Sustainable Consumption and Production

In short: we have increased our capacity to visualise the cause and effect relationships which, a few years ago, only reduced specialised academic circles could make out. Today more than ever, things local are converted to global and vice-versa. It is this ability we have acquired to link our specific and finite acts to the long-distance and large-scale effects which gives us an invaluable opportunity and an exceptional action potential in all the fields, in order to carry out action with a more global impact, with a view to improve our behaviour towards the physical and social surroundings.

In this context the companies have been enhancing, during the last years, their perception of the indissoluble interrelation which exists between production and consumption, due, to a large extent, to the increasing importance of the role of sustainable consumption as an engine of impacts at the environmental, economic, and social levels : impacts no longer seen as resulting directly from production per se, but stemming from the elevated consumption which is keeping a steady pace, with the associated increasing amounts of energy and resources consumption.

Hence an increase in the number of public policies which integrate both sides of the same coin, consumption and production, which are no longer conceived of as liable to a separate treatment. An indication to this increasing perception is the number of the national strategies which many countries have been developing recently with regard to Sustainable Consumption and Production. All these aspects have been promoted by the United Nations since the Johannesburg Summit in 2002, through the Marrakesh Process. The Marrakech Process, with whom the CP/RAC collaborates, promotes a change in the production and consumption patterns at the international level with a view to make a change in the present tendencies and make them compatible with the planet and the human activity.

This tendency is taking place at the same time as the major challenge which has ever faced humankind, climate change, and it is widely known that this needs a synergy in efforts, as well as an effective, efficient, and innovative action at all levels and immediately. For all these reasons, climate change has been defined as a priority work area in the agendas of the Governments, in the schedule of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), as well as in that of the Mediterranean Action Plan (MAP), among many others. The years 2008 and 2009 are key years in the world policy, since they pave the way for the adoption, in 2009, of the most ambitious and global policy ever adopted regarding environmental issues and lifestyles in general, which will have a direct influence on our production and consumption patterns.