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  • ddc:600  (134)
  • 2015-2019  (91)
  • 2010-2014  (43)
  • 1975-1979
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  • 1
    Publication Date: 2022-02-18
    Description: Consumption of natural resources should not exceed sustainable levels. The increasing use of biofuels and to some extent biomaterials, on top of rising food and feed demands, is causing countries to use a growing amount of global land, which may lead to land use conflicts and the expansion of cropland and intensive cultivation at the expense of natural ecosystems. Selective product certification cannot control the land use change triggered by growing overall biomass consumption. We propose a comprehensive approach to account for the global land use of countries for their domestic consumption, and assess this level with regard to globally acceptable levels of resource use, based on the concept of safe operating space. It is shown that the European Union currently uses one-third more cropland than globally available on a per capita basis and that with constant consumption levels it would exceed its fair share of acceptable resource use in 2030. As the use of global forests to meet renewable energy targets is becoming a concern, an approach to account for sustainable levels of timber flows is also proposed, based on the use of net annual increment, exemplified with preliminary data for Switzerland. Altogether, our approach would integrate the concept of sustainable consumption into national resource management plans; offering a conceptual basis and concrete reference values for informed policy making and urging countries to monitor and adjust their levels of resource consumption in a comprehensive way, respectful of the limits of sustainable supply.
    Keywords: ddc:600
    Repository Name: Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie
    Language: English
    Type: article , doc-type:article
    Format: application/pdf
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  • 2
    Publication Date: 2022-02-18
    Description: The field of nutrition will face numerous challenges in coming decades; these arise from changing lifestyles and global consumption patterns accompanied by a high use of resources. Against this background, this paper presents a newly designed tool to decrease the effect on nutrition, the so-called Nutritional Footprint. The tool is based on implementing the concept of a sustainable diet in decision-making processes, and supporting a resource-light society. The concept integrates four indicators in each of the two nutrition-related fields of health and environment, and condenses them into an easily communicable result, which limits its results to one effect level. Applied to eight lunch meals, the methodology and its calculations procedures are presented in detail. The results underline the general scientific view of food products; animal-protein based meals are more relevant considering their health and environmental effects. The concept seems useful for consumers to evaluate their own choices, and companies to expand their internal data, their benchmarking processes, or their external communication performance. Methodological shortcomings and the interpretation of results are discussed, and the conclusion shows the tools' potential for shaping transition processes, and for the reduction of natural resource use by supporting food suppliers' and consumers' decisions and choice.
    Keywords: ddc:600
    Repository Name: Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie
    Language: English
    Type: article , doc-type:article
    Format: application/pdf
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  • 3
    Publication Date: 2021-05-07
    Description: In a globalized economy, the use of natural resources is determined by the demand of modern production and consumption systems, and by infrastructure development. Sustainable natural resource use will require good governance and management based on sound scientific information, data and indicators. There is a rich literature on natural resource management, yet the national and global scale and macro-economic policy making has been underrepresented. We provide an overview of the scholarly literature on multi-scale governance of natural resources, focusing on the information required by relevant actors from local to global scale. Global natural resource use is largely determined by national, regional, and local policies. We observe that in recent decades, the development of public policies of natural resource use has been fostered by an "inspiration cycle" between the research, policy and statistics community, fostering social learning. Effective natural resource policies require adequate monitoring tools, in particular indicators for the use of materials, energy, land, and water as well as waste and GHG emissions of national economies. We summarize the state-of-the-art of the application of accounting methods and data sources for national material flow accounts and indicators, including territorial and product-life-cycle based approaches. We show how accounts on natural resource use can inform the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and argue that information on natural resource use, and in particular footprint indicators, will be indispensable for a consistent implementation of the SDGs. We recognize that improving the knowledge base for global natural resource use will require further institutional development including at national and international levels, for which we outline options.
    Keywords: ddc:600
    Repository Name: Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie
    Language: English
    Type: article , doc-type:article
    Format: application/pdf
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  • 4
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    Wuppertal : Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie | Wuppertal : Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie
    Publication Date: 2022-02-18
    Keywords: ddc:600
    Repository Name: Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie
    Language: English
    Type: report , doc-type:report
    Format: application/pdf
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  • 5
    Publication Date: 2022-02-18
    Keywords: ddc:600
    Repository Name: Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie
    Language: English
    Type: workingpaper , doc-type:workingPaper
    Format: application/pdf
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  • 6
    Publication Date: 2022-11-10
    Description: The innovative software system "myEcoCost" enables to gather and communicate resource and environmental data for products and services in global value chains. The system has been developed in the consortium of the European research project myEcoCost and forms a basis of a new, highly automated environmental accounting system für companies and consumers. The prototype of the system, linked to financial accounting of companies, was developed and tested in close collaboration with large and small companies. This brochure gives a brief introduction to the vision linked to myEcoCost: a network formed by collaborative environmental accounting nodes collecting environmental data at each step in a product's value chains. It shows why better life cycle data are needed and how myEcoCost addresses and solves this problem. Furthermore, it presents options for a future upscaling of highly automated environmenal accounting for prodcuts and services.
