Oecotrophologie · Facility Management (OEF)
Refine
Year
Language
- English (18) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (18) (remove)
Keywords
- sustainable consumption (4)
- governance (2)
- public policy (2)
- sustainable consumption and production (2)
- Agenda 2030 (1)
- ESCOs (1)
- European Union (1)
- NEEAPs (1)
- NGOs (1)
- Paris agreement (1)
- Polanyi (1)
- Prism of Sustainable Consumption (1)
- SDG implementation (1)
- Social Practice Theory SPT (1)
- Sustainable Consumption (1)
- Theory of Planned Behaviour TPB (1)
- Veblen (1)
- absolute reduction (1)
- climate change (1)
- consumption corridors (1)
- dimensions of affordability (1)
- energy consumption (1)
- energy efficiency policy (1)
- environmental impact (1)
- food consumption (1)
- food selection (1)
- householding (1)
- households (1)
- limits (1)
- meat (1)
- moral economy (1)
- needs (1)
- power (1)
- residential sector (1)
- sharing economy (1)
- social change (1)
- social innovation (1)
- structural change (1)
- sufficiency (1)
- sufficiency policy options (1)
- sustainable investments (1)
- systemic approaches (1)
- timebanking (1)
- vested interests (1)
- wellbeing (1)
Sustainable Consumption within a sustainable economy - beyond green growth and green economies
(2014)
Contemporary food production and consumption cannot be regarded as sustainable and raises problems with its wide scope involving diverse actors. Moreover, in the face of demographic change and a growing global population, sus-tainability problems arising from food systems will likely become more serious in the future. For example, agricultural production must deal with the impacts of climate change, increasingly challenging land-use conflicts, and rising health and social costs on both individual and societal levels. The unsustainability of current arrangements arises from the industrialization and globalization of agriculture and food processing, the shift of consumption patterns toward more dietary animal protein, the emergence of modern food styles that entail heavily processed products, the growing gap on a global scale between rich and poor, and the paradoxical lack of food security amid an abundance of food. These factors are attributable to national and international policies and regulations, as well as to prevalent business prac-tices and, in particular, consumers’ values and habits. The most effective ways for affluent societies to reduce the environmental impact of their diets are to reduce consumption of meat and dairy products (especially beef), to favor organic fruits and vegetables, and to avoid goods that have been transported by air on both individual and institu-tional levels (e.g., public procurement, public catering). In examining the unsustainability of the current food system this article reviews the pertinent literature to derive a working definition of sustainable food consumption, outlines the major issues and impacts of current food-consumption practices, and discusses various policy interventions, including information-based instruments, market-based initiatives, direct regulations, and “nudges.” It concludes with a call for integrative, cross-sectoral, and population-wide policies that address the full range of drivers of unsustainable food production and consumption.
A synthesis is made of 10 topics within climate research, where there have been significant advances since January 2020. The insights are based on input from an international open call with broad disciplinary scope. Findings include: (1) the options to still keep global warming below 1.5 °C; (2) the impact of non-CO2 factors in global warming; (3) a new dimension of fire extremes forced by climate change; (4) the increasing pressure on interconnected climate tipping elements; (5) the dimensions of climate justice; (6) political challenges impeding the effectiveness of carbon pricing; (7) demand-side solutions as vehicles of climate mitigation; (8) the potentials and caveats of nature-based solutions; (9) how building resilience of marine ecosystems is possible; and (10) that the costs of climate change mitigation policies can be more than justified by the benefits to the health of humans and nature.
Actual initiatives to cultivate more sustainable modes of consumption have not materialized and there are indications that an implementation gap is becoming manifest.
Research must begin to systemically integrate initiatives to promote improvements in quality of life, to distinguish long-term structural consumption trends, and to identify the social mechanisms and cultural aspects of consumer behavior and household decision making.
The United Nations formulated the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in 2015 as a comprehensive global policy framework for addressing the most pressing social and environmental challenges currently facing humanity. In this paper, we analyse SDG 12, which aims to ‘‘ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.’’ Despite long-standing political recognition of this objective, and ample scientific evidence both on its importance and on the efficacy of various ways of promoting it, the SDGs do not provide clear goals or effective guidance on how to accomplish this urgently needed transformation. Drawing from the growing body of research on sustainable consumption and production (SCP), the paper identifies two dominant vantage points—one focused on promoting more efficient production methods and products (mainly through technological improvement and informed consumer choice) and the other stressing the need to consider also overall volumes of consumption, distributional issues, and related social and institutional changes. We label these two approaches efficiency and systemic. Research shows that while the efficiency approach contains essential elements of a transition to sustainability, it is by itself highly unlikely to bring about sustainable outcomes. Concomitantly, research also finds that volumes of consumption and production are closely associated with environmental impacts, indicating a need to curtail these volumes in ways that safeguard social sustainability, which is unlikely to be possible without a restructuring of existing socioeconomic arrangements. Analysing how these two perspectives are reflected in the SDGs framework, we find that in its current conception, it mainly relies on the efficiency approach. On the basis of this assessment, we conclude that the SDGs represent a partial and inadequate conceptualisation of SCP which will hamper implementation. Based on this determination, this paper provides some suggestions on how governments and other actors involved in SDGs operationalisation could more effectively pursue SCP from a systemic standpoint and use the transformation of systems of consumption and production as a lever for achieving multiple sustainability objectives.
Veblen’s concept of conspicuous consumption is often cited to explain why consumption habits in our consumer societies tend to be unsustainable and ever increasing. However, much more than blaming individual consumption habits Veblen sharply analyzed quite some of the societal and economic forces which drive the framework conditions for un-sustainable consumption: the vested interests and the absentee ownership. The paper follows the path Veblen’s thoughts have taken trough economic and social literature over the last centuryand highlights how the actual sustainable consumption debate could make better use of Veblen’s insights e.g. in requesting the constitutive institutions for property. Opportunities for Strong Sustainable Consumption obviously presuppose radical changes, social innovations and thinking out of the box.
Who cares (for whom)
(2022)
Technological solutions to the challenge of dangerous climate change are urgent and necessary but to be effective they need to be accompanied by reductions in the total level of consumption and production of goods and services. This is for three reasons. First, private consumption and its associated production are among the key drivers of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, especially among highly emitting industrialized economies. There is no evidence that decoupling of the economy from GHG emissions is possible at the scale and speed needed. Second, investments in more sustainable infrastructure, including renewable energy, needed in coming decades will require extensive amounts of energy, largely from fossil sources, which will use up a significant share of the two-degree carbon budget. Third, improving the standard of living of the world’s poor will consume a major portion of the available carbon allowance. The scholarly community has a responsibility to put the issue of consumption and the associated production on the research and policy agenda.