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Introduction: Moving towards a more plant-based dietary pattern would likely be beneficial in terms of a variety of sustainability dimensions.
Methodology: We conducted a 2-year intervention study with six measurement time points (baseline, 10 weeks, 6 months, 1 year, 1½ years, 2 years) in rural northwest Germany. The intervention consisted of a lifestyle programme, and dietary recommendations were to move towards a healthy, plant-based diet. The control group received no intervention. Diet quality was assessed with the healthful plant-based diet index (hPDI).
Results: In the intervention group (n = 67), the 2-year trajectory of hPDI was significantly higher compared to control (n = 39; p 0.001; between-group difference: 5.7 (95% CI 4.0, 7.3) food portions/day; adjusted for baseline). The 2-year trajectory of meat intake was significantly lower in the intervention group (n = 79) compared to control (n = 40; p 0.001; between-group difference: -0.7 (95% CI -0.9, -0.5) portions/day; adjusted for baseline).
Conclusion: Our study confirms that plant-based nutrition education in the general population is likely to result in at least modest dietary improvements in terms of general healthfulness and meat reduction.
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.
Consumption Corridors: Living a Good Life within Sustainable Limits
explores how to enhance peoples’ chances to live a good life in a world of ecological and social limits.
Rejecting familiar recitations of problems of ecological decline
and planetary boundaries, this compact book instead offers a spirited explication of what everyone desires: a good life. Fundamental
concepts of the good life are explained and explored, as are forces
that threaten the good life for all. The remedy, says the book’s seven
international authors, lies with the concept of consumption corridors, enabled by mechanisms of citizen engagement and deliberative
democracy.
Across fve concise chapters, readers are invited into conversation about how wellbeing can be enriched by social change that joins
“needs satisfaction” with consumerist restraint, social justice, and
environmental sustainability. In this endeavour, lower limits of consumption that ensure minimal needs satisfaction for all are important, and enjoy ample precedent. But upper limits to consumption,
argue the authors, are equally essential, and attainable, especially in those domains where limits enhance rather than undermine essential
freedoms.
As a salutogenic concept, “consumption corridors” aims to support what is necessary for sustainable wellbeing to be achieved in relation to the Earth system, with a deep consideration for justice and equity. Living in consumption corridors is a representation of everyday life whereby people live within limits, so that all people – now and in the future – can access what is needed to live a good life. In this special issue, a series of scholars and practitioners have come together to further develop the concept, engage with its ethodological implications, and relate it to consumption domains and policy implications. We begin by introducing how the concept emerged, in relation to the complexity of grappling with the societal transformations required for achieving more sustainable forms of consumption. We then present the different contributions, which demonstrate the importance of considering both maximum and minimum consumption standards, the relevance of human-need theories, as well as the difference between achieving wellbeing and the means necessary for doing so. We conclude by opening up to areas that merit further deliberation: how to relate consumption corridors to everyday-life dynamics, but also to the critical question of power relations at play in implementing consumption corridors.
Experience shows that energy savings through energy efficiency measures are partly compensated by income growth, and partly by rebound effects. Therefore to be effective, efficiency measures have to be embedded in a concept of sufficiency which strives for limits and absolute reduction of energy consumption. While the sufficiency concept is not new, it only recently gained attention in the field of housing. This paper provides a basis for broader and more informed debates in policy and research on the potential of sufficiency considerations to contribute to the overall reduction of energy consumption in the residential sector. It recommends shifting the attention from energy consumption of buildings towards a concept of sustainable homes in which e.g. the size of the living area plays a crucial role. A further important aspect is the possibility to fulfil other basic needs like the provision with food, recreation and social contacts in the nearby environment. The paper describes first examples of housing projects guided by sufficiency criteria, depicts the potential roles of different actor groups and points towards some general policy recommendations.
It is increasingly obvious that for safeguarding environmental sustainability, eco‐efficiency measures will need to be complemented by sufficiency, in particular by strong sustainable consumption. The Theory of Planned Behaviour TPB and Social Practice Theory SPT offer different views on consumer behaviour, and on ways to change it. This paper briefly describes the challenges, discusses the applicability of both theories and their meaningfulness for policy recommendations.
We suggest an approach combining results of both bodies of theory, complemented by ideas from political economy, to substantiate the Prism of Sustainable Consumption we introduce as a heuristic sufficiency policy tool. It is useful to identify affordability criteria for change in each dimension, as the basis for deriving suggestions for effective policy interventions. We conclude
that (i) effective interventions are possible, (ii) they have to address several dimensions of affordability simultaneously, and (iii) the sufficiency policy space prism can be a useful tool in structuring planned interventions.
