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.^[1] 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.^[2] Environmental pressure is often measured using emissions of pollutants, and decoupling is often measured by the emission intensity of economic output.^[3]

Studies have found that absolute decoupling was rare and that only a few industrialised countries had weak decoupling of GDP from "consumption-based" CO₂ production.^[4] No evidence was found of national or international economy-wide decoupling in a study in 2020.^[5] 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.^[6]