Achieving Sustainable Consumption for Sustainable Development: Issues and Solutions

Current patterns of consumption and production, particularly, in the developed countries are unsustainable. They are depleting forest resources, fisheries, groundwater and bio diversity, polluting air, water and eco systems and causing dangerous climate changes. Environmental decay is occurring everywhere around the globe.

Goal 12 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations is to “ensure sustainable consumption and production (SCP) patterns.” It means being mindful about what, how, and how much we produce and consume so that the earth’s resources are used judiciously and preserved for future generations.

SCP is important because human beings exert extreme stress on the planet and its resources. Every living being relies on the planet for the basic needs of air, food, water and shelter. In addition, humans exert a special kind of stress on the planet, an exponential pressure to provide beyond the basic needs such as bigger houses, nicer cars, the latest gadgets and appliances, entertainment, fashion items, annual vacations and so on. 

 It is estimated that the world population will reach 9.6 billion by 2050. The number may not mean much until we consider that 70 percent of the world’s population is predicted to live in resource-intensive urban areas and 3 billion middle class consumers will join the global economy by 2040. Put simply, it means more people with greater wants will consume more.

Our consumption (and production) pattern is problematic because we only have one planet with finite resources. If we keep consuming and producing like we do currently, there will come a day when the earth can no longer provide us with the resources necessary to fulfil our unlimited wants.

Forget the wants, the earth may, in fact, be unable to provide us with what we need: clean water, air, food and basic shelter. Another facet of the state of humanity is that while we have made good progress in addressing poverty, 1.2 billion people are still living in extreme poverty today. So, on one hand we have rich people “wanting more” and, on the other, we have poor people “needing” the essentials.

Additionally, not all our wants are superficial. After all, is it all that bad to want better healthcare, more varieties of food, longer lives, better education, safer communities, better roads, more telecommunication and comfortable lives for our families and children? No. Thus our governments, our businesses, and we as individuals engage in a whole lot of human activity in pursuit of better lives.

Unfortunately, all the human activity comes at a cost to the planet, be it aimed at meeting needs or fulfilling wants. Geologists have declared that we have entered a new epoch since 1950, “the Anthropocene” where human activity has an incredible impact on the environment of the planet.

For instance, human activity has pushed extinction rates of animals and plants far above the long-term average, increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the fastest rate in 66 million years, put so much plastic in the waterways that microplastic particles are now omnipresent, doubled the nitrogen and phosphorous in our soils in the past century with fertiliser use, and left a permanent layer of black carbon (airborne particulates from fossil fuel burning) that affects human health, visibility, ecosystems, agricultural productivity and exacerbates global warming.

Therefore, considering 1) the unlimited human aspiration and increasing disposable income 2) the need to alleviate poverty and provide decent living standards for the entire world’s (growing) population and 3) the incredible impact of human activity on earth, we must find solutions and compromises. Perhaps the Middle Path is the way.

 In other words, in order to ensure that development addresses the need of all humanity while removing excessive stress on the planet, adoption of sustainable patterns of consumption and production is an imperative. Sustainable living in its truest sense may be achieved only if we radically change our consciousness.

Whether it is checking population growth or letting go of all our wants and desires (beyond the basic necessities), debating roles of economy and technology or rethinking current systems and institutions, these “big questions” are difficult to answer and even more complicated to achieve.

Open truth is; without sustainable consumption, sustainable development is impossible. Sustainable consumption has become an important issue on the global governance agenda. There is an increasing recognition that increases in resource productivity alone will not be sufficient to deliver sustainable development.