DESIRE - Development of a System of Ind...

The Europe 2020 Strategy establishes resource efficiency as one of its fundamental Flagship

Initiatives for ensuring the smart, sustainable and inclusive growth of Europe. The Resource

Efficiency Flagship should "help the EU to prosper in a low-carbon, resource constrained world while preventing environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and unsustainable use of resources". The Resource Efficiency Flagship has close connections to the Raw Materials Initiative and Innovation Union Flagship. Without access to and smart use of critical materials, European industry will face considerable challenges. Smart resource management and eco-innovation are essential to realise the innovation and competitiveness goals of the Innovation Union Flagship. Resource Efficiency has further relations with other EC policy initiatives, such as the EU Sustainable Development Strategy and the Sustainable Consumption and Production Action Plan.

The main goal of DESIRE is to develop and apply an optimal set of indicators to monitor

European progress towards resource-efficiency. We propose a combination of time series of

environmentally extended input output data (EE IO) and the DPSIR framework to construct the

indicator set. Only this approach will use a single data set that allows for consistent construction of

resource efficiency indicators capturing the EU, country, sector and product group level, and the

production and consumption perspective including impacts outside the EU.