Resource Panel
As our economies have grown, so has the use of materials and resources. In an increasingly globalised economy, the challenge for policy-makers is to streamline actions for ensuring a more sustainable management of resources, both renewable and non-renewable. There are existing measures such as policies on climate change and biodiversity that tackle certain aspects of the global resource issues. However a holistic approach to resources management is needed to better identify their inter-linkages and gaps in a systemic way.

 

The establishment of the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, or Resource Panel for short, is a first step towards addressing this need. The Panel was officially launched in November 2007 and is expected to provide the scientific impetus for decoupling economic growth and resource use from environmental degradation.

 

The Resource Panel aims to:

a. provide independent, coherent and authoritative scientific assessments of policy relevance on the sustainable use of natural resources and in particular their environmental impacts over the full life cycle;

b. contribute to a better understanding of how to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation.

 

This work builds on and will contribute to other related international initiatives, including the development of the Marrakech Process, the 3R (reduce, reuse and recycle) initiative, the circular economy approach, the Global Environment Outlook and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

 

International Life Cycle Partnership for a sustainable world

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) launched an International Life Cycle Partnership, known as the Life Cycle Initiative, to enable worldwide users to put life cycle thinking into effective practice. The initiative responds to the call by governments around the world for a life cycle economy in the Malmo Declaration (2000). It contributes to the Marrakech Process to promote sustainable consumption and production patterns. Life cycle is about going beyond the traditional focus on production site and manufacturing processes to include the environmental, social, and economic impact of a product over its entire life cycle, from cradle to grave.