Abstract
A split review of the environmental impact of Norwegian consumption and production over the last decade illustrates that rising consumption is eliminating the bonus of eco-efficiency in production. Two key drivers behind this situation are the large increase in person and goods transportation and an increase in wealth that has allowed Norwegians to spend more on purchasing products and services. To achieve a sustainable development in rich countries, two major adjustments to the prevailing environmental policy are suggested: (1) The environmental impact of consumption should also be monitored as part of the official sustainability indicator monitoring system, e.g., by calculating the ecological footprint. (2) A specific consumption focus in environmental policy should be developed, beginning with the consumption categories with the largest footprint (volume) and the most negative development (change).
Highlights
The sustainable development debate has focussed on transforming production to become more efficient in terms of resource use, and less environmentally harmful
“eco-efficiency” in 1992 by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development [1], was endorsed the same year at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development as a means for private enterprises to contribute to sustainable development
In the case of aviation, we used an average figure of our study shows that the additional global warming potential (GWP) per passenger kilometer was taken to be 0.72 times that resulting from CO2 emissions alone in 1987, rising to 0.8 times in 2006 because of a growth in the share of long-haul flights
Summary
The sustainable development debate has focussed on transforming production to become more efficient in terms of resource use, and less environmentally harmful. An alternative hypothesis is presented: In high-consuming industrialized countries such as Norway, the overall environmental impact of production has been reduced substantially over the last decade, whereas the overall environmental impact of consumption has increased [2,3,4,5,6]. This means that rising consumption rates eliminate the bonus of eco-efficiency in production. We discuss how Norway’s environmental policy could be reshaped in light of the conclusions we draw concerning the above-mentioned alternative hypothesis
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