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SPAC Watch
SPAC Watch Research - United Kingdom
Accountability
• 1 st country to come out with its own National SPAC Strategy titled " Changing patterns: The UK Government's Framework on Sustainable Consumption and Production ". The strategy is the UK government's response to its commitment under the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation to "encourage and promote the development of a 10 year framework of programmes in support of regional and national initiatives to accelerate the shift towards sustainable consumption and production" [i] . The objectives of UK's SCAP strategy are (i) Decoupling economic growth and environmental degradation (ii) Focusing policy on the most important environmental impacts associated with the use of particular resources, rather than on the total level of all resource use (iii) Increasing the productivity of material and resource use (iv) Encouraging sustainable consumption. The strategy takes into account market frameworks and barriers, lists out SPAC policies that can be used to build a framework and considers the next steps to be taken.
• The DEFRA/DTI consultation paper " Sustainable consumption and production indicators " considers a basket of decoupling indicators for SPAC. This includes the following (i) Economy-wide decoupling indicators (ii) Resource use indicators (iii) Decoupling indicators for specific sectors. The SD Unit at DEFRA (Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) has been preparing annual reports reviewing progress on certain headline indicators. Presumably the SPAC Strategy will be included in this review in the future.
• The report " Policies for sustainable consumption " [ii] commissioned by the UK sustainable development commission does a great job of identifying the obstacles to dealing with SPAC issues squarely. Institutional reticence to address these latter issues appears to hinge on three concerns. In the first place, addressing them properly would involve questioning fundamental assumptions about the way modern society functions. In the second place, any attempt to address consumption quickly becomes reflexive and challenges us at the level of personal change. Finally, questioning consumption appears to threaten a wide variety of vested interests.
Responsibility
• 1 st country to come out with a national strategy devoted to SPAC
• While the strategy pays some lip service to the notion of the UK's responsibility to developing countries, there is nothing that practically addresses the issue. Some commentators have criticized the strategy and the relevant indicators for not taking into account the effects of international trade - "We currently import a vast amount of products and raw materials as well as outsourcing many services abroad. Since none of the indicators refers to this, one could envisage a scenario where we might congratulate ourselves that the UK had successfully decoupled economic growth from adverse impacts while causing serious impacts elsewhere in the world due to poor controls on supply conditions" [iii] .
• "Given the current disproportionate burden placed on the global environment by rich countries such as Britain and continuing under-consumption in most countries of the South, steps towards sustainable production and consumption will need to deliver positive benefits in terms of poverty elimination and ecological regeneration in the developing world if international policy deadlock is to be overcome." [iv] Nick Robbins goes on to point out 8 key production and consumption linkages that the UK government could pursue to help developing countries - but none of them have been incorporated in the SPAC strategy.
• "There is both a growing concern in Britain about our impacts abroad and a desire for practical change. The former may be symbolized as a perception of a "blind trampling foot", whereby we in Britain create a range of social and environmental impacts elsewhere in the world, largely invisible to the UK citizen, and the latter as the "enabling hand". Much more can and needs to be done to assist developing countries establish the sustainable production and trading systems that allow both them and us to benefit from their scarce environmental resources." [v]
Implementation
• Local implementation - Policies for sustainable consumption in Wales [vi] - initiative in Wales by the Welsh Consumer Council and others to the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) to influence patterns of consumption in Wales.
Endnotes
[i] Paragraph 15, Report of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2002 (A/CONF.199/20*)
[ii] Policies for sustainable consumption, Tim Jackson and Laurie Michaelis, Sustainable Development Commission, 2003, < http://www.sd-commission.gov.uk/pubs/suscon/ >
[iii] Breaking the link - can we have our cake and eat it? Cyberium, 2003 < http://www.cyberium.co.uk/changing.htm >
[iv] "Sustainable consumption in Britain: the International Dimension", Nick Robbins, IIED, 2000 < http://www.iied.org/smg/pubs/detr.html >
[v] Citizen action to lighten Britain's Ecological Footprints, Nick Robbins, IIED, 1995, < http://www.iied.org/smg/pubs/citizen.html >
[vi] Policies for sustainable consumption in Wales", Sustainable development forum for Wales, WWF, Welsh Consumer Council, 2004, < http://www.wales-consumer.org.uk/englishsite/press_pubs/publications/pol_sus_con/pol_sus_con_eng.pdf >