Sustainable production and consumption

Professor Mark HarveyCentre for Research in Economic

Sociology and Innovation

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

“Peak petro-chemicals”

Global climate change

Food crises

Land use + water

Biodiversity

Socio-economicwelfare

INTERLOCKING CHALLENGES AND CRISES

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.

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.