Improving residential energy efficiency is widely recognized as one of the best strategies for reducing energy demand, combating climate change and increasing security of energy supply. However, progress has been slow to date due to a number of market and behavioural barriers that have not been adequately addressed by energy efficiency policies and programmes.
This study is based on updated findings of the European Futures for Energy Efficiency Project that responds to the EU Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2014-15 theme 'Secure, clean and efficient energy'. This article draws on five case studies from selected European countries - Finland, Italy, Hungary, Spain, and the UK - and evaluates recent energy efficiency developments in terms of indicators, private initiatives, and policy measures in the residential sector. Our analysis shows that the UK government has implemented a better range of policies, coupled with initiatives from the private sector, aimed at improving energy efficiency. However, its existing conditions appear to be more problematic than the other countries. On the other hand, the lack of effective and targeted policies in Finland resulted in increased energy consumption, while in Hungary, Spain and Italy some interesting initiatives, especially in terms of financial and fiscal incentives, have been found.
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.
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.
In this paper, we scrutinise the sharing economy from a moral householding perspective and evaluate the moral justifications for a sustainable form of the sharing economy. We consider the emergence of normative moral justifications through householding practices that rest on local mobilisation of people in defence of communities and commitments against the adverse impacts of neoliberal market capitalism.
Our perspective draws on Karl Polanyi's conceptualisation of householding, that is, autarchic, communistic provision in a closed community. Using timebanking as an example, we illustrate how a moral sharing economy can be mobilised in collective battles against the current neoliberal system of economic crisis. We contribute to the amassing sharing economy literature emphasising a central, yet missing element of the current discourse: householding as practices creating self-sufficiency and autonomy as well as combining both kin and stranger.
Power: the missing element in sustainable consumption and absolute reductions research and action
(2016)
In this essay, we aim to demonstrate the value of a power lens on consumption and absolute reductions. Specifically, we illuminate what we perceive to be a troublesome pattern of neglect of questions of power in research and action on sustainable consumption and absolute reductions. In pursuit of our objectives, we delineate how many of the informal and implicit “theories of social change” of scholars and activists in sustainable consumption and sustainable development fail to address power in a sufficiently explicit, comprehensive and differentiated manner and how that failure translates into insufficient understandings of the drivers of consumption and the potential for and barriers to absolute reductions. Second, we develop the contours of a power lens on sustainable consumption. Third, we illustrate the value of such a power lens, with a particular focus on the case of meat consumption.
Sustainable Consumption within a sustainable economy - beyond green growth and green economies
(2014)
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.
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.
The Tigray and Afar Water Initiative (TAWI) is a collaboration between the Mekelle University (Ethiopia), the Muenster University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and the Westfalian Wilhelms-University Muenster (Germany). This special initiative is concerned with the rural water supply for the particularly water-scarce regional states of Tigray and Afar in the semi-arid north of Ethiopia. This paper describes a pilot project near the village of Koraro, Hawzen county in the Tigray region and deals with river reaches or creeks which carry water for short periods and only after the longer of two rainy seasons. When these waters run dry, water is still often to be found under the dry beds and is used casually by local people for agricultural purposes. An impermeable wall constructed as a subsurface dam to retain water in the ensuing subsurface micro-reservoir under the bed of such rivers could enable this usage to be intensified and hence enhance the water supply of small local user-groups, while at the same time positively influencing the landscape water balance. Here, the word micro refers to the fact that only the pores of the granular soil of an alluvial river bed are used to store water. Furthermore, storing water underground also avoids the danger of increasing the incidence of diseases such as malaria, a consequence of open water ponds.
The Effects of Lifestyle Modification on Glycemic Levels and Medication Intake:The Rockford CHIP
(2012)
Introduction: The high prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the past 50 years has led to intense research, resulting in many improvements in treatment. At the same time, type 2 diabetes, with its concomitant increase in vascular complications, has become a serious, exploding and costly public health concern . Diabetes now affects 285 million adults worldwide and 344 million with pre-diabetes. Of these, 25.8 million diabetics and 79 million pre-diabetics are found in the United States alone.The current cost of diabetes in the US is likely to exceed the $174 billion estimate, which includes 2/3 for direct medical costs and 1/3 for indirect costs, such as disability, work loss, and premature death, but omits the social cost of intangibles (e.g. pain, suffering, lower quality of life). The diabetes epidemic has been accompanied by a similarly drastic increase in obesity. Although the relationship between the two developments is a matter of debate, both are presumably caused by changes in dietary habits and an increasingly sedentary modern lifestyle . Compelling evidence has shown that lifestyle changes can effectively prevent or delay the occurrence of type 2 diabetes. Because individuals at risk for this disease can usually be identified during the pre-diabetic phase of impaired glucose tolerance, early intervention and lifestyle change offer a logical approach to preventing this disease and its devastating vascular complications. Additionally, community-based lifestyle interventions for high risk groups and for the general population are a cost-effective way of curbing the growing burden of the disease. Solidifying the scientific basis for the prevention, treatment and control of this disease and its implementation on a national level, however, remains a difficult challenge. Moreresearch is needed to provide comprehensive and more effective strategies for weight-loss,especially over time. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to identify diabetics and those at risk (prediabetics) out of the total cohort of 1,517 who selected themselves into an intensive community-based lifestyle intervention program, and to assess its clinical efficacy ineffecting medication status as determined and managed by their personal physicians.
