In 2017, under the German G20 Presidency, a “G20 Resource Efficiency Dialogue” was established to facilitate the exchange of good practices and national experiences on resource efficiency and to promote more sustainable production and consumption patterns.
In this context, in July 2017, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU) launched the “Initiative Resource Efficiency and Climate Action”, which supports the dialogue process in the G20 on resource efficiency. Implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the project aims to strengthen capacities of key actors from the public and private sector to develop and push forward measures and integrated strategies for increasing resource efficiency and improving climate protection.
Since the project was launched, several activities have been successfully implemented. These include a four-day study tour to Berlin, Germany, which provided 25 industry representatives from eleven emerging economies with the opportunity to network, exchange ideas, and learn from industry pioneers that have experience applying resource efficiency practices; and an internationally-accessible webinar, Doing More with Less: Rebuilding Capital in a Circular Economy, held in collaboration with the Green Growth Knowledge Platform (GGKP), which involved over 150 participants from public and private industrial sectors. In addition, information and training activities with key actors from politics, business, and science have taken place in Mexico, Argentina, and Indonesia, raising local awareness about potential opportunities for resource efficiency and climate protection and building capacities to design and implement related strategies.
The GIZ recently published five policy briefs on key themes related to resource efficiency. These briefs provide decision makers with a concise yet comprehensive overview of how resource efficiency can be applied, fostered, and utilised to help achieve country-specific climate targets.
- Resource Efficiency – seeks to operationalize resource efficiency by providing a working definition of the term and describing the relevance of key concepts such as decoupling.
- Digital Transformation and Resource Efficiency – explains how digitalisation can play a pivotal role in transforming industries toward more resource efficient operations and gives concrete examples of companies used digitalization tools to streamline industry operations
- Resource Efficiency for Climate Protection – elaborates on the climate mitigation potentials of resource efficiency measures and provides recommendations on how stakeholders at all levels can engage in tapping into resource efficiency to contribute to national and international climate targets.
- Resource Efficiency in Infrastructure and Buildings – describes the impact of ubanisation on GHG emissions and the environmental and economic benefits of implementing resource efficiency in infrastructure and building projects.
- Resource Efficiency Policies Worldwide – assesses the state of current resource efficiency policies at the national and multinational level and explores how such policies can unlock potentials to reach more sustainable production and consumption patterns as well as push for a circular economy.