The world has entered a new era of unprecedented challenges for natural resource. About three billion new consumers will ascend to the middle class over the next 20 years, powerfully boosting global demand for natural resources, at a time when it is becoming more and more difficult to find new supply sources, and their production is constrained by environmental factors. This new reality will require businesses and economies to make fundamental shifts in the way they operate.
We support private and public sector clients in addressing resource risks and enhancing their performance through higher resource productivity and a smaller environmental footprint. We advise companies on capturing emerging opportunities in energy, water, waste, and land use, and how to harness the potential of clean technologies to create smarter systems and competitive advantages. We also help governments incorporate sustainability into their long-term economic growth plans, with a view to supporting their people’s welfare and prosperity and protecting the environment.
We work with energy, basic materials, engineering, and consumer-goods companies, as well as governments, financial institutions, multilateral organizations, and philanthropic foundations. Our work draws on more than 1,000 consultants and experts from McKinsey offices across the world, with academic backgrounds in development and environmental economics, chemical engineering, waste engineering, oceanography, weather modeling, and international affairs.
Shaping the global debate on resource access and environmental risk, we invest heavily in developing knowledge, insights, tools, and methods. We have developed detailed cost curves for water, land use, and greenhouse gases reduction, which have helped us establish a fact base and methodology for assessing the potential benefits and cost of a wide range of resource supply and demand measures. We have also created a resource productivity cost curve, which integrates all resources, to identify how the growing global demand can be met.