Abstract

Modern production and consumption have unintended consequences for our natural resources. The environment provides natural resources and other environmental inputs to economic activities while also acting as a sink for residuals and unwanted byproducts of economic production. According to Sustainable Development Goal 12: Ensure Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns, global consumption and production rely on the use of the natural environment and resources in ways that continue to have negative effects on the planet. Working to promote sustainable consumption and production to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation will increase resource efficiency and promote sustainable lifestyles.

The study intends to develop the Economy-Wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA) of the Philippines to provide a physical measurement of the economy-environment relationship. The EW-MFA physical accounts determine the country's resource consumption and quantify the flow of resources from the environment to the economy. According to the United Nations System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA), this account provides an important resource to those wanting a macro, economy-wide look at the physical inputs into an economy, material accumulation in the economy and outputs to other economies. This framework provides a powerful tool to monitor progress towards a circular economy and to create effective policies by accounting for material flows.

This study aims to provide information on the country’s first attempt to compile the MFA. This contains a compilation of the core account for economy-wide material flows, which provides information on domestic extraction, imports, and exports. The quantity of all materials per category is expressed in terms of their mass (weight in tons) per year. This is enough to generate several key indicators used in policy and decision-making. Domestic material consumption (DMC), which measures changes in natural resource use, is one of the most important indicators derived from the core account data. DMC is the most widely used indicator for capturing the amount of material extracted within a nation's territory, plus imports and minus exports. DMC serves as an indicator of domestic environmental pressure and contributes to the long-term amount of final waste and emissions generated (UN ESCAP, 2021).