Experience indicates that in the longer term sustainable resource use and technological progress help decoupling economic growth, increases in resource consumption and environmental degradation. It has a bearing on decisions cutting across many policy areas, ranging from economy, trade, innovation and technology development, to natural resource and environmental management, and to human health. It is understood to contain both a quantitative dimension (e.g. the quantity of output produced with a given input of natural resources) and a qualitative dimension (e.g. the environmental impacts per unit of output produced with a given natural resource input).