Research focus: Resources
resource fever | www.resourcefever.orghttp://www.resourcefever.org
How long will our natural resources of metals, minerals, renewable resources and the resource of land last? How can negative impacts on the climate and the environment be reduced while the demand for resources is increasing worldwide? How can the demand for resources be made more sustainable in future? The questions are becoming more and more significant – Oeko-Institut is conducting research to find the answers.
Resource fever website For some years now Oeko-Institut has been working intensively on the wide range of topics involving resource efficiency. In order to simplify the distribution of the many different project results, Oeko-Institut has set up a topic-specific website on which all key publications are available. The web address was named after the popular Resource Fever brochure. “With the website we can provide the interested expert audience with all our work on this topic in one place. We hope that as a result this key focus of research will gain more attention in the future,” says Dr Matthias Buchert, leader of the Resources Working Group at Oeko-Institut. Oeko-Institut’s Resource Fever brochure can be downloaded here The Resource Fever website can be found here
Rare earths – A turning point for efficiency and recycling
The recycling of rare earths is a strategy geared to the sustainable use of valuable resources in times of rising prices and the scarcity of such resources. In a study commissioned by the Greens/European Free Alliance in the European Parliament under the auspices of Reinhard Bütikofer, Oeko-Institut proposes an eight point plan for the development of a European recycling scheme. It shows what sustainable resources management for neodymium, terbium, lanthanum & so on might look like.
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Land-Use Management in practice in the region of Freiburg (PFIF)
The German federal state of Baden-Württemberg aims to significantly reduce development of currently undeveloped land for housing and transport purposes. The objective is to secure the development potentialities of the land in the long term. Dedicated municipalities and other future-looking “land actors” are a key foundation of these activities. This is where the project “Land-Use Management in practice in the region of Freiburg” (PFIF) comes in.
Marketplace for available plots of land and vacant buildings
This marketplace for available plots of land is a joint initiative of cities and communities in the region of Freiburg located in the south west of Germany. On this online platform building plots and vacant buildings are advertised. The vacant buildings have one thing in common: they are part of the building stock and are NOT located in a new development area. “Building within existing structures” has a large potential because the areas have already been developed, all forms of technical infrastructure are already installed and whoever builds his or her house on the plot, knows already what the neighbourhood looks like before the building begins.
komreg – Municipal land-use management in the region of Freiburg
The aim of the new research project “Municipal land management in the region of Freiburg” (komreg) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is to limit ongoing land-use and to determine development potentials for residential areas in the region. The city of Freiburg and ten partner municipalities (Au, Ballrechten-Dottingen, Breisach, Emmendingen, Hartheim, Herbolzheim, Merzhausen, Titisee-Neustadt, Schallstadt and Umkirch) are cooperating in the project. Oeko-Institut, which is leading the project, is providing research support, along with the environmental and landscape planning agency Baader Konzept GmbH in Mannheim and the Institute for Urban and Regional Development of the Nürtingen-Geislingen University (IfSR).