THIS RESEARCH PROJECT IS NOT CURRENTLY ACTIVE.
This project provides an integrated examination of energy and resource policies to enhance sustainability along the full life cycle from extraction to transformation into materials, production, transportation, consumption, recycling, and disposal. Research examines why resources are back on the policy agenda, provides a comprehensive overview of global issues of raw-material supply and resource use, presents results and perspectives on the availability of resources, and discuss factors such as limited supply, demand from emerging and other economies, and the critical shortage of some materials — particularly some metals — that are essential inputs in many high-tech processes and may put certain industries at risk.
The project also sheds new light on the economics of sustainable growth, examining the current trend toward decoupling resource use from economic growth. It undertakes a rigorous cross-country comparison and looks in more detail at the cases of some European countries, as well as at emerging economies and their role in the global governance of natural resources.
Collaborating scholars
- ZhongXiang Zhang, Adjunct Senior Fellow, East-West Center
- Raimund Bleischwitz, Director, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Germany
- Paul Welfens, Jean Monnet Professor for European Economic Integration and President, European Institute for International Economic Relations, Germany.
Selected publications
Bleischwitz, Raimund, Paul Welfens, and ZhongXiang Zhang, eds. Forthcoming. International resource policy: New dimensions to a green economy. Springer.
Bleischwitz, Raimund, Paul Welfens, and ZhongXiang Zhang, eds. 2012. Resources, energy, and eco-innovation. Special Issue of Mineral Economics 24(2–3): 55–163.
Bleischwitz, Raimund, Paul Welfens, and ZhongXiang Zhang, eds. 2011. International economics of resource efficiency: Eco-innovation policies for a green economy. Heidelberg, Germany: Physica-Verlag Springer.
Bleischwitz, Raimund, Paul Welfens, and ZhongXiang Zhang, eds. 2010. International economics of resources and resource policy. Special Issue of International Economics and Economic Policy 7(2/3): 147–370.
Bleischwitz, Raimund, Paul Welfens, and ZhongXiang Zhang, eds. 2009. Sustainable growth and resource productivity: Economic and global policy issues. Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf Publishing.
Related event
3rd International Wuppertal Colloquium on "Sustainable Growth and Resource Productivity–Harnessing Industry and Policy towards Eco-Innovation", 4–6 September 2010.
