Europe has few natural resources but a large and growing economy. Therefore the European Member States, or rather their business community, imports most of the resources it needs, sometimes from conflict zones. Against this background the German Federal Environment Agency raised the question, how the environmental, social and development aims of resource exploitation and trade could be addressed in the framework of 'European Thematic Strategy on the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources’. The strategy currently reads as if the resources were readily available in Europe. The Agency commissioned the Institute for Future Studies and Technology Assessment, the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy and Adelphi Research to explore this question, highlighting the case of coltan from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The project team produced an extensive background paper, which has just been published, and discussed it in a multi-stakeholder workshop in December. Natural scientists, engineers and business representatives actively participated and added often neglected perspectives to the debate.

The discussion showed the complexity of the topic, which involves key areas of development (poverty reduction, economic growth and stability in the DRC), trade (supply chain management, voluntary vs. regulatory approaches, etc.), environment (resource depletion, resource efficiency and life-cycle approaches), geology (which resources are available in which areas, which ones are really rare), economics and business dynamics (existence of rare resources vs. their commercial viability, availability of resources vs. trading prices), technology (use of new resources for new products, technical advances and short-comings in recycling, etc.) as well as foreign and security policy (conflict mitigation and post-conflict stabilisation). As one recommendation, the German Federal Environment Agency wanted to explore the European Commission’s idea of creating an International Panel on the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources in analogy to the International Panel on Climate Change. Such a panel would have to include expertise on conflict and policy analysis. Transferring the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme was not considered feasible due to various market and resource characteristics that enabled that specific process. Further recommendations of the workshop summarized in the report clearly addressed development rather than environmental agencies. (Moira Feil)

For the report, please see here.

Published in:ECC-Newsletter, April 2007