Brussels, 17 March 2015 Indicators for resource efficiency should be meaningful for policymakers and researchers and help to measure improvements towards a smart, sustainable and inclusive development of Europe. Experts from all over Europe, brought together by the European flagship project DESIRE and the European Environment Agency EEA discussed about the conditions and requirements as well as the directions for development of the final set of indicators for measuring resource efficiency, against the background of more than 100 indicators that currently already exist.

Special attention during the workshop, which was one in a series that started with a workshop at the World Resources Forum 2013, was given to less well-developed areas such as ecosystem resilience and human well-being indicators. Dr. Alexandra Marques (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research; iDiv) explained how the project will integrate biodiversity metrics in a multi-regional input-output framework to explore the impact of economic activity in biodiversity. Dr. Tom Bauler (Free University, Brussels) discussed the importance of co-construct narratives in order to influence the uptake of indicators in policymaking, stressing that people need to feel concerned about it.

The DESIRE (DEvelopment of a System of Indicators for a Resource efficient Europe) project is led by Prof. Dr. Arnold Tukker (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research TNO) and includes among its project partners the Wuppertal Institute WI, the Alpen Adria University, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU, the Institute of Environmental Sciences at Leiden University UL-CML, the Sustainable Europe Research Institute SERI as well as various other European institutes. The project runs from September 2012 to February 2016. For more information on DESIRE and the workshop, please visit the project website: http://fp7desire.eu/.

Arnold Tukker is currently working with the World Resources Forum on a resources efficiency index of nations. For more information about resource efficiency indicators write to Cecilia Matasci at cecilia.matasci@wrforum.org

Photo: Vera Freyling/ Wuppertal Institute.