Sustainable Consumption, Ecology and Fair Trade

Edwin Zaccaï, Edwin Zaccaï

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134120710
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This timely volume discusses the debates concerning sustainable consumption and the environment.

Sustainable consumption stands as a wide objective that attracts a growing attention within sustainable development policy circles and academic research. The contributors examine a range of interesting and relevant case studies including: household energy consumption, sustainable welfare, Fair Trade, Oxfam Worldshops, cotton farming and consumer organizations.

Sustainable Consumption takes an interdisciplinary approach and is well-balanced, presenting theoretical debates as well as empirical evidence in order to:

• 
  
  

• characterize the basic problems and determiners of an evolution towards, and the obstacles to, more sustainable consumption patterns
• produce knowledge on the profile of consumers sensitive, and not sensitive, to these issues
• explore realistic modes of interaction and innovation for changes in which consumers are involved.

This text will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, environment studies and sociology.

1 Introduction

Contradictions and studies

Edwin Zaccaï

Policies for sustainable consumption

A number of public policy areas related to sustainable development have in recent years brought changes in consumption and production patterns to the fore. This expression was highlighted in Chapter 4 of Agenda 21 (UNCED, 1992). This chapter was brief in part because it gave rise to conflict, particularly the idea that the consumption patterns of the developed nations would not be sustainable: ‘In many instances, this sustainable development will require reorientation of existing production and consumption patterns that have developed in industrial societies and are in turn emulated in much of the world’ (4.15).

That key idea was translated ten years later into the United Nations programme adopted in Johannesburg (2002) which in these matters: ‘Encourage and promote the development of a 10-year framework of programmes . . . to accelerate the shift towards sustainable consumption and production’ (§14).¹ Meanwhile, this objective has gained importance and is associated with policies along these lines in bodies such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (OECD, 2002a) and the European Environment Agency (EEA) (EEA, 2005).

In these contexts, the many initiatives, declarations and watchwords launched in recent years by public policy makers, companies or activist movements interested in these questions expect consumers to exert a significant favourable influence. Reasons for this evolution are linked to the proportionally growing ecological impact of consumers’ habits in certain fields; the framework of the growing merchandization of the economy; the move from the public powers as central regulator to actors within schemes of governance; the individualism of ‘consumer-citizens’; not forgetting the tradition of activism through example.

How can we analyse these roles, their motivations and effectiveness? More broadly, what does sustainable consumption represent for consumers, in particular from the standpoint of ecology and Fair Trade, and what changes are taking shape that can give form to more effective policies and actions in these areas?

These are the key questions addressed in this book, which is the result of a dialogue and pooling of several research projects aiming to:

• characterize the basic problems and determiners of an evolution towards and the obstacles to more sustainable consumption patterns;
• produce knowledge on the profile of consumers sensitive to and not sensitive to these issues;
• explore realistic ways of interaction and innovation for changes in which consumers are involved, in interaction with consumption conditions, the actions of producers and initiatives by the public authorities.

A majority of these research projects were carried out in the context of providing scientific documentation as possible support for public policies related to sustainable production and consumption patterns.² That does not mean that definitions resulting from these political projects are taken for granted in this book, and the objectives themselves will be analysed critically. Since 2000, a number of academic books and synthesis reports (Heap and Kent, 2000; Cohen and Murphy, 2001; Princen et al., 2002; Jackson and Michaelis, 2003; Reisch and Ropke, 2004; Southerton et al., 2004; Jackson, 2006) have offered rich insights for the exploration of key questions in this respect, focusing especially on ecologically sustainable consumption. In this book, the issue of Fair Trade has been combined with the former to consider sustainability in broader terms.

These questions are more or less present in most of the industrialized countries and, if much of the field research has been accomplished in Belgium, the angle of our work is decidedly European in the ways it is put into perspective and, thanks to the contributions of academics from different countries, comes from a number of disciplines. I will return below to the way their contributions tie in with one another. However, I would first like to highlight contrasts that may make clear straight away the considerable difficulties that are masked by what at first sight appears to be a consensual position.

