ABSTRACT
This quote is taken from the Oslo Declaration on Sustainable Consumption, a manifesto developed in February 2005 by about 50 scientists from around the world.1 It is one of the (many) documents that suggest that significant efforts have to be made to make our production and consumption systems more sustainable to avoid a global crisis with regard to environmental and other resources.2 In this context, at various levels the need for policies with regard to SCP is increasingly recognised as a priority. The most important policy statements include:
The above-cited statement adopted at the WSSD, and the subsequent development of this 10-year framework under leadership of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Department of Environmental and Social Affairs (UN DESA) through the Marrakech process3
The clear place for SCP in the sustainable development strategy adopted by the European Council in June 2006,4 which includes the task to develop an action plan for sustainable production and consumption in Europe by 2007
So, the change to sustainable production and consumption patterns has an important place on various policy agendas, but is it clear how to govern this change, and what such changes imply? The editors of this book, all affiliated to a major EU-funded project called Sustainable Consumption Research Exchanges (SCORE!), think that this is a hard and far from trivial nut to crack. They hence decided to dedicate the first of the two books that will be produced in the project to the question of how radical changes to SCP can be governed. Follow-up books will apply the lessons learned in the field of food, mobility, and energy and housing. This first chapter:
Discusses the conceptual approach followed in SCORE! and the development of this book
Introduces the structure of the book
1 See www.oslodeclaration.org [accessed 25 August 2007]. 2 Compare as well the ‘ecological footprint’ calculations published by WWF and the related concept of
‘World Overshoot Day’ coined by the Global Footprint Network (GFN). As put by GFN director Mathis Wackernagel, in 2006 on 9 October humanity started ‘to live from its ecological credit card’, having used the resources that the Earth could regenerate in that year. We refer, for example, to org.eea. europa.eu/news/Ann1132753060 and www.neweconomics.org/gen/ecologicaldebt091006.aspx [accessed 25 August 2007].
