Taking the Step towards a More Dynamic View on Raw Material Criticality: An Indicator Based Analysis for Germany and Japan

Abstract

Due to mounting concerns about the security of raw material supplies, numerous studies dealing with the quantification of supply risks and material criticality at the national level have been carried out in previous years. Regarding these studies, most approaches are indicator based static screening methods analyzing large numbers of raw materials and identifying those which are most critical for an economy. The majority of these screening methods quantify supply risks and vulnerabilities for one base year without taking into account temporal changes. Dynamic approaches for specific raw materials analyzing affected value chains in detail have been introduced recently; however, these studies do not intend to provide a screening of larger numbers of commodities. In this paper, we present a simple dynamic screening approach to assess raw material criticality at the country level building upon methods from innovation economics. The indicators applied in this study are only based on broadly available production and trade data, which makes this approach relatively easy to apply. We test our methodology on the example of Germany and Japan-two economies with highly specialized industries and low domestic raw material deposits, and, hence, high import dependency. The results are comparable to those of previously conducted multi indicator based static screening methods. However, they provide additional insight into temporal developments over the previous decade.

The future in and of criticality assessments

“…The study of Glöser‐Chahoud et al. () is a simplified dynamic criticality approach; however, the method is not used as a prospective criticality assessment, but rather as an analysis of the historic criticality trends. In the upper left corner, site‐specific criticality studies have been performed for gravel at a departmental level (Ioannidou et al., ) and for water at a regional level (Sonderegger et al., ).…”

“…Finally, Glöser‐Chahoud et al. () developed a simplified dynamic criticality approach, which is used to analyze the historic criticality trends, however, no future scenarios or use in prospective assessments were envisaged in the study.…”

Critical Natural Resources: Challenging the Current Discourse and Proposal for a Holistic Definition

“…In addition to that, some authors mention nonanthropocentric perspectives that consider parts of the natural environment as resources or even critical resources to other species than humans [23,50]. Within the dominant anthropocentric perspective, the criticality concept is guided by different interest groups such as, critical to: global human society (or humanity) [61], a region [35], a country [62], a corporation [63], an economic or industrial sector [64], or a specific product or technology [65]. This is one of the reasons why definitions and criticality assessments are considered context dependent by many authors, as mentioned earlier.…”

“…Several types of tools exist for quantifying and communicating natural resource criticality. They most often include detailed time series and scenario analyses per natural resource or hierarchical risk ranking based on indicator selection and aggregation [62]. The criticality matrix is most often applied, locating various resources as dots between two dimensions or axes of basic risk theory:…”

Assessment process of concept for mining and its impact on the region

“…Criticality of different metallic and mineral raw materials has gained attention in recent years. Consequently, the systematic evaluation of raw material criticality has been the subject of numerous studies in recent years [9]. Several working groups around the world have made criticality assessments for raw materials to analyze the driving impact factors for the instability [10].…”