A short list of contradictions

By way of introduction, I will thus try to formulate the questions at stake in the form of a list of contradictions. My hypothesis here is that the question of sustainable consumption stands at an essentially contradictory stage. These contradictions act as powerful brakes on changes aimed at achieving the stated objectives. For some of these contradictions, it is hard to see how they might be resolved in keeping with the objectives. Highlighting them may consequently serve as a reminder of the backdrop against which actions are being initiated. For others, there are partial options where changes can take place, and the different papers try to clarify a certain number of them. In any case, our academic privilege is perhaps to assume the possibility of pointing out the existence of conflicts and contradictions, without claiming that, for sustainable consumption as it stands today, there are already policies capable of surmounting them. In this respect I adopt a critical approach more than a problem-solving approach. For each contradiction I nevertheless make a few suggestions, concluding, with the last, with a summary assessment of the general state of this problem today. These introductory analyses are grouped first by three relating to the basic determiners, or macro-drivers (points 1–3), after which I look at the role of consumers (points 4–7), followed by the role of public policies (points 8–10).

Box 1.1 Ten contradictions on the road to sustainable consumption

1. Economic growth constitutes a basic foundation of economies, which thwarts limits to consumption.
2. Growth in consumption is still identified with a model of well-being.
3. There is an accelerated adoption of high consumption standards in rapidly industrializing countries.
4. Consumers take advantage of high levels of competition to put downward pressure on prices, which discourages more costly – and sustainable – production standards (both social and ecological).
5. Discriminating between products, to identify those that meet sustainable consumption requirements, demands means of analysis lacking to consumers.
6. Attitudes in support of sustainable consumption are translated into only limited reductions of the negative impacts of consumption.
7. From the standpoint of enterprises, at ecological level the green profile of products is not a first order positioning factor, while at social level voluntary commitments reflect limited changes.
8. Information instruments are preferred tools for change even though their impact is weak.
9. The objectives of a sustainable consumption policy are relatively vague.
10. Although the goal of sustainable consumption raises many questions, the issue appears consensual rather than being the subject of policy debates.

Economic growth constitutes a basic foundation of economies, which thwarts limits to consumption

We might begin by pointing out the somewhat incongruous nature of motivations for limiting consumption in societies where, on the contrary, consumers are encouraged to support economic growth, which is needed to reward investors and permit the sharing of certain economic benefits in society. Initiatives such as the ‘no-shopping day’ are tolerated at present because they are relatively limited in scope, but how could they expand without at least prompting impassioned debates? Some voices are advocating for the end of growth in rich societies, but should it come from documenting its numerous deadlocks, as in the substantial book by R.U. Ayres (1998), or in a movement towards ‘de-growth’ (see Latouche, Chapter 12, this volume), though this catchword taken as a project (a radical ‘update’ of the sustainable development motto) appears at the moment to be rather ambiguous and ill-defined.

In contrast, what is very clear is that from a macroeconomic standpoint, businesses and political leaders work actively to reduce the costs of production and of commercial transactions, the result being a sought-after growth of production and trade. Looking at the ecological consequences of this deep economic driver, a ‘rebound effect’ may be observed in many cases, such as transport. This effect means that even if individually more ‘eco-efficient’ products are consumed, their growing quantity implies that their cumulative impact in general does not decrease (Røpke, 1999), not to mention the much more common cases where there is no specific effort to reduce the ecological impacts of the products themselves.

In this context, ecological objectives are brought down to a ‘second best’, namely the decoupling of economic growth from environmental impacts (OECD, 2002b). But this decoupling is only taking place in certain zones and for certain vectors. In addition, from an ecological point of view it can only be a secondary objective: it is after all the absolute value of impacts that should diminish, not their relative value compared to the (growing) economic output. According to ambitious studies (Sachs et al., 1998; von Weiszäcker et al., 1997) and macroscopic environmental research (Vitousek and Mooney, 1997), as in international political programmes,³ reductions in some of the impacts should nevertheless be highly significant in the long term to ensure the ecological sustainability of the planet. Difficulty complying with the Kyoto objectives, a major aim of decoupling, provides a symbolic illustration of the extent of this challenge.

