Abstract
The article discusses key aspects to be considered for the orientation of sustainable resource policies. Resource management at the local scale needs to be supplemented by governmental action in order to adjust production and consumption toward acceptable levels of global resource use. What is acceptable is being informed by scientific findings on environmental degradation and relevant cause–effect relationships. However, the desired state of the environment, the tolerable level of uncertainties about environmental impacts, risks of societal conflicts, and ethical considerations all involve normative considerations. Policy decisions for sustainable global resource use must be taken on the basis of imperfect information. A wider systems perspective, longer time horizon, and broader involvement of available knowledge could provide a sufficiently valid basis to derive directionally safe targets. Possible proxy targets for global biotic and abiotic resource use, considering land, biodiversity, and water issues, are presented on a per-person basis for 2050 for further discussion and research. These values could be used to assess the resource footprints of countries with regard to sustainability, providing orientation for governments and industry.
Highlights
(1) What can be regarded as sustainable resource on this planet? (2) How can knowledge on acceptable levels be translated into management targets?
There is a broad consensus that a more sustainable use of natural resources requires a profound decoupling of environmental degradation from socio-economic development, that a much higher material and energy efficiency would be required toward that end, and that this would be beneficial for both the environment and the economy [2]
When considering science-based and knowledge-based targets (S&KBTs), it seems advisable to distinguish between targets of desired environmental state and the management targets aiming to reach it
Summary
This article addresses two main questions. (1) What can be regarded as sustainable resource on this planet? (2) How can knowledge on acceptable levels be translated into management targets?. Monitor the performance of their physical economy in an internationally comparable way and in relation to a worldwide standard, check on their progress toward sustainability in the context of SDGs, including their fair share, and adjust their incentive framework for the actors in production, consumption, and infrastructures, if necessary Such global orientation values and further derived national policy targets would be useful in order to benchmark their performance of life-cycle wide or cradle-to-gate resource use in relation to national and sectoral levels, based on relations e.g., to turnover, value added, or employees, integrate these indicators into existing environmental management schemes
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