Sustainability is a central issue in food business and food retailing since approximately 3 years (See Teitscheid 2011). Various influential factors are significant for this development. On the one hand consumers choices are changing (See GFK et al. 2009). They are looking for natural, good and healthy food; they have a longing for home and an intact world (See iSuN 2010). The image of a highly efficient, but often ruthless industrial food production in regards to mankind and nature is not appropriate here. On the other hand, raw materials are scarce and, thus, very valuable. Bad harvests, mostly interpreted as a result of climate change, worldwide increasing consumption and the production of food in favor of energy production instead of nutritional aims, lead to a re-evaluation of agricultural resources and their producers. Within this context, food industry is searching for new forms of cooperation and partnership along the value chain in order to secure their resource basis. In the light of their significant environmental impact, an increasing number of companies also start to work on the environmental assessment and optimization of their products and value chains. Therefore they need employees with valid knowledge and competencies in sustainability and resources management. Based on this demand, the master's program "Sustainable Services and Nutrition Management" started in 2009 in the University of Applied Sciences in Münster (Germany)1. This text reports about how the topic of resource efficiency in food/nutrition industry has been integrated within the study program, which projects have been worked on and what experience could be gained from them.
A record of morbidity and medical request profiles in international humanitarian aid, taking the earthquake in BAM in Iran in 2003 as an example Objective: With the humanitarian work of the International Red Cross after the earthquake in BAM, Iran, it should be noted that international and national cooperation is possible according to recognised standards and concepts, and therefore morbidity records can be included uniformly in the context of day to day work even in post disaster situations. The data ascertained show changes in the disease spectrum. Basic health provision according to the primary health care concept has priority in the post disaster response (> 6 days) of the earthquake compared to more surgically oriented medical acute aid from abroad. Material and methodology: In the international consensus conference at the beginning of January 2004, uniform morbidity recording was fixed to simple standardised case definitions. The recording of traumatic, infectious and non-infectious diseases was carried out during the routine work in the out-patient facilities of the emergency response units of January 3 to 31, 2004 . Examination was according to the following indicators: Proportional morbidities, sum of the proportional morbidities. Results and discussion: 16677 new cases were included in the complete examination time period. The health facility rate only gradually increased. Temporal fluctuations in the numbers treated may be caused by secondary care of the injured, by a possible lack of accessibility (transport problems) or an increased acceptance of facilities. A written specification of the case definitions was not carried out in BAM, and so a comparison is not possible for recorded morbidities at the same time, and consistency cannot be reached for some of the data. Nine diagnoses/categories cover 98.68% of the consultations in the complete time period. Non-traumatic health problems predominate for the whole of the month. The category "others" is too high with 57.94%. Therefore, it may be assumed that certain diagnoses were overestimated, underestimated or not recognised. Vulnerable groups (children, women, the old), were not completely included. Conclusion: Standards and guidelines for health care in humanitarian aid exist, and are of help during planning, decision finding, execution and communication. Data acquisition instruments (registering books and patient files) should be developed and standardised by national and international humanitarian groups. The recording of morbidity is a simple instrument in the context of out-patient facilities with valuable information for further work during catastrophes.
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 paper looks at NGOs activities in Sustainable Production and
Consumption and obstacles being faced. It identifies lessons for policymakers seeking to engage civil society and makes recommendations on how academics can co-operate more effectively with civil society. Insights are drawn from recent studies on stakeholder involvement in the international political process and a series of surveys and semi-structured interviews. The authors identify four challenges. Effort should (1) be planned more strategically, (2) link sustainable consumption to current priorities, (3) ensure better links between global and local and (4) NGOs have to better link to other interest groups.
What are the implications of the current international political, and
economic settings for consumer policy, and, in particular, those regarding sustainable consumption? In terms of improvements in the efficiency of consumption, the settings have induced efforts to this effect and show potential for further progress. In terms of necessary changes in consumption levels and patterns, however, little progress has been made since the Rio Summit nor is there likely to be any in the near future. These two dimensions of sustainable consumption need to be differentiated, as there is a substantial amount of controversy regarding our ability to achieve sustainable consumption on the
basis of improvements in efficiency alone. The paper traces these differences with respect to the work of the major international governmental organizations (IGOs) engaged in developing sustainable consumption governance. It argues that the lack of commitment
to strong sustainable consumption among IGOs can be explained by their ‘‘weakness’’ as actors in global governance and the existence of strong opposing interests among consumers and business actors.
