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The paper examines the "Declaration of German Industry on Global Warming Prevention (DGWP)" in its updated version of 1996. The analysis draws on the findings of empirical case studies in the cement and glass sector as well as on a general analysis of the policy process including monitoring experience so far. The findings emphasise the weak impact of the agreement on the most important driving forces for industrial energy consumption. However, an improved design and a more stringent procedural framework would allow better advantage to be taken of the particular strengths of the approach. The paper concludes by making a number of recommendations that would improve the scope and quality of commitments, and would enhance learning effects during the course of the policy process.
Many concepts are able to initiate an increase in resource productivity in enterprises and supply chains – although some of these approaches do not directly address resource efficiency. From these instruments, we derived seven important set-screws, pointing at the most important starting points for resource productivity. Considering the differences of the examined set-screws in general and of the approaches lying in the background in particular, the existing portfolio of instruments seems broad enough to successfully implement instruments aiming at an increase of resource efficiency in the enterprises. However, it is necessary to adapt the selection of instruments to the conditions of the specific enterprise.
In this paper Justus von Geibler, Kora Kristof and Jan Walter highlight how sustainability demands can be integrated in early innovation phases and how new markets for sustainable products can be explored. The paper describes related experiences from a research project on future market development for timber in the building sector, conducted for the German Ministry for Research and Education.
The optimization of value chains is an important process to promote sustainable development, since value chains are closely linked to the satisfaction of human needs and combine different driving forces for environmental change. This article presents a methodological approach for the participatory development of value-chain wide sustainability indicator sets and their integration into a decision support tool in the specific case study of the chain "construction and refurbishment with wood". There are numerous indicator sets for sustainable development of forests and sustainable forestry available at different levels, ranging from local, regional and national to global scale assessments. Some efforts were also made to integrate later production stages of forest value chains (such as wood processing) in the assessment scope (e.g. for chain-of-custody certification). However, no indicator set has so far been available covering environmental, social and economic aspects for the entire value chain of building with timber. This gap was closed through applied sustainability research in the project "Holzwende 2020: Sustainable future markets for wood in the building sector".