Sustainable production and consumption

1
Sustainable production and consumption

• Professor Mark Harvey
• Centre for Research in Economic Sociology and
  Innovation

2
Current relevant research

• Transition to a sustainable bioeconomy (ESRC)
• Sustainable transport energy and engines
• Beyond the petro-chemical technology platform
• ESRC Centre for Research and Engagement in
  Sustainable Behaviour (possibly).
• Macro-, meso-, and micro- framework for
  behavioural analysis
• Eating
• Sheltering
• Washing and watering
• Moving and communicating

3
INTERLOCKING CHALLENGES AND CRISES
Global climate change
Peak petro-chemicals
Socio-economic welfare
Biodiversity
Food crises
Land use water
4
Instituting economies

• Market-led modes of innovation and consumption
  are inadequate to the six challenges
• Range of political instruments, national and
  international
• Mandates, fiscal incentives, legal constraints,
  public procurement, public provision, etc.
• Innovation through directed evolution
• Governments, NGOs, incumbent and new entrant
  firms, scientists a complex interaction of
  multiple actors and interests.
• Consumers, social practices, groupings
  interdependent systems of provision and end-use.

5
Sustainable consumption and production

• Distributed and interdependent innovation towards
  sustainability systems of provision and
  consumption
• Sustainability AND growth versus sustainability
  as a restriction of consumption, localisation,
  etc.
• Collective and political choices rather than
  individual moral or market choice
• Triangular affairs (state and market actors,
  consumer organisations/groupings) at least.