Phosphate price peaks and negotiations – Part 2: The 2008 peak and implications for the future – Mew M.; Steiner G.; Haneklaus N.; Geissler B.
Journal of Resources Policy, June 2023, Volume 83, 103588
This is Part 2 of a study examining the 1975 and 2008 price hike in the phosphate markets. While Part 1 of the companion paper introduces the system model and discusses the 1975 price hike in the phosphate market, Part 2 of the companion paper covers the major 2008 price hike, discusses similarities between the 1975 and 2008 price hike events and provides an outlook on the predictability and likeliness of future price hikes in the phosphate industry.
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Phosphate price peaks and negotiations – Part 1: Fundamentals and the 1975 peak – Geissler B.; Steiner G.; Haneklaus N.; Mew M.
Journal of Resources Policy, June 2023, Volume 83, 103587
Natural resources such as mineral commodities represent global assets of tremendous economic value for our modern-day society. Broadly speaking, the economic value in the form of the raw material price is related to their function, thus the demand for the commodity in interrelation to its supply. While most mineral commodities allow substitution, at least in the long-run, phosphorus is bio-essential and thus unsubstitutable
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The role of transdisciplinarity for mineral economics and mineral resource management: coping with fallacies related to phosphorus in science and practice – Scholz R.W.; Steiner G.
Mineral Economics, August 2022, Volume 35, Issue 2
Mineral economics is a genuine multidisciplinary field dealing with economic and policy matters related to the production, distribution, and consumption of mineral commodities. We discuss why the increasing complexity, ambiguity, ambivalence, and social contestation of subjects of mineral economics promote the participation of mineral economists in transdisciplinary processes. […]
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Endangering the integrity of science by misusing unvalidated models and untested assumptions as facts: General considerations and the mineral and phosphorus scarcity fallacy – Scholz R.W; Wellmer, F.W.
Sustainability Science, March 2021
[…] Herein, we exemplarily elaborate how the integrity of science is endangered by normative solutionist and sociopolitically driven transition management and present mineral scarcity claims that ignore that reserves or resources are dynamic geotechnological-socioeconomic entities. We present the main mineral scarcity models and their fallacious assumptions. We then discuss the phosphorus scarcity fallacy, which is of particular interest as phosphorus is non-substitutable and half of all current food production depends on fertilizers (and thus phosphorus). We show that phosphorus scarcity claims are based on integrating basic geoeconomic knowledge and discuss cognitive and epistemological barriers and motivational and sociopolitical drivers promoting the scarcity fallacy, which affects high-level public media. […]
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