The Effects of Resource Efficiency on Competitiveness and Climate Change Mitigation: The Role of Investments

From barriers to opportunities: Enabling investments in resource efficiency for sustainable development

“…Crucially, a clearer understanding needs to be developed of why certain actors may fail to benefit from increased resource efficiency. This information is critical for finding adequate responses for affected sectors and regions (Flachenecker, 2018;Hughes and Ekins, 2018). Simply emphasising the positive effects while overlooking downside risks for certain firms, sectors, and regions will ultimately undermine trust in the very institutional framework that could support those affected not only in coping with but also in benefitting from this transition in the medium to long-term.…”

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“…By providing evidence from a large number of countries and regions, Rentschler, Bleischwitz and Flachenecker (2018) demonstrate that resource markets are characterised by inefficiency: in many countries resource productivity remains low, and valuable resources are wasted despite the existence of cost-effective recycling 352 technologies. The authors show that the factors that cause and perpetuate such inefficiencies can be categorised in five main types (summarised in Table 1): i. information availability and access; ii.…”