Co-designing workshops on sustainable consumption and production in Southeast Asia: application of idea cards and structuring methods

Abstract

Ensuring sustainable consumption and production (SCP) patterns is an important task for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 12 by 2030. To facilitate international and domestic collaboration toward regional SCP, we developed a collaborative workshop method to generate and structure ideas about consumption and production (CP) patterns and employed the procedures for emerging Southeast Asian countries at workshops in Japan and Thailand. The main focus was on Bangkok, and the goal was to identify the implications of SCP policies. The structuring of seventeen SCP patterns chosen from 525 CP patterns generated at the workshops helped to identify the important influential factors, policy interventions, and features of probable SCP patterns. The main conclusions were the following: (1) The viewpoints of consumers and providers are important for idea generation. The products and services, as well as the systems of CP patterns, should be targeted; (2) Transition, improvement of the quality of life, and digitalization are also key directions of SCP patterns in Bangkok; (3) Culture, infrastructure, and industry are major considerations for regional SCP policy; and (4) SCP policy instruments are broader than conventional environmental policy instruments, and expanding the scope of SCP policy should be discussed more widely, especially in Asian countries.