Growth in consumption is still identified with a model of well-being

The previous contradiction looked at material economic drivers. This one is about the cultural associations between growth in consumption and in happiness. Consumerism has been identified since the beginnings of ecology in the late 1960s as the central obstacle to limiting the impacts of contemporary societies (Gorz, 1977; Bozonnet, 2005). In fact, this criticism dates back much further: ‘Consumption is not geared unfailingly towards increasing our well-being and improving our quality of life – as economics would have it. Some of it appears to impede well-being and decrease our quality of life. This kind of claim has occupied a central role in critiques of society for well over two centuries’, write Jackson and Michaelis (2003: 27) in a chapter entitled ‘Consumerism as a social and psychological pathology’ (see also Wilk (2001, 2002) and Dobré (Chapter 11, this volume). John Lintott (Chapter 4, this volume) updates this argument by means of satisfaction surveys that largely confirm the claim. So how can we act on the values that underpin these behaviours (Brown and Cameron, 2000)?

The effort to ‘change the indicators’ (e.g. to stop giving the central role to economic growth as a measure of progress), represents a constant in recent years in the field of sustainable development (Max-Neef, 1995), or more broadly in social economics (Viveret, 2002). While it is certainly necessary, it requires considerable means and numerous developments to impact concretely on the differentiated behaviours of actors beyond a general measure of well-being such as that of the UNDP Human Index Development, for example.

Another non-exclusive possibility consists of making a better distinction between segments of the population in whom these objectives strike a chord, knowing that the dissociation between increased consumption and well-being covers countless realities. However, such dissociation can only be partial.

There is an accelerated adoption of high consumption standards in rapidly industrializing countries

This third difficulty underlines the contemporary context of consumption patterns at the global level. Analysis shows that the fear of ecological impacts associated with considerable projected consumption increases at global level constitutes a powerful historic root of sustainable development conceptualization (Zaccaï, 2002). Inversely, as W. Sachs puts it, ‘sustainability implies creating a style of wealth which is capable of justice’ (Sachs, 1999a). Global studies (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005) show that this direction has not been taken in the past fifty years. Discourse on revising growth in consumption as a model for lifestyle therefore appears out of sync, in a period where these models are being rapidly replicated. Calls for limits directed towards the fringes of the population having access to these new standards may be interpreted as eco-colonialism, and cannot be taken seriously given the massive historic ‘addiction’ to the same consumption patterns in economically rich countries. A survey of data published about the ‘new consumers’ in newly industrialized countries (Myers and Kent, 2004) confirms and reactivates this fast-evolving problematic. And yet, at the very least, sustainable consumption must be analysed in the context of globalization (Fuchs and Lorek, 2001).

At an ecological level, important questions hang in the balance and will soon be played out in the choices and standards adopted by the rapidly industrializing nations, China first and foremost. Not only will this determine their own impacts, but as the ‘planet’s workshop’, the standards could influence world development more widely (Izraelewicz, 2005). For certain impacts, the serious level of pollution already reached may sometimes act ‘favourably’ in terms of promoting more advanced standards.⁴

Questions also arise with regard to the social aspects of this phase of industrialization, to which we will return in some of the following points.

Consumers take advantage of high levels of competition to put downward pressure on prices, which discourages more costly – and sustainable – production standards (social and ecological)

In short, this fourth contradiction lies between the individual’s interests as a consumer and as a worker. This contradiction is not new and underpins the law of supply and demand, but we may observe a change of context in relation to sustainable consumption. The purchase of inexpensive products from lowwage countries, while profitable to consumers from high-wage countries, leads to their de-industrialization, with alarming socioeconomic consequences. If the objective of sustainable consumption is understood to include some social criteria we are left with difficulties in setting out priorities that should, moreover, be understood and supported by the population. Based on a survey carried out in Great Britain, Hobson (2002: 95) suggests an idea that can be connected to this challenge: ‘This analysis argues that social justice, not sustainable lifestyles, has the most resonance with interviewees. As a result, not only do calls for rationalisation carry little cultural meaning, they also actively alienate individuals from the project of sustainable consumption.’

