dc.description.abstract | Since the advent of industrialization, humans have been exploiting natural resources more than ever. Extracting oil, wood, minerals, ores and other materials from lithosphere, there has been a massive change in peoples lifestyle and landscape around the world since then. With technological advancement, global population has also been increasing which is further adding pressure to the use of the resources. United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP, 2011) states that 20th century brought a remarkable progress for the human civilization. It highlights that annual extraction of construction materials grew by a factor of 34, ores and minerals by factor of 27, fossil fuels by a factor of 12, biomass by a factor of 3.6 and total material extraction by a factor of about 8 while GDP grew 23-fold | |