Reports

Intentionally Designing Sustainable Consumption and Production Policies and Practices to Reduce Inequalities

This think piece identifies certain issues that are often “inconvenient” to discuss. It suggests several transformations to how we produce and consume natural resources that the...

Global Resources Outlook 2024

IRP’s flagship report – The Global Resources Outlook 2024 – is out now! The pathway towards sustainability is increasingly steep and narrow, and the window of opportunity is...

Trends and Outlook of Natural Resource Use in West Asia

This report aims to provide policy makers in West Asia with insights on the trends and outlook for natural resource use and environmental impacts in the region. The report marks the...

Urban Agriculture’s Potential to Advance Multiple Sustainability Goals

This Think Piece evaluates to what extent, and in which conditions, urban agriculture can enhance the sustainability of urban-rural food systems and promote a circular economy in...

Policy Options to Eliminate Additional Marine Plastic Litter

The think piece provides policy options to reduce marine plastic litter and achieve the Osaka Blue Ocean Vision, which voluntarily commits G20 countries to “reduce additional pollution...

Catalysing Science-Based Policy Action on Sustainable Consumption and Production

This report from the International Resource Panel and the One Planet network explains the ‘Value-Chain Approach’ methodology and shares findings from its application to three critical...

Building Resilient Societies after the Covid-19 Pandemic

This document provides policy recommendations extracted from IRP research over the past 10 years to drive a resource smart recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, generating socio-...

Policy Coherence of the Sustainable Development Goals

City-Level Decoupling

Most resource consumption takes place in cities. How a city is designed shapes how its inhabitants use transport, energy and water, and dispose of waste. The challenge is to build...

Measuring Water Use in a Green Economy

How do we meet the water, energy, land and material needs of up to 9 billion people, while keeping climate change, biodiversity loss and health threats within planetary boundaries?

Responsible Resource Management for a Sustainable World

This report brings together highlights of five previous reports to enable policy-makers and business leaders to begin decoupling economic activity from resource use to allow the global...

Recycling Rates of Metals

Recycling rates of metals are far lower than potential for reuse. Less than one-third of 60 studied have a recycling rate above 50 per cent, though many are crucial to clean...

Decoupling Natural Resource Use and Environmental Impacts from Economic Growth

We are using unsustainable amounts of the Earth’s natural resources. We need to improve the rate of resource productivity (“doing more with less”) faster than the economic growth rate...

Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production

This report gives a scientific assessment of which global environmental problems present the biggest challenges, and weighs up the impacts of various economic activities to identify...