SCP


Cross-cut Chapter 3 GLOBAL GENDER AND ENVIRONMENT OUTLOOK Food Fish


The nature of consumption Types of consumption


Chapter 4: Water Forest


Unsustainable consumption and production has been identified as a high-priority global environmental issue for decades. Agenda 21, adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 (the Rio Earth Summit), stated that “While poverty results in certain kinds of environmental stress, the major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialized countries, which is a matter of grave concern,


Energy Chapter 2 aggravating (Sustainable poverty and Development Knowledge


imbalances” Platform


2016a). The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, adopted at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, recognized that sustainable consumption and production (SCP) is essential for sustainable development and called for accelerating “the shift towards sustainable consumption and production to promote social and economic development within the carrying capacity of ecosystems” (UNEP 2012a). Goal 12 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by world leaders in 2015, is “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns” (UN 2016).


The current global pace and trajectory of consumption and production are environmentally unsustainable and socially inequitable (WWF 2014; Hoekstra and Wiedmann 2014 ). In 2012, the European Environment Agency dubbed unsustainable consumption the “mother of all environmental issues” (EEA 2012). Rapid economic growth and human development since the 1950s have been achieved at a heavy cost in terms of environmental pressures and impacts. Global use of natural resources including biomass, fossil


fuels,


ores, minerals and water increased from less than 10 billion tonnes in 1950 to over 70 billion tonnes in 2010 and could reach 140 billion tonnes by 2050 unless economic growth is decoupled from the rate of natural resource consumption (UNEP 2011a; FOE et al. 2009). Accelerating global resource use has produced concomitantly rapid growth in wastes and emissions that are now driving global environmental crises including climate change, degradation of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, threats to food security, water scarcity, and nearly-ubiquitous chemical pollution.


104 Over-consumption as a cultural norm – and a conspicuous Chapter 1


signifier of modernity and class status – is a defining characteristic of developed countries. A “modern” (western) lifestyle is increasingly characterized by its consumption and production patterns. In a lifetime, on average, a European uses four times more resources than someone in Africa and three times more than someone in Asia (but only half as many as someone in the United States) (EEA 2012). Dramatic differences in consumption between rich and poor countries raise obvious questions about environmental equity and responsibility (Wilk 2002).


As more governments and individuals aspire to higher levels of consumption, and in the absence of any change in the pace of growth in this development model of development, by 2050 global material and resource use of materials and resources could dwarf today’s (UNEP 2015b). The resources needed to sustain this level of consumption are simply not available on anything except the most short-term basis, and the pollution and waste absorptive capacities of the earth’s ecosystems are already strained. The 2014 Living Planet Report estimated that the equivalent of one and a half Earths would be needed to support the global population if population and consumption trends continue in a BAU (business as usual) manner (WWF 2014).


At the same time, this “global” view is misleading in that consumption, economic growth, development, resource depletion, and the environmental consequences of all of these are not evenly distributed globally (WWF 2014; FOE et al. 2009). Neither are they evenly distributed at smaller scales, including the intra- household level. “Average” consumption rates hide significant gender and class differences at the high and low ends of “average” consumption. The social benefits, social inequities, depletion of resources and environmental degradation that accompany current unsustainable models of consumption and production shape (and are shaped by) gender, class, age, race and locational differences. This is also true of people’s relationships to economic growth and their perceptions of environmental problems and solutions.


Many forms of consumption and production place unsustainable pressures on ecosystems. The need to meet urgent human needs, including in disaster or


refugee situations, during conflicts and where


there is chronic or acute poverty, can result in poor environmental management and resource-raiding


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