A resource turnaround is urgently needed. As one of the countries with the highest per capita resource consumption, Germany has a special responsibility here. In order to do justice to this, the organisations demand, among other things, that Germany must reduce its per capita consumption of non-renewable raw materials to six tonnes per year by 2050. The consumption of renewable raw materials must be reduced to two tonnes per person and year. This means a reduction of 85 and 44 percent respectively.
Click here to download the entire appeal.