Prevailing resource use patterns of the global socio-industrial metabolism are unsustainable. For effective resource policies, drivers for such unsustainable resource use and their effects need to be better understood and mapped. In the context of the FP7 research project DYNAMIX, Dr. Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers and co-authors identified by means of meta-analysis a set of ten driver categories that affect unsustainable resource use.

Those are inter alia prevailing consumption and production patterns, use and design of infrastructure and technology, underlying paradigms and world views, resource prices and the level of knowledge and information of resource users. In relation to such a multi-dimensional network of drivers causing unsustainable resource use, resource policy should combine policy objectives and instruments into policy mixes to target key drivers and their interrelations.