The influence of globalization on the sustainability of consumption is a frequent topic in academic and political debates. Despite this, the scientific understanding of this influence and, even more so, of the consequences for governance strategies in pursuit of sustainable consumption are still weak. In this paper, we therefore inquire into the specific channels of the influence of globalization on the sustainability of consumption. Based on our analysis, we develop guidelines for sustainable consumption governance.
Unsustainable consumption patterns of the North (or rather of the global affluent consumers class) have been identified by Agenda 21 as one of the key driving forces behind the unsustainable development. However, neither accounting based on the system of national accounts SNA nor household economics provide the proper instruments to assess the environmental impact of household decision making. Eco-efficiency assessments as familiar in the business sector provide no appropriate tool for households. As an alternative an environmental space based assessment scheme is suggested covering the major pressures on the environment caused by household decisions. The methodology is used twice: once to analyse the environmental relevance of the main activity clusters of household consumption and once to identify the dominant acts of consumption within each cluster. The latter provide the basis for deriving environmental performance indicators. A rough analysis of household influence potentials permits to identify housing, eating and mobility as the three priority fields for action for minimising the environmental impact of households. Extending the influence analysis actor matrixes are derived allocating influence and thus responsibility for environmental pressures to different groups of economic agents.
The objective of this paper is to identify those areas of consumption, in which private households can make significant contributions to environmental sustainability, and to present a transparent and comprehensive set of indicators for them. The analysis of the environmental impacts of households focuses on consumption clusters that permit to depict different life spheres of private households. Two criteria guided the investigation of the relevance of these clusters: · The significance of the consumption cluster, and · The potential influence of households. Resource consumption was chosen as simplified, but reliable representation of environmental pressure dynamics. Growing resource consumption goes together with growing environmental pressures and vice versa, although not necessarily proportionally. The key resources analysed are energy and material consumption, and land use. Based on this analysis, three priority fields for action by households were identified: construction and housing, food/nutrition and transport (in this order). All other consumption clusters can be considered environmentally marginal, providing combined saving potentials of less than 10% of the total resource consumption. Finally, from description of the respective roles of actors based on anecdotal evidence a semi-quantitative "actor matrix" is presented indicating the relative influence of different actors per consumption cluster.
Organic food quality is based on processing. While the EU organic production regulation focuses on agricultural production, private standards provide more detailed information about further processing. For the development of organic processing, practitioner perspectives can provide valuable input. To get insight into practitioner perspectives, we conducted semi-structured expert interviews with nine employees of seven partly organic juice processing companies from Germany and Austria. Interview topics were (i) quality of organic juice processing in general, (ii) assessment of specific processing techniques, (iii) product quality of organic juice and (iv) flow of information between producer and consumer. We conducted a thematic analysis. We found that the experts’ understanding of process quality mostly includes more aspects than the EU organic production regulation. It covers the whole food chain plus aspects of social and environmental sustainability. The experts prefer directly bottled juice of local raw materials but chiefly accept juice made from concentrate of exotic raw materials because of environmental concerns. Organic juice is preferred when it is cloudy and natural fluctuations are interpreted as an indicator of natural quality. The experts report that consumer information is challenging because of low food literacy. Raising this might help reduce the number of processed juices on the market.
Purpose: Organic food processing must include organic principles to be authentic. This qualitative study aims to understand the processors' understanding of organic food processing quality.
Design/methodology/approach: This study is based on semi-structured expert interviews with eight employees of six purely or partly organic dairies from Germany and Switzerland. Interview themes are (1) quality of organic milk processing in general, (2) assessment of specific processing techniques, (3) product quality of organic milk and (4) flow of information between producer and consumer. The interviews have been audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed.
Findings: (1) Experts prefer minimal processing; some prefer artisanal processing, whilst others stress the advantages of mechanisation. (2) High temperature short time (HTST) pasteurisation and mechanical processing techniques are accepted; ultra-high-temperature (UHT) milk processing is partly rejected. (3) Traditional taste and valuable ingredients should be present in the final product. Natural variances are judged positively. (4) Consumers' low level of food technology literacy is challenging for communication.
Research limitations/implications: The results cannot be generalised due to the qualitative study design. Further studies, e.g. qualitative case analyses and studies with a quantitative design, are necessary to deepen the results.
Practical implications: The paper shows which processing technologies experts consider suitable or unsuitable for organic milk. The paper also identifies opportunities to bridge the perceived gap between processors' and consumers' demands.
Originality/value: The study shows the challenges of processors in expressing the processors' understanding of process quality.