Introduction

Sustainable consumption and production: Policy efforts andchallenges

David Le Blanc

This issue of Natural Resources Forum is devoted tosustainable consumption and production (SCP), one of thethemes of the upcoming discussions at the UN Commissionon Sustainable Development in 2010 and 2011. SCP, aconcept that dates back several decades, has recentlyregained the spotlight under the influence of several globalcrises and trends, which have sparked budding interest inmore sustainable living. The recent oil and food crises havehighlighted once again the dependency of our globaleconomy –– and its Western model –– on finite naturalresources. The implications of the rapid emergence ofChina, India and other economies in terms of naturalresources consumption have spurred a broad literatureexamining the consequences of a global alignment on theproduction and consumption patterns set by OECDcountries. These ideas have increasingly been brought intothe public arena through powerful messages such as the“Five earths” image popularized by the work on theEcological Footprint index (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996).

There has also been a growing realization that economicgrowth has not been synonymous with an absolute decreasein the consumption of natural resources, what economistscall “absolute decoupling”. While limited success has beenregistered in some sectors for some economies, when tradeis accounted for, it appears that by and large advancedeconomies are consuming more and more natural resourcesand generating more and more waste. Recent workaccounting for consumption of natural resources over thelast century puts humanity squarely in front of ever-risingtrends (Krausman et al., 2009).

There seems to be broader and broader recognition that adecoupling of consumption and growth will not happen onits own. The crisis has given a new lustre to the role ofgovernments, if not in steering societies, in facilitating moresustainable choices on behalf of its citizenry and consumers.As Candice Stevens argues in her article, governmentsshould do more than educate citizens on sustainable orgreener consumption: they should regulate and provideincentives for producers to foster the transition to goods andservices that more closely match public preferences.

Acknowledging the potential role of governments tofacilitate the transition to a more sustainable economy opensthe question of which policies should be selected. There areconceptual and practical difficulties in answering thisquestion. First, and a common obstacle to all policyevaluation work, it is generally quite challenging to estimatethe impacts on consumption patterns of individual policieswhen those policies operate within an array of taxes,subsidies and regulations that may be contradictory andinconsistent across sectors. Therefore, knowing “whatworks” is not as easy as it might seem. More fundamentally,as shown by recent work in social practice theory,consumption behaviour is a very complex system ofpractices governed by dynamics that extend way beyond thecontrol of consumers themselves or of specific policyinterventions. Consumption patterns did not emerge as aresult of policy interventions, but as the result of centuries ofdevelopment in collective conventions and socio-technicalsystems. As such, the ability of policy interventions to bendor break such dynamics significantly is not obvious. While aconsensus seems to have developed that no single policy canaddress SCP in a satisfactory way and that an array ofpolicies targeting the different actors is needed, there remainmany gaps in our knowledge of the costs, effectiveness, andreasons for success or failures of policy mixes in addressingconsumption goals and targets.

More broadly, there seems to be an increasing skepticismthat decreasing the ecological impacts of the globaleconomy can be realized by relying only on clever market-based policies such as taxes, subsidies, provision ofinformation, and other incentives. That is, marginalistthinking may not by itself bring in a reduction in theconsumption of natural resources. The financial crisis hasgiven more space to the notion that market systems may notspontaneously drive the economic fabric in the “good”direction — in this case, a society less profligate in the useof its finite resources. The crisis has given new currency toold ideas such as Herman Daly’s notion of a “steady-statesociety”. It has also led thinkers to question the possibilityof achieving sustainability at a global level without putting

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into question the fundamental mechanisms at the heart ofthe capitalist system. Among a burgeoning literature, thework of Tim Jackson and the UK Commission onSustainable Development is one of the most influential sofar (see Jackson, 2009). In his perspective, the reliance ofthe capitalist model on growth is the fundamental obstacleto achieving a sustainable society, and “solutions” that donot address this issue are in fact dead ends.

At the heart of these discussions is the issue of values. Sofar, many governments seem to exhibit a profoundreluctance to openly tinker with consumer values atdifferent levels of society. This has been reinforced by theintellectual domination of mainstream economics, which isalmost entirely built upon fixed and intangible consumerpreferences and is reluctant to work on notions such ascommunity and society values. However, as we realize thatmarket approaches have largely failed to bring in sizeablereductions in material throughput, we have to ask ourselves:can sustainability be achieved without touching on values?Are current values at the society, community and individuallevels compatible with a sustainable society?

