This publication, by UNEP, aims to identify the challenges faced in attempting to decouple human well‐being from resource consumption and exists as the first report amongst many investigations into decoupling which will be undertaken by the International Resource Panel and UNEP over the next few years. The report offers facts and statistics of natural resource flows and trade globally and notes that consumption of natural resources is still rapidly rising. A series of country wide case studies (Germany, South Africa, China and Japan) are presented that examine the decoupling potential of the countries in question. The report observes that developed countries appear to show stabilisation of resource and energy consumption however these economies appear to have exported the more energy and resource intensive elements elsewhere. There appears to be some success of relative decoupling (where resource intensity per unit growth falls) in developing countries but resource consumption in these economies is ‘steeply on the rise’.
The Design for Sustainability (D4S) concept outlines methodologies for making sustainable improvements (social, economic and environmental) to products by applying elements of life cycle thinking. D4S builds on the work of ecodesign to include economic and social concerns, and its methodology includes both incremental and radical innovation. The United Nations Environment Programme and the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, in concert with key partners, work to support, illustrate, and diffuse targeted D4S demonstration efforts, including the European Commission-funded Cleaner Production for Better Products project in Vietnam, that are needed to change unsustainable consumption and production patterns.
Based on 15 case studies as well as a literature review, this study assesses the links between corporate environmental governance and financial performance.
The overall evidence of the study is strongly supporting the argument that sound environmental governance policies, practices and performances are likely to improve in improved financial performance. More detailed findings of the study include:
The document provides guidance principles for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) databases; this includes how to collect raw data, how to develop datasets and how to manage databases. The publication also addresses questions concerning data documentation and review, coordination among databases, capacity building and future scenarios. LCA databases provide fundamental energy, materials, land, water consumption data and emissions data into water, air and soil for a wide range of processes, products and materials. In this way, the publication provides the bridge between the data users and the data providers, making basic information easily accessible for computing the environmental footprints of materials and products that are key to make and judge green claims and to allow institutional and individual consumers to make informed consumption choices.
The document is the output of the UNEP/SETAC "Global Guidance for LCA Databases" workshop, (30 January - 4 February 2011, Shonan, Japan), also known as the ‘Shonan Guidance Principles’ workshop.
This book explores the potential contribution of a particular public policy - variously called environmental tax reform (ETR), environmental fiscal reform (EFR) or green fiscal reform (GFR) - to reconciling economic growth and the environment.