Materials-GRoWL: Gauging the Rest-of-World’s Lifecycles of construction materials

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This project, Materials-GRoWL, will assess the current and future construction material uses that compose human settlements of the Global South, which is sometimes indiscreetly aggregated as the Rest of the World (RoW) in global studies. This is crucial, because construction materials have global environmental impacts: half of yearly consumption of all raw materials, significant shares of carbon emissions, and major contributors to land use change. Most of their future demands and thus environmental and societal impacts will occur in the global south. This is also challenging, because understanding the lifecycles of construction materials – how many and which materials, where are they used, to what ends, and with which impacts – has been daunting due to limited data and research frameworks. The Global South has been neglected so far, and the little understanding we have is incomplete, uncertain, and incoherent. Thus the environmental and socioeconomic risks related to construction material use in the RoW countries now and in upcoming decades are only generically studied or remain unknown. Materials-GRoWL will: 1. Develop novel methodologies to produce high-resolution construction material data in the Global South and link these to the societal services and human needs they provide; 2. Compare future material use developments to 2070 under a suite of different socioeconomic and wellbeing pathways; 3. Identify environmental and socioeconomic risks imposed on and by construction material accumulation; and 4. Form an exchange framework for cross-transfer of material use knowledge. Materials-GRoWL will overcome the severe data and methodological challenges that held back the study of construction material use in the Global South. It will provide data and methods crucial for addressing the SDGs and material prerequisites of decent living standards. The results will link the development of the built environment with its impacts to inform further research, policy and action