Expansion of Policy Domain of Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP): Challenges and Opportunities for Policy Design

Ryu Koide,Yasuhiko Hotta,Tomohiro Tasaki

doi:10.3390/su13126763

Abstract

Since 2015, the international policy community has started to agree on international agreements with ambitious middle-term and long-term goals, highly relevant to sustainable consumption and production (SCP) such as those seen in the Paris Agreement, SDGs, and the plastic-related agreements at the G7 and G20 processes. Along with this trend, there has been growing attention given to socio-technical system change or “transition”. Policy debate is putting more focus on the need to change consumption and production patterns and deal with various ecological consequences within planetary boundaries such as decarbonization, absolute reduction in material throughput, or creation of a plastic-free society. This paper examines the expansion of the policy domain of SCP in three phases; SCP focusing on pollution control and cleaner production (SCP 1.0), SCP from the perspective of product lifecycle (SCP 2.0), and SCP focusing on systematic changes in socio-technical systems driving consumption and production (SCP 3.0). The potential impact of a wider SCP policy domain can be comparable to the historical shift in discourse related to ecological modernization theory from pollution prevention to efficiency. This emerging trend corresponds to the need for a fresh approach to policy design which can facilitate transition to sustainability.

Highlights

Accepted: 11 June 2021One of the key policy concepts on the global sustainability agenda since the 1990s has been sustainable consumption and production (SCP)
The objective of this paper is to summarize the different policy backgrounds on how SCP as a policy domain evolved from SCP 1.0 to SCP 2.0 and onto the recent interest over sustainability transition (SCP 3.0) by applying environmental policy discourse analysis
We look at how the focus of SCP policy has shifted and widened over the last 30 years, and pay particular attention to the development of SCP policy discourse

Summary

Introduction

One of the key policy concepts on the global sustainability agenda since the 1990s has been sustainable consumption and production (SCP). This was triggered by economic globalization and the increasing distance between where goods are produced and where they are consumed [1]. SCP was a key component of Agenda 21, the action plan adopted at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Rio Summit) in 1992 [2]. In a report published in 2015, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) defined SCP as “a holistic approach to minimizing the negative environmental impacts from consumption and production systems while promoting quality of life for all” [3]. The focus of SCP has widened over the last few years due to a shift in emphasis of environmental policy and sustainability agenda

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