Eco-economic decoupling

In economic and environmental fields, decoupling refers to an economy that would be able to grow without corresponding increases in environmental pressure. In many economies, increasing production (GDP) raises pressure on the environment. An economy that would be able to sustain economic growth while reducing the amount of resources such as water or fossil fuels used and delink environmental deterioration at the same time would be said to be decoupled. Environmental pressure is often measured using emissions of pollutants, and decoupling is often measured by the emission intensity of economic output. In 2020, Haberl et al found that absolute decoupling was rare. They found that a few industrialised countries had weak decoupling of GDP from "consumption-based" CO2 production. Also in 2020, Vadén et al found no evidence of national or international economy-wide decoupling. In cases where evidence of decoupling exists, one proposed explanation is the transition to a service economy. The environmental Kuznets curve is a proposed model for eco-economic decoupling. In 2002, the OECD defined the term as follows: the term 'decoupling' refers to breaking the link between "environmental bads" and "economic goods." It explains this as having rates of increasing wealth greater than the rates of increasing impacts. Historically there has been a close correlation between economic growth and environmental degradation: as communities grow in size and prosperity, so the environment declines. This trend is clearly demonstrated on graphs of human population numbers, economic growth, and environmental indicators. There is a concern that, unless resource use is checked, modern global civilization will follow the path of ancient civilizations that collapsed through overexploitation of their resource base. While conventional economics is concerned largely with economic growth and the efficient allocation of resources, ecological economics has the explicit goal of sustainable scale (rather than continual growth), fair distribution and efficient allocation, in that order.