In short, price incentives do matter, but we also realizethat we cannot go as far as needed without influencingpreferences themselves, without making the link betweenpolicies and the different layers of society — from theglobal to the local where ultimately most consumptionchoices are made. The status quo seems to be changingrather quickly, with each day bringing new publicationsreferring to changes in values. The Worldwatch Institutedevoted its 2010 State of the World Report, TransformingCultures, to this issue.

Given all this, it is perhaps no coincidence that althoughthe call for papers for this special issue canvassed bothproduction and consumption, and therefore implicitlyencompassed virtually all areas of the economic system,most of the articles we received focused on consumption.

In their article, Wei Zhao and Patrick Schroeder reviewthe trends in private consumption in Eastern Asia. Theconclusions from their investigation are clear. As Asiancountries develop rapidly, the trends in consumption are setup by their fast-growing cities. In fact, Asian cities appearcomparable to cities in developed countries as far as carbonemissions and resource consumption are concerned. This isdue to a convergence of private consumption patterns ofAsian urban dwellers (who happen to belong to the richestfraction of the population) towards Western standards. Thelower per capita consumption and emissions in Asiancountries compared to OECD countries is therefore a merereflection of a still incomplete urbanization process. As thisprocess progresses and incomes continue to rise, so willemissions and natural resources consumption. Thisconclusion rejoins that of earlier works such as Plan B (inits successive versions) by Lester Brown (Brown, 2006). Intheory, the good news is that due to the incompletetransition to westernized urban lifestyles in many of thesecountries, there is still room for maneuvre: clever policies

promoting better public transport, integrated planning at thecity level, and different consuming habits could perhaps bemobilized to deflect the current trends towards lower-impact cities and societies. The bad news is that there seemsto be no signs that such an inflexion is actually starting.

Focusing on OECD countries, Candice Stevens illustratesthe necessary connection between policies addressingproduction and consumption issues. She takes an apparentlyprovocative stance and argues that governments have tendedto focus too much on consumption, and should redirect theirfocus to production, while keeping the link with consumer-targeted policies. In fact, she argues that as societies evolve,consumers as a whole demand more sustainable products.Therefore the government’s effort should progressivelyshift to the production side with the objective of making thishappen through public procurement and direct actions onproducers. Steven’s paper showcases a sample of policiesdirected both at production and consumption, and is basedon extensive recent work done by the OECD (OECD,2008a: 2008b).

The article by Scholl and coauthors is a good complementto Steven’s article. It examines several examples ofgovernment initiatives aimed at sustainable consumption.This includes the “OneTonne Less” programme in Denmark,the Dutch Green Fund Scheme, the Red/Green Calculator inthe UK, and the “Top Ten” internet platform. The authorshighlight the successes but also the limits of such initiatives,offering insights on how to take consumer policies one stepfurther. This voyage in the universe of public awarenesscampaigns and sustainable consumption programmes offersinteresting perspectives that can be subsumed in the idea thatgovernments “cannot do the job alone”. Instead, they willincreasingly have to join forces with other components ofsociety. Today’s awareness campaigns and programmes tonudge consumption crucially involve producers and supplychains, as well as huge flows of information amongproducers and consumers.As such, contrary to regulations orfiscal incentives whose creation could remain largelybureaucratic, these new approaches need new governancesystems based on public participation and transparency tosupport them.

The focus of the contribution by Linda Ho, NicholasDickinson and Gilbert Chan is the development of greenpublic purchasing/green public procurement in Asiancountries, with special emphasis on recent developments inHong Kong. Public procurement has long been seen as apowerful tool for greening the economy. However, so far,the leaders have been OECD countries. Ho and colleagues’contribution shows us that Asia is indeed catching up fast. Itis quite interesting to contrast this rapid rise in awareness ofAsian governments about their capacity to influenceproduction and consumption choices with the equally fastchanges in the patterns of private consumption in theregion. In some sense, compared to the western case,governments can be considered to have a head start — theyare replaying a story that has happened before, but with the

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benefit of decades of policy experiments and a clearconsciousness of the power of public procurement. Will thestory unfold differently this time?

