Abstract
The input and output material flows of the socio-economic system are connected with certain pressures, which is imposed on the environment by society. The question that comes up lately is decoupling of environmental pressure from economic growth.
The aim of decoupling is to achieve that the environmental pressure, expressed by the selected „environmental bad”, drops and the economic performance, expressed by the “economic good”, rises. Indicators of material flows are considered an appropriate tools for expressing decoupling.
If we use the indicators of material flows calculated for the Czech Republic, it turns out that there had been a marked decoupling and a decrease in the total environmental pressure connected with raw material consumption in the Czech Republic in 1990-2004. However, if we compare the absolute figures of material intensity (the ratio of indicators of material flows to GDP) in the Czech Republic and in the EU15, this figure is still two times higher for the Czech Republic.