Discriminating between products, to identify those that meet sustainable consumption requirements, demands means of analysis lacking in consumers

The observations we made at the end of the previous point prompt us also, if we want to promote sustainable consumption beyond restricted circles where it may be rationalized, to study the way in which these subjects are represented in the population as a whole. In this respect the discrimination between sustainable and not sustainable products is crucial. For social impacts of products difficulties will rapidly appear, outside of well-identified but limited initiatives, among which Fair Trade products (see several contributions in this volume), or in a more diluted way, products made in companies declaring meeting a variety of codes of conduct. But in ecological matters as well, field studies (Bartiaux, Chapter 7, and Rousseau and Bontinckx, Chapter 6, this volume) demonstrate the low level of identification in the population as a whole of more ecological products and behaviours, including those duly labelled. A collection of studies conducted in different countries show that attitudes to ecological problems vary in terms of problems and products, social categories, but also concrete local situations (Diamantopoulos et al., 2003). Aside from these technical obstacles which should be considered in the design of efficient policies and actions, there exists a fundamental criticism of the idea of placing the burden of responsibility for these choices on individuals (Dolan, 2002), introducing at the very least the importance of consumer group dynamics (Georg, 1999; Burgess, 2003), or other collective social drivers.

Attitudes in support of sustainable consumption are translated into only limited reductions of the negative impacts of consumption

This observation is commonplace in social science research on consumers in relation to the environment. ‘The influence of environmental knowledge on environmental consciousness is small, effects of environmental knowledge and consciousness on behaviour are insignificant’ (Kuckartz, 1995 quoted in Brand, 1997). In this volume, Bartiaux provides concrete examples showing that the higher social categories have both an ‘environmentally friendly’ attitude and greater impacts than social categories where the situation is the reverse, a result corroborated by different studies (Brand, 1997; Dobré, 2002). This is not surprising, since the most discriminatory factor, on average, of the increase in impacts is income level.

This does not mean that strengthening these attitudes, and providing information on possible actions (EC, 2004), is pointless. It is a pipe-dream, however, to count on this aspect in the hope of obtaining significantly different results within the pursuit of economic growth.

It seems more promising to gain better understanding of how consumers are partially ‘locked in’ to certain consumer behaviours owing to infrastructures (Green and Vergragt, 2002; Sanne, 2002; Southerton et al., 2004) and the organizational networks in which their actions take place, in routine and ordinary forms of consumption (Shove, 2005). Consumers’ concrete practices in managing their decisions and their time (Spaargaren, 1997; Cogoy, 1999) should also be studied.

From the standpoint of enterprises, at an ecological level the green profile of products is not a first order positioning factor, while at a social level voluntary commitments reflect limited changes

This observation should be related to two lines of reasoning that have been argued extensively in recent years. First, in a perspective of governance, it was considered that more changes in production patterns and products were to be expected from voluntary corporate initiatives. At the Johannesburg Summit in 2002, for example, this position was expressed both in the text of the Programme of Implementation and by the presentation of numerous partnerships with private enterprises. Second, from the earliest ‘citizen-consumers’ initiatives, it has been repeatedly claimed that consumers would be capable of influencing the market by their preferences for certain products that meet more ecological or social criteria.

This presumed model of influence nevertheless shows its limits in reality. Only a minority of products occupy ‘ecological niches’. The ‘green’ argument is secondary in product profiling (Kong et al., 2002). A survey made in Europe has demonstrated that consumer organizations and consumers are not among the top sources of influence in decisions for corporate environmental managers (Kestemont, 1999). Of course some campaigns of boycott have attracted attention and stimulated comments because of the new configurations and opportunities they could offer (e.g. Brent Spar, Clean Clothes Campaign). All in all, their impacts do not appear to deviate significantly from the general curse of world business.

Nevertheless, while there may be only a weak direct influence of ‘market demands’ within the meaning that concerns us, it is none the less true that codes of conduct and ratings of different sorts related to various aspects of sustainability are multiplying in the drive for corporate social responsibility (Livesey and Kearins, 2002). The influences favouring these changes bring consumers into the picture indirectly, though in a less important way than the influence of shareholders, company staff and certain stakeholders, acting in a perspective of limiting risk-taking in case of failure – risks whose level depends partly on regulatory decisions taken by the public authorities (e.g. legal liability in pollution cases).

These developments are leading to changes in certain corporate impacts and practices, whose effects seem limited on average. This does not prevent initiatives from being interesting and dynamic, however (...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Sustainable Consumption, Ecology and Fair Trade
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• Part I: Consumption: What kind of problem for sustainable development?
• Part II: Who is sensitive to sustainable consumption, and why?
• Part III: Dynamics of sustainable consumption
• Bibliography