Not Roadmaps but Toolboxes: Analysing Pioneering National Programmes for Sustainable Consumption and Production

Abstract

Sustainable consumption and production, Policy programmes, Finland, Sweden, United Kingdom,

Developing Policies and Instruments for Sustainable Household Consumption: Irish Experiences and Futures

“…For example, responsibility for product labelling frequently involves a plethora of government departments, state agencies and non-governmental organizations. This low priority of sustainable consumption in Ireland contrasts with considerable progress made by some other EU Member States such as Finland or the UK which have developed comprehensive national SCP programmes (Berg 2010;UNEP 2008).…”

“…The distinction between "weak" versus "strong" sustainability and its operationalisation in terms of three principles of strategic planning-comprehensiveness, commitment and clarityprovides a useful conceptual and methodological framework for systematic cross-national comparison (Berg 2010;Cherp et al 2004;Fuchs and Lorek 2005). While "strong" applications of sustainability strategies promote structural changes with commitment and coordination, targeting, resourcing and monitoring, weak applications lack several of these qualities, resulting in fragmented policy actions (Berg 2010).…”

“…Additional principles of efficiency, cooperation and sufficiency then offer further analytical potential to the comparative assessment of SC policy programmes (Princen 2003). Assessment of Berg (2010) of SCP programmes in Finland, Sweden, and the UK, for example, reveals that the efficiency principle (which focuses on technical and economic aims, e.g., using less oil to move a car a given distance) dominates whereas principles of cooperation (the level of participation in policy formation) and especially sufficiency (promoting principles such as restraint and precaution) are developed to a much lesser degree.…”

Corrigendum to “Participatory systems mapping for sustainable consumption: Discussion of a method promoting systemic insights” [Ecol. Econ. 106 (2014) 33–43]

“…Over the 1990s and 2000s a number of programmes on sustainable consumption has been initiated by international organisations such as UN or OECD as well as by a number of national governments and the European Union (Fuchs and Lorek, 2005;Berg, 2011;Fuchs, 2013). Most of these programmes share the same basic understandings and, contrary to the call of the Brundtland Report, are quite far from any serious challenge to the lifestyles of the affluent.…”

Att skingra myter om hållbar konsumtion för att förbättra nordiskt beslutsfattande

“…administrativa eller ekonomiska styrmedel, som direkt angriper ohållbara konsumtionsmönster och -nivåer. Till exempel väljer regeringar ofta mjukare, politiskt mer acceptabla, men ofta mindre effektiva verktyg såsom informationskampanjer, som tenderar att flytta ansvaret för att göra marknaden grönare till konsumenten (Berg 2011). …”