Sustainable consumption and production (SCP) is at the core of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically addressed by SDG 12. This goal aims to "ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns," acting as a cross-cutting theme that feeds into other SDGs such as those related to climate change, poverty, health, and sustainable cities.
SCP involves using services and products in a way that minimizes environmental damage, preserves natural resources, and promotes social equity. The purpose is to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation, which means pursuing economic development in a way that can be sustained by the planet over the long term. SCP requires changes at all levels of society, from individuals to businesses to governments.
At the individual level, SCP implies making lifestyle choices that reduce environmental impact. This might include reducing, reusing, and recycling waste, choosing products with less packaging, and opting for more sustainable forms of transport like cycling or public transport.
For businesses, SCP entails adopting sustainable business models and practices. This could include improving resource efficiency, investing in renewable energy, designing products that are durable and recyclable, and ensuring fair labor practices.
At the government level, SCP involves implementing policies that support sustainable business practices and incentivize sustainable consumer behavior. This might involve regulations to reduce pollution, subsidies for renewable energy, and campaigns to raise awareness about sustainable consumption.
SCP also plays a role in several other SDGs. For example, sustainable production practices can help mitigate climate change (SDG 13) by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, by reducing the pressure on natural resources, SCP supports the goals related to life below water (SDG 14) and life on land (SDG 15).
While progress has been made in certain areas, challenges remain in achieving the shift towards SCP. These include existing patterns of overconsumption, limited awareness about the impacts of consumption, and the need for technological innovation to enable more sustainable production.
Pathways towards a defossilated sustainable power system for West Africa within the time horizon of 2015–2050 is researched, by applying linear optimisation modelling to determine the cost optimal generation mix to meet the demand based on assumed costs and technologies in 5-year intervals. Six scenarios were developed, which aimed at examining the impact of various policy constraints such as cross-border electricity trade and greenhouse gas emissions costs.
Producing food exerts pressures on the environment. Understanding the location and magnitude of food production is key to reducing the impacts of these pressures on nature and people. In this Perspective, Kuempel et al. outline an approach for integrating life cycle assessment and cumulative impact mapping data and methodologies to map the cumulative environmental pressure of food systems. The approach enables quantification of current and potential future environmental pressures, which are needed to reduce the net impact of feeding humanity.
Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Systems, Encyclopedia of the World's Biomes, 2020
High-tech products like batteries and electronics contain a variety of valuable, scarce, and in some cases potentially harmful materials, but in only a few exceptional cases (such as lead-acid batteries) is the material being recovered efficiently. Cotributing to SDGs 7, 9 and 12, this special issue seeks to elucidate the technical and institutional difficulties inherent in recycling these products and provide a forum for sharing potential ways to overcome them.