    Keywords: ddc:600
    Repository Name: Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie
    Language: English
    Type: report , doc-type:report
    Format: application/pdf
    Location Call Number Limitation Availability
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  • 7
    Publication Date: 2022-02-18
    Description: Global trade is increasingly being challenged by observations of growing burden shifting, in particular of environmental problems. This paper presents the first worldwide calculations of shifted burden based on material flow indicators, in particular direct and indirect physical trade balances. This study covers the period between 1962 and 2005 and includes between 82 and 173 countries per year. The results show that indirect trade flow volumes have increased to around 41 billion tonnes in 2005. The traded resources with the highest share of associated indirect flows are iron, hard coal, copper, tin and increasingly palm oil. Regarding the burden balance between regions, Europe is the biggest shifter whereas Australia and Latin America are the largest takers of environmental burden due to resource extraction. To evaluate the findings from a global perspective, the results are analysed in terms of resource flow induced environmental pressure related to a country's land area in terms of total and per capita area. Resource endowment and population density seem to be more relevant in determining the physical trade balance, including indirect flows, than income level.
    Keywords: ddc:600
    Repository Name: Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie
    Language: English
    Type: article , doc-type:article
    Format: application/pdf
    Location Call Number Limitation Availability
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  • 8
    Publication Date: 2021-05-07
    Description: Renewable energy targets in the European Union (EU) have raised the demand for timber and are expected to increase dependence on imports. However, EU timber consumption levels are already disproportionally high compared to the rest of the world. The question is, how much timber is available for the EU to sustainably harvest and import, in particular considering sustainable forest management practices, a safe operating space for land-system change, and the global distribution of "common good" resources. This article approaches this question from a supply angle to develop a reference value range for the current as well as future sustainable supply of timber at the EU-27 and global levels. For current supply estimates, national-level data on forest area available for wood supply, productivity in that area, as well as the rate available for harvest were collected and aggregated into three potential supply scenarios. For future supply estimates, a safe operating space scenario halting land use change, a sensitivity analysis, and a literature review were performed. To provide both a comparison of global versus EU sustainable supply capacities and to develop a benchmark toward evaluating and comparing levels of consumption to sustainable supply capacities, per capita calculations were made. Results revealed that the per capita sustainable supply potential of EU forests is estimated to be around three times higher than the global average in 2050. Whether a global or EU reference value is more appropriate for EU policy orientation, considering both strengthened economic and cultural ties to the forest in forest-rich countries as well as the need to prevent problem shifting associated with exporting land demands abroad, is discussed. Further research is needed to strengthen and harmonize data, improve methods for modeling future scenarios and incorporate interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder perspectives toward the development of robust and politically relevant reference values for sustainable consumption levels.
    Keywords: ddc:600
    Repository Name: Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie
    Language: English
    Type: article , doc-type:article
    Format: application/pdf
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  • 9
    Publication Date: 2021-05-07
    Description: The growing demand for wood to meet EU renewable energy targets has increasingly come under scrutiny for potentially increasing EU import dependence and inducing land use change abroad, with associated impacts on the climate and biodiversity. This article builds on research accounting for levels of primary timber consumption - e.g., toward forest footprints - and developing reference values for benchmarking sustainability - e.g., toward land use targets - in order to improve systemic monitoring of timber and forest use. Specifically, it looks at future trends to assess how current EU policy may impact forests at an EU and global scale. Future demand scenarios are based on projections derived and adapted from the literature to depict developments under different scenario assumptions. Results reveal that by 2030, EU consumption levels on a per capita basis are estimated to be increasingly disproportionate compared to the rest of the world. EU consumption scenarios based on meeting around a 40% share of the EU renewable energy targets with timber would overshoot both the EU and global reference value range for sustainable supply capacities in 2030. Overall, findings support literature pointing to an increased risk of problem shifting relating to both how much and where timber needed for meeting renewable energy targets is sourced. It is argued that a sustainable level of timber consumption should be characterized by balance between supply (what the forest can provide on a sustainable basis) and demand (how much is used on a per capita basis, considering the concept of fair shares). To this end, future research should close data gaps, increase methodological robustness and address the socio-political legitimacy of the safe operating space concept towards targets in the future. A re-use of timber within the economy should be supported to increase supply options.
    Keywords: ddc:600
    Repository Name: Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie
    Language: English
    Type: article , doc-type:article
    Format: application/pdf
    Location Call Number Limitation Availability
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  • 10
    facet.materialart.
    Unknown
    Wuppertal : Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie | Wuppertal : Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie
    Publication Date: 2022-02-18
    Keywords: ddc:600
    Repository Name: Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie
    Language: English
    Type: report , doc-type:report
    Format: application/pdf
    Location Call Number Limitation Availability
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