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The road from Rio


Chapter 4 of Agenda 21, the outcome of the First Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, opens with one of the most forthright statements on changing consumption patterns:

The major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in the industrialised countries.

Principle 8 of the Rio declaration states:

To achieve sustainable development and a higher quality of life for all people, Member States should reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption.

Sustainable production and consumption was acknowledged at the time of the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992 as being one of the most important issues to be addressed, particularly the ‘unsustainable’ patterns of production and consumption in the industrialised countries. Since that time, progress at national and international levels on this issue has been patchy and inadequate to say the least, particularly on the consumption side. Ten years on, as part of the preparations for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in August 2002, sustainable production and consumption was yet again identified as one of the key issues to be addressed.

Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, in a speech in London in February 2002 called for, "strong political will and practical action to overcome the hurdles that nations face in reconciling their economic, social and environmental goals as they prepared to debate the issues at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit 2002) in Johannesburg later this year." (lecture at the London School of Economics and Political Science: "From Doha to Johannesburg by way of Monterrey: How to achieve, and sustain, development in the 21st century" London, 25 February 2002)

Responding to the challenges of the WSSD, the UK Government through Michael Meacher stated, "In developing these ‘deliverable’ initiatives we place a strong emphasis on the importance of the involvement of civil society, including the Private Sector, NGOs and Local Authorities." (UNED UK Conference, January 2002)

The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee conducted an inquiry in 2002 to examine how the UK was preparing for Earth Summit 2002 and the progress which had been made since the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.

So what progress have we made in terms of political will and practical action in achieving more sustainable patterns of production & consumption (Chapter 4 of Agenda 21) in UK?

Many people could perhaps be forgiven for concluding that there is a lack of evidence of widespread political will within the UK Government, beyond some passionate speeches from the then Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, and the fact that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was the first leader to declare his intention to go to Johannesburg. Or is it that the media just is not reporting it?

To be fair, this apparent lack of political will could perhaps be because our political leaders do not perceive a real signal from the electorate that there is consensus for a particular course of action on sustainability – and so with a multitude of separate ‘agendas’, most politicians would regard it as political suicide to take one particular direction – and hence little happens.

So we are left with proposals for practical action being developed by the citizens themselves, reaching consensus and then communicating to Government for its support, whether it be fiscal ‘encouragement’ or infrastructure development.

It is fair to say that since the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, there has been considerable progress on the production side of the equation – the ‘greening’ of industry, led by individual ‘pioneering’ companies and by business organisations such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. It could be argued that this progress is not nearly enough and many in industry would agree. But the problem for industry is that while most companies are very good at setting targets for improvements, operating their internal management systems to achieve those targets and move in a certain direction, they are becoming less willing to do so where there is little or no agreement among their stakeholders on which that direction should be. So many of the companies who participated in the multi-stakeholder process described in this report did so because they hoped that we would achieve consensus on what is the ‘right’ direction so they could be confident that their programmes in future would meet with widespread approval.

Where the gap really lies is on the other side of the equation – the sustainable consumption issue. Here there has been much less progress since Rio – in particular in helping individual citizens (’consumers’) make the link between their personal actions (good and bad) and changes in the global environment such that they might then be persuaded to alter their lifestyles to effect positive change for the good of all, and especially for themselves as individuals – and we all know the power of enlightened self interest in such matters! All the market research shows no particular lack of interest or awareness among consumers (although there is obviously wide variation) but a general frustration at the lack of unbiased and valid information on the basis of which they could make informed purchasing decisions which would actually contribute to more sustainable lifestyles.

In the UK, if not elsewhere, we have been largely brainwashed into what can best be described as the ‘supermarket mentality’:

- we can have what we want, when we want it, as long as we can afford to pay for it!

and that just about sums up the current consumer situation in the UK with all that entails in terms of social exclusion for those who cannot afford to pay, whether we are talking about filling supermarket trolleys, booking the next foreign holiday or buying the latest model from the local car dealer. Yet just to tell people to give up their ‘air miles’, their ‘food miles’ and their precious ‘family’ car is not the best way to win people over to follow a more sustainable lifestyle. Exhortations to make ‘sacrifices’ and consume less often fall on deaf ears – or perhaps are met with the response that it really is the job of Government, not ‘me’ personally, to bring about change. Sustainable lifestyles may involve ‘consuming less’ but the best way to achieve support at the start is to talk about consuming differently.

There have been many very good programmes from ‘design for environment’ through to innovative processes for reducing waste but largely developed and conducted in an uncoordinated way. What is required is something much more radical – a fundamental rethink of the ways we as a ‘Society’ do things, the products and services we use to do those things, and the processes we adopt to make those products and services.

Incremental changes are just not enough. Yet complex debates about just what is or is not involved in sustainable development, while perhaps appropriate for academics and the cognoscenti, just do not appeal to the general populus – the very people who have to be brought into the debate if we are to be truly successful in the sustainability stakes. For many people the concept of sustainability as currently portrayed is very complex – but it does not have to be – not at the start at least. It really is very simple – some more Life Cycle ‘thinking’ rather than yet more Life Cycle Analyses.

Asking questions such as,

and

If we do not think we can do it indefinitely for whatever reason, then it is not sustainable and now is the time to be thinking about the alternatives before it is too late – too late that is to develop and introduce alternatives. And that is just where we need practical actions – actions which are relevant to the vast majority of people.

Click here to review the main recommendations for which consensus was achieved in the ‘It’s your choice!’ report.