Reports

Natural Resource Use in the Group of 20: Status, trends, and solutions

Dissemination materials from the International Resource Panel

Global Resources Outlook

Through a combination of resource efficiency, climate mitigation, carbon removal, and biodiversity protection policies, this report finds that it is feasible and possible to grow...

Re-defining Value – The Manufacturing Revolution

Re-thinking how we manufacture industrial products and deal with them at the end of their useful life could provide breakthrough environmental, social and economic benefits. Adopting...

The Weight of Cities

We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shift future urbanization on to a more environmentally sustainable and socially just path. The Weight of Cities suggests a new approach to...

Assessing Global Resource Use

Better and more efficient production and use of natural resources can be one of the most cost-efficient and effective ways to reduce impacts on the environment (including pollution)...

Resource Efficiency

This report analyzes four paths that countries could take over the next three decades, ranging from business as usual to a scenario where countries adopt both ambitious climate...

Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity (with database link)

Growing concern about assuring affordable, equitable and environmentally sustainable access to natural resources is well founded. In this report we show global natural resource use...

Decoupling 2

This report explores technological possibilities and opportunities for both developing and developed countries to accelerate decoupling and reap the environmental and economic benefits...

Options for Decoupling Economic Growth from Water Use and Water Pollution

To head off a looming water crisis, meet demand, and sustain growth and human wellbeing, decoupling water from economic growth is essential. The report shows a package of policy and...

Green Energy Choices: the Benefits, Risks and Trade-Offs of Low-Carbon Technologies for Electricity Production

Low-carbon electricity generation could help meet demand while reducing climate change. But new technologies could create new environmental problems. This report aids informed decision...

Policy Coherence of the Sustainable Development Goals

Environmental Risks and Challenges of Anthropogenic Metals Flows and Cycles

Metal production is responsible for 7-8% of global energy use as well severe environmental impacts. Recycling would decrease both, but even if recycling increased, rising global demand...

City-Level Decoupling

Most resource consumption takes place in cities. How a city is designed shapes how its inhabitants use transport, energy and water, and dispose of waste. The challenge is to build...

Metal Recycling

A global move to a Product-Centric approach, in which recycling targets specific components of a product and devises ways to separate and recover them, is essential. This report...

Responsible Resource Management for a Sustainable World

This report brings together highlights of five previous reports to enable policy-makers and business leaders to begin decoupling economic activity from resource use to allow the global...

Decoupling Natural Resource Use and Environmental Impacts from Economic Growth

We are using unsustainable amounts of the Earth’s natural resources. We need to improve the rate of resource productivity (“doing more with less”) faster than the economic growth rate...

Metal Stocks in Society

A key question that relates to the very broad and intensive use of metals is whether society needs to be concerned about long-term supplies of any or many of them. To examine this...

Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production

This report gives a scientific assessment of which global environmental problems present the biggest challenges, and weighs up the impacts of various economic activities to identify...