Sustainable Consumption
By Dr Arvind Kumar
The following warning signal came from World Widelife Fund’s 2008 report on ‘Living Planet’: “The earth is running out of natural resources like land, water and minerals so quickly that if nothing is done, some predictions say that by 2030 humankind will need the equivalent of two planets to sustain our current lifestyle.” It seems that over the past four this warning has remained unheeded. At this juncture it is worth noting as to what exactly can be done to reduce environmental impact – which has got further worsened – and how shoud we go about doing about it? Preventing environmental damage in the first place is seen as a preferable strategy to asking people to mitigate it after the fact. However, according to Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout (Greens), addressing sustainable consumption was “as crucial as [addressing] the production side. They need to go hand-in-hand but it’s far more difficult. How do you tell people what to consume? You cannot really forbid things.”
There is a need for better environmental information to be made available to the public, to encourage a change away from unsustainable consumption patterns such as meat-eating. For Franz Fiala, a spokesman for the European consumer rights group ANEC, the fundamental problem was the lack of a “roadmap” or “master plan” for addressing the issue. He further adds: “We have pieces of that but no overall strategy, any overall strategy would have to accomplish fundamental changes to the way we live, how we produce, how we consume. It’s quite clear that we have to consume less.” But reducing consumption had to be done according to principles of global social equity – and quickly. Sustainable consumption should go hand in hand with sustainable development to maintain ecological equilibrium.