When it comes to fostering more sustainable productchoices among private consumers, marketing is a keydimension that is often absent from policy debates. Fosteringmore sustainable product choices presupposes anunderstanding of consumer preferences and tastes, andthe ability to identify the barriers faced by citizens tothe adoption of sustainable consumption behaviours. Thecurrent development of “green” products occurs in a contextof competition with standard, non-green products.Sustainable products have to find niches and adapt to therequirements of consumers who may or may not befavourably inclined to green products per se. While in OECDcountries these concerns have become mainstream all alongthe value chains, studies of these issues in emergingcountries are harder to find.Angela Marx, Istefani Carisio dePaula and Fabiane Sum report the findings of a qualitativesurvey conducted in Southern Brazil on both “green” and“non-green” consumers. Using a methodology inspired frommarketing, the authors asked consumers about theirexpectations about products, eventually translating theseexpectations into consumer requirements that sustainableproducts should satisfy.The innovative side of their approachis that instead of focusing on the use phase of products asmost marketing studies do, they consider other phases of theproduct life-cycle as well, from packaging to discard, localavailability and brand reputation. The authors use thematerial from their survey to provide recommendations forpublic policies that could support increased uptake of greenproducts in Southern Brazil. Undoubtedly, their analysis hasrelevance in broader contexts.

In his contribution, Christian Brodhag offers a kind ofcounterpoint to the profusion of studies that consider SCPpolicies within the framework of standard, neoclassicaleconomics. Beyond correcting market failures andinternalizing externalities, what can be said about changingconsumption patterns? Brodhag essentially argues that froma policy perspective, we need to depart from two simplifyingassumptions. First, individuals do not always behave likerational consumers. Second, communities do have socialpreferences and their modes of consumption can bedetermined and operate outside market forces. National andinternational rules aiming to curb consumption patterns haveto take this reality into account and strive for coherence notonly across policy areas or sectors, but also vertically, fromthe very local to the global level. The current state of play,argues Brodhag, is far from this ideal: international rule-making processes are still largely disconnected from theirultimate targets, individual and communities.

Overall, I found some core ‘take-away’ messages fromthe articles featured in this special issue. First, policy effortsto reduce the impacts of consumption and productionpatterns on natural resources and the environment have notsucceeded at the global level. Global trends continue to be

dominated by the impacts of rising incomes andwesternization of lifestyles. Second, current approaches toSCP seem to be of the “let a thousand flowers bloom” type,with governments, consumers, companies, and NGOsinvolved to some degree but in a largely uncoordinated way.This is probably a sign that the importance of the issue isfinally becoming mainstreamed. As such, the current bloomof initiatives can perhaps be seen optimistically as theprecursor for more drastic, better coordinated actions.

Third, a low-impact society has to rely eventually onindividuals or households to make low-impact consumptionchoices on a daily basis. However, the policies to obtain thisare far from being limited to those targeting the individuallevel, but rather apply to multinational corporations, plantsand distributors all along the supply chains. Massiveamounts of information and regulation are involved. Giventhis complexity, the question of how to connect the maze ofregulations, rules and incentives to individuals andcommunities both in their everyday choices as consumersand in the rule-making process itself remains. How can weadapt governance systems to this challenge?

There is of course no way that a handful of articles can dojustice to an issue as complex as SCP. By its very nature, SCPis multi-faceted and can be examined through many lenses.My aim in composing this special issue has been to providethe NRF readers with an impressionist picture, whereindividual articles are the dots hopefully composing acoherent picture when considered together. In short, thepolicy research agenda on SCP remains widely open andlargely uncharted. I hope that this special issue can stimulateinterest in this fascinating and rapidly evolving realm.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the authors and referees to this specialissue for stimulating thoughts. Many ideas expressed in thisintroduction are theirs, not mine.

References

Brown, L. R., 2006. Plan B 2.0, Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and aCivilization in Trouble, Earth Policy Institute, NY: W.W. Norton & Co.

Jackson, T., 2009. Prosperity without growth? The transition to asustainable economy, London: UK Commission on SustainableDevelopment.

Krausmann, F., S. Gingrich, N. Eisenmenger, K.-H. Erb, H. Haberl, M.Fischer-Kowalski, 2009. Growth in global materials use, GDP andpopulation during the 20th century, Ecological Economics, 68:2696–2705.

OECD (2008a), Measuring Sustainable Production, OECD SustainableDevelopment Studies, Paris, France: OECD.

OECD (2008b), Promoting Sustainable Consumption: Good Practices inOECD Countries, Paris, France: OECD.

Wackernagel, M. and Rees, W., 1996, Our ecological footprint: reducinghuman impact on the Earth, Gabriola Island, Canada: New SocietyPublishers.

Worldwatch Institute, 2010. State of the World 2010, TransformingCultures — from Consumerism to Sustainability, NewYork: W.W.Norton & Co.

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