Data, Indicators and Targets for Comprehensive Resource Policies

Abstract

Today's most pressing environmental problems, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, land cover conversion, etc. are caused by the overall growth of production and consumption. For a methodologically sound and comprehensive measurement of societal resource use and its environmental, economic and social impacts as well as for monitoring progress towards defined targets, appropriate indicators are needed. In addition to the territorial indicators currently in use, such indicators take into account resources ``embodied'' in traded goods and services. These ``footprint-type indicators'' help understand to what extent a country's economy, the environment, and the resource efficiency performance of goods and services are influenced by global value chains. In this book chapter we discuss the state of the art of data and indicator development focussing on three different types of natural resources -- raw materials, land, and water. First an overview of methodological options regarding environmental accounting frameworks as well as the calculation of footprint-type indicators is provided. We show empirical trends of resource use and analyse to what extent drivers of global resource use such as the European Union have managed to decouple their economic development from resource use. Methodological requirements and necessary next developments are identified and the ongoing processes as well as empirical analyses linked to the question of how targets for sustainable resource use can be identified in both regards, to the methodological as well as institutional level.