Preamble for a 10-Year GRF-SPaC Research Agenda
September 2013
The Global Research Forum on Sustainable Production and Consumