RRF DATABASE - RESOURCES

Here are some useful public domain reports on resources, which you may find of interest.

If, on the other hand, you want to learn more about the Forum's own studies, then follow this link to the folder of your choice.

• Resources, scarcity, growth and the environment Robert Ayres Centre for the management of environmental resources. Insead, France (0.3 MB)

This study aims at reviewing and presenting in an easily comprehensible way the parts of the methodological toolkit of cost-benefit analysis where information is not readily available, i.e. environmental externalities from landfill disposal and incineration. More specifically, the study aims to provide “an overview of the environmental externalities that need to be taken into account when evaluating different waste management policies and how they can be integrated into cost-benefit analysis.”

The study was launched by the European Commission in late 1999, and it has been conducted by COWI Consulting Engineers and Planners AS

• The Economics of Resource Management by Hans Christoph Binswanger Rabindra Nath Chakraborty University of St. Gallen, Institute for Economy and the Environment (October 2000) - Paper commissioned by the European Commission, Directorate General Environment (ENV.B.2) (0.1MB)

The objective of this paper is to provide a brief overview of the economics of resource management and to discuss policy implications. The paper is structured as follows. After a definition of the concepts of “resources” and “sustainability” in Section 2, economic theory is reviewed with regard to the capacity of markets to generate optimal time paths for the exploitation of nonrenewable resources (Section 3). Section 4 presents an interpretation of sustainability that can be applied to non-renewable resources. Section 5 develops recommendations for resource management policies and suggestions for further research.

• Material flow analysis for the European Union and beyond - implications for statistics & policy. Stefan Bringezu, Wuppertal Institute (0.2MB)

• Technical report No 55 - Total material requirement of the European Union Authors: Stefan Bringezu and Helmut Schütz (Wuppertal Institute) Project commissioned by the European Environment Agency (0.2MB)

The Wuppertal Institute was asked to process Eurostat’s and its own data to come up with a first calculation of the total material requirement indicator for the European Union. More detailed, but comparable data are also available from the few countries (the Netherlands, Finland, Germany) which made their own calculations. In this report, all outcomes of the first calculation of TMR for the EU are included. In fact it has a similar aim as the TMR chapter in the Environmental signals 2000 report: to stimulate the discussion on the usefulness of total material requirement and related indicators for policy-making by showing concrete results.

The EEA hopes that this report will stimulate many users to have a closer look at the aggregates, and to think of possible changes for environmental and other policies. For those who need to go into the details of the calculation the EEA has

• Analysis of the fundamental concepts of resource management. Report from Gua (Austria) (0.3MB)

• Towards a sustainable use of natural resources Stichting Natuur en Milieu, January 2001 H.Muilerman, H.Blonk. (0.2MB)

The aim of this report is to demonstrate the need to reduce the consumption of natural resources (environmental impacts) in the economy and provide the initial impetus for a new policy to keep the use of natural resources within sustainable limits. (By ‘natural resources’ we mean the global reserves of natural resources and raw materials by used human beings.) Reduction of the use of natural resources in production and consumption is often referred to as ‘dematerialization’.

• PUBLIC POLICY AND NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT - A framework for integrating concepts and methodologies for policy evaluation David PEARCE Economics, University College London Prepared for DGXI, European Commission - September 2000 (0.2MB)

Environmental issues are at the forefront of European Union policy. The Treaty of European Union (1992) (the Maastricht Treaty) elaborated the role of environmental goals in EU policy. It spoke of the goal of ‘sustainable growth respecting the environment’ rather than the Treaty of Rome‘s ‘continuous and balanced expansion’

Second, it spoke of the need to integrate environmental issues into all policies, whether environmental or not. This second provision is an explicit recognition of the pervasiveness of environmental impacts from all economic activity The Maastricht Treaty also introduced the ‘precautionary principle’ (the PP). The PP effectively says that lack of scientific evidence linking cause and effect shall not be deemed sufficient reason to take no action when there are significant risks. Finally, the Treaty extended the EU‘s role into international and global environmental policy.

• Sustainable Germany - towards an environmentally sound development - 14.11.1997 This report was created by the members of the working group AGENDA 21/Sustainable Development of the German Federal Environmental Agency - Umweltbundesamt - 1997 - (0.2MB)

This study contributes to the discussion on sustainability in Germany. The main concern in the chosen fields of energy use, mobility, food production, material flow, management consumption patterns is less that of a totally new detailed information system as that of the convergence of the various problem areas, so far individually managed, into the comprehensive perspective of sustainable development.

• Advancing sustainable resource management - using ecological footprint analysis for problem forumlation, policy development and communication . Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D. February 27, 2001 Prepared for DG Environment, European Commission Project officers: Marc Vanheukelen, Otto Linher - (0.2MB)

This report argues that

A. Sustainability is a specific term with a specific meaning: it requires avoiding
ecological overshoot.
B. Overshoot can be measured. And there is evidence that humanity is in
overshoot. In fact, most industrialized countries run massive ecological
deficits.
C. To move out of overshoot, governments need first and foremost to develop
ecological accounts to track overshoot and to run social marketing
campaigns that gather popular support for reducing human pressure on the

• Resource management - do we need public policy ” Small study for Directorate B Environmental Instruments Directorate General Environment European Commission. Aart de Zeeuw, Professor of Environmental Economics Department of Economics CentER for Economic Research Tilburg University The Netherlands December 2000

First, this paper tries to argue that the issue is not so much whether we should focus on either resources or other environmental problems such as pollution, since these concepts are so strongly interrelated.

Furthermore, the modern definitions of these concepts imply that it effectively boils down to the same thing. Pollution can be interpreted as depleting an environmental resource, and the problem of resources is often meant to be the problem of the pollution resulting from the use of these resources. It is more important to identify the problems and to analyze how the problems can be solved in the best way.

Much has been written on resource management but, unfortunately, the material can be split into two strands of literature that fight each other more than try to learn from each other. This paper will try to reconcile some of the issues. The paper is written from an economist’s point of view. This implies that concepts and policies that were developed in environmental economics will be highlighted. Of course, many other valuable approaches to the problem exist but these are outside the scope of this paper.