Patterns of Production and Consumption in the Atlantic Space and Future Environment and Resource Scenarios

Scientific Paper, nº. 36

The environmental challenges of the Atlantic Space are manifold and mutually reinforcing. This paper examines the dynamics of four key environment and resources issues, looking to the 2020/2025 horizon: climate mitigation and energy transformations; food security; overfishing; and wildlife trafficking and biodiversity loss. Each is global in nature, yet Atlantic actors play influential roles and have shared interests in, and critical resources for, addressing them. Underlying these challenges are regional and global drivers of resource consumption and production. Rising demand for resources to feed growing and wealthier populations is shifting global production and consumption patterns, and in turn, creating heavy environmental strain. Where policy solutions prove insufficient to internalize costs, economic interests will continue to drive unsustainable, and often illegal, resource use and consumption. Nevertheless, despite negative trajectories in many areas, the Atlantic Space offers unique opportunities for concerted action and furthering networks of state and non-state actors to address the environmental challenges of today and of the future through coordinated regional action.