In the EU, resource efficiency has been high on the political agenda since 2011, when the European Commission first included it as one of the seven flagship initiatives in its Europe 2020 Strategy for “smart, sustainable and inclusive growth”. Resource efficiency is not only considered an environmental necessity, but also a political, economic and security opportunity.
This paper first stresses the benefits and opportunities for the EU of improving its resource efficiency. It then explains the added value of the www.measuring-progress.eu web tool, which aims to improve the way policy-makers and others involved in the policy process can access, understand and use indicators for resource efficiency. It provides practical examples of relevant indicators in the form of the EU Resource Efficiency Scoreboard and a case study showing how the web tool established by NETGREEN can be used in practice. The paper concludes with a number of policy messages.
Eco-innovation has been identified as one of the key drivers of change that need to be harnessed for a sustainable future. Given the complexity of eco-innovation as a concept, there are various challenges to measuring its progress.
In 2013, the Nordic Ministers for the Environment decided to strenghten the measurement of green estimates of welfare and socio-economic developments.
Fostering sustainable industries and industrial development requires the use of effective indicators. Though a multitude of indicators exist, their applicability to sustainable industries remains largely unaddressed to date.
This new report reveals, for the first time, data on resource use and resource efficiency for all countries of the world over three decades, from 1980 – 2008.