Sustainable resource management is at the heart of sustainable consumption and production. Sustainable resource management aims to close the product life cycle loop to achieve more efficient, circular material flows throughout entire economies. In this concept, "waste" is considered as a useful resource for meeting society's need for products and services. Moving beyond cleaner production, sustainable resource management takes advantage of all potential resources in order to meet the needs of the people within the carrying capacity of the Earth.

UNEP's work to promote sustainable resource management is spearheaded by the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, which provides coherent and authoritative scientific assessments on the environmental impacts of resource use over the full life cycle. The Resource Panel works to decouple economic growth from resource use and resource use from environmental degradation, and in particular to develop a better understanding of the ways to increase resource-efficient economic growth .

The sustainable use of natural resources was a key focus-area at the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development and is mentioned in two chapters of the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation: Poverty Eradication and Sustainable Consumption and Production. Resources are needed to eradicate poverty and fulfill the Millennium Development Goals. The topic of sustainable resource management has also been addressed at the international level by Japan in launching the G8 Initiative on 3R (reduce, reuse, recycle), by China in promoting a circular economy and by the European Commission in its thematic strategy on sustainable use of natural resources.

The management of resources such as metals and minerals, oil and gas, water and other renewable resources (for food and non-food purposes) is a fundamental challenge of sustainable development. In the last few years, unsustainable resource consumption has accelerated fuelled by soaring prices for raw commodities and increased competition amongst importing and manufacturing countries for ressources. Recent global assessments such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have issued strong messages regarding the seriousness and irreversibility of the environmental impacts related to resource use, such as land degradation, loss of biodiversity, pollution and climate change.

At the same time, the global sentiment and the push for collective action necessary to address these problems is also gaining momentum. Recent government policies have started to monitor and address the environmental dimension of natural resource use. Government have launched 'material flows analysis' to evaluate land use alterations in relation to extraction and transportation infrastructure of raw materials and have also begun to implement life cycle thinking with regards to products and services.