| | Policy Review on Decoupling: Development of indicators to |
| | 1,24 | | MB | assess decoupling of economic development and |
| | 159 | | stron | environmental pressure in the EU-25 and AC-3 countries |
| | 5149 | | ID | Directorate-General for the Environment, European Commission |
| | 2005 | | rok |
| | Table of Contents |
| | Executive Summary 5 |
| | 1 Introduction 19 |
| | 2 MFA database for DMC: Review of the comparability of data, explanations, solutions, and results |
| | 21 |
| | 2.1 Introduction 21 |
| | 2.2 Methodology: DMC in the context of aggregated indicators for resource use derivable from |
| | economy-wide material flow accounts 22 |
| | 2.3 Results: DMC for the EU and MS and for other European countries 26 |
| | 2.4 References 28 |
| | 3 Derivation of a weighted indicator of material flows based on environmental impacts 31 |
| | 3.1 A methodology to assess the environmental impacts related to the consumption of specific |
| | resources 31 |
| | 3.1.1 Outline of the methodology 31 |
| | 3.1.2 Materials included in the study 32 |
| | 3.1.3 Impacts per kg material 35 |
| | 3.1.4 System boundaries: quantities of materials consumed 36 |
| | 3.1.5 Combining the per kg impacts and the kilograms 40 |
| | 3.2 Application 41 |
| | 3.2.1 Per kg impacts 41 |
| | 3.2.2 Volumes of materials 43 |
| | 3.2.3 Combining per kg impacts with volumes 45 |
| | 3.3 Indicators: different approaches to a weighting of environmental impacts 49 |
| | 3.3.1 Requirements of an indicator 49 |
| | 3.3.2 Weighting procedures 50 |
| | 3.4 Country comparisons 55 |
| | 3.4.1 Impacts per capita for one year 55 |
| | 3.4.2 Impacts per unit of GDP for one year 57 |
| | 3.4.3 Impacts per km2 for one year 59 |
| | 3.4.4 Developments over time 59 |
| | 3.4.5 Discussion of the results 61 |
| | 3.5 References 62 |
| | 4 Analysis of differences between the (development of) DMC of countries 63 |
| | 4.1 Introduction 63 |
| | 4.2 Selection of variables 63 |
| | 4.2.1 Theoretical background 63 |
| | 4.2.2 Defining a set of explanatory variables 64 |
| | 4.2.3 Overview of all variables used in this study 67 |
| | 4.2.4 Selection of years and countries 68 |
| | 4.3 Relationships between socio-economic and material consumption variables 69 |
| | 4.3.1 Relationships between material consumption variables 69 |
| | 4.3.2 Relationships between explanatory variables 70 |
| | 4.3.3 Relationships between materials consumption and explanatory variables 71 |
| | 4.3.4 A note on the relationship between total DMC and EMC 79 |
| | 4.4 Regression analysis 83 |
| | 4.4.1 Hypothesis testing 83 |
| | 4.4.2 Estimating influences of socio-economic variables on the DMC 84 |
| | 4.4.3 Estimating influences of socio-economic variables on the EMC 86 |
| | 4.5 Regression analysis for resource efficiency 86 |
| | 4.5.1 Conceptual elements 87 |
| | 4.5.2 Estimating influences of socio-economic variables on resource efficiency 88 |
| | 4.5.3 Benchmarking 89 |
| | 4.5.4 Reasons for the different successes in the countries 91 |
| | 4.6 Concluding remarks 92 |
| | 4.7 References 94 |
| | 5 Background and EU policies 95 |
| | 5.1 Introduction 95 |
| | 5.2 Demarcation 95 |
| | 5.3 Overview of EU policies 96 |
| | 5.4 Specific instruments 97 |
| | 5.4.1 Materials 97 |
| | 5.4.2 Products and life-cycle stages 106 |
| | 5.5 Conclusions 111 |
| | 5.6 References 112 |
| | 6 Identification of the land use intensity in the EU-15 and AC-13 113 |
| | 6.1 Introduction 113 |
| | 6.2 Land use in environmental accounting and related conceptual issues 116 |
| | 6.2.1 Land use accounting in the SEEA 116 |
| | 6.2.2 Illustrative land use accounting activities by the German Federal Statistical Office 119 |
| | 6.3 Conceptual conclusions for the further development of land use intensity indicator 122 |
| | 6.4 Data on land use and definition of possible land use intensity indicators inter alia comparable to |
| | DMC 123 |
| | 6.4.1 Introduction 123 |
| | 6.4.2 Data availability for EU-15 and ACC-13 124 |
| | 6.4.3 Approaches to estimate missing data 127 |
| | 6.4.4 Domestic land use data 129 |
| | 6.4.5 Results: Global Agricultural Land Use Indicator (GALU) 135 |
| | 6.4.6 Conclusions 146 |
| | 6.5 References 147 |
| | 7 Indicators for mass flows and land use 149 |
| | 8 Conclusions, discussion, recommendations 155 |
| | Annexes 161 |
| | Annex 1 Minutes of the expert meeting 163 |
| | Annex 2 Critical review of the MFA database and DMC 165 |
| | Annex 3 Three options to link DMC to life-cycle based environmental impacts 173 |
| | Annex 4 Data on materials and impacts per kg of material for thirteen impact categories, from ETH- |
| | database for LCA studies 175 |
| | Annex 5 Calculation of environmental impacts related to the consumption of resources and |
| | materials 183 |
| | Annex 6 Description of data and data sources for the regression analysis 199 |
| | Annex 7 Estimation procedure for the regression analysis 207 |
| | Annex 8 Estimation results not included in the main text 215 |
| | Annex 9 Data on land use 217 |