The Future Availability of Natural Resources

This report takes a novel approach to enhance the understanding of natural resource availability over a 20-year time frame. It combines an analysis of the important factors of supply and demand at a global level, with an investigation into the different dominant “paradigms” that stakeholders use in discussing or assessing natural resources, with paradigms in this context being a combination of different, often deeply held assumptions. The report presents three scenarios that challenge these paradigms under different future conditions, and also reveals a number of important insights that come from a deeper understanding of the complex interactions inherent in resource flows.