Abstract
Growing population and economic activity in the last decades have correlated with increasing use of finite natural resources and environmental degradation. With a predicted 9.3 billion people on the Earth by 2050 and the imperative to eradicate poverty, our economic system will need to become much less dependent on the use of these resources if major crises are to be avoided. The World Resources Forum was launched in 2009 in order to transcend the current political focus on climate change and to bring the broader issues of global resource consumption and resource productivity back onto the agenda. The first meeting in 2009 led to the formulation of a joint declaration which advises to seek international agreements on world-wide per-capita targets for natural resource extraction and consumption, the overarching objective being to bring about an absolute decoupling between economic development and resource use. The 2011 World Resources Forum continued the discussion and concluded with 14 recommendations for converting to a green economy. Establishing an international platform for increasing worldwide resource governance was the main recommendation of the 2012 World Resources Forum.
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Notes
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The UNEP International Resource Panel was officially launched in 2007. It is expected to provide the scientific impetus for decoupling economic growth and resource use from environmental degradation. The overall objective of the Resource Panel is therefore to provide independent scientific assessment of the environmental impacts due to the use of resources over their full life cycle, and advise governments and organisations on ways to reduce these impacts (UNEP 2010c).
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September 16, 2009 in Davos/Switzerland.
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At micro-, meso- and macro-levels.
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September 19–21, 2011 in Davos/Switzerland.
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October 21–23, 2012 in Beijing, China.
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Financial, food, climate change.
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de Leeuw, B., Edelmann, X., Meijer, K.A. (2014). Towards a More Sustainable Use of Resources: A View from the World Resources Forum. In: Angrick, M., Burger, A., Lehmann, H. (eds) Factor X. Eco-Efficiency in Industry and Science, vol 29. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5706-6_15
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