In the context of the transformation toward a "green economy," issues related to natural resource use have rapidly increased in importance in European and international policy debates. The large number of studies applying economy-wide material flow analysis so far mostly produced aggregated...

The EU recently emphasised the need to speed up the pace of reforms to improve the state of the environment both in Europe and internationally. This becomes in particular challenging, as the "Lisbon Strategy" defines the general goal of an annual economic growth rate of 3%. Decoupling of...