“Waste not, want not”, is a dictum that has gone out of fashion in the decades since the Second World War. But it is a message that is now coming back into vogue in an era of economic retrenchment and austerity.

The European Commission is right to set a discussion about the European Union’s access to the world’s raw materials alongside a discussion of how to improve the efficiency with which the EU uses natural resources. The two subjects, which are on the agenda of European commissioners next week (26 January), belong together.

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Without an improved performance on efficiency, the EU is in no position to complain about being shut off from access to important raw materials. Across a whole gamut of resources – water, forests, metals, energy – the countries of the EU have squandered riches that should have been nursed more carefully.

The current concern about resources is – relative to the industrialisation of Europe – a recent phenomenon. For the best part of two centuries, Europe has been very favourably placed. The continent itself is richly supplied with many important materials – including coal, water, wood and metals. In addition, European countries have had ready access to the resources of other continents – in earlier times because it had established colonial rule in other parts of the world, in recent years because it has been at the centre of global trade networks.

But the certainties of yesteryear have evaporated. The supplies of raw materials are no longer as reliable as they once were, affected by climate change, by demographic shifts and by global competition.

Europe is now obliged to compete for resources not just with its old economic rivals, the United States and Japan, but also with fast-developing countries, such as China, India and Brazil.

The paper being prepared by the Commission is couched in defensive terms. How should the EU respond to export restrictions applied by third countries, restrictions of the sort that China introduced on rare earths late last year, to the alarm and annoyance of various European manufacturers?

In a post-colonial era, is a desire to secure raw materials elsewhere in the world compatible with the EU’s development policies? Or must the EU stand helplessly by and watch China buy up vast tracts of the African continent that Europeans previously plundered?

The answers are not easy, but all such problems would be helped by a little bit more attention to resource efficiency. In parts of the EU, there are already acute shortages of materials as basic as water and energy. Those shortages, which are often at the heart of price volatility, will only be made worse if the EU does not husband its resources carefully.

The pity is that, historically, Europeans have prevaricated too long before worrying about shortages. Those who grew up in times of plenty are not well adapted to times of austerity. Compare, for example, Australians’ economical use of water to the spendthrift habits of Europeans.

For Europe, the message is perhaps beginning to sink in about energy – at least in some parts of some societies, helped by higher prices and awareness of climate change. There is, however, a long way to go: technologies for greater energy efficiency – particularly in buildings – exist but are not widely applied. Europe is typically trapped by short-termism, which looks at the costs of investment in terms of efficiency rather than of longer-term benefits. Energy transmission systems are a glaring example.

A first step towards the more efficient use of any material, whether water, wood or metal, is to measure its use. Without measurement, efforts to improve efficiency amount to little more than guesswork. With measurement, the arguments in favour of greater efficiency become hard to refute. As a first step towards the better use of the planet’s resources – the Commission and the EU should put in place comprehensive systems to measure where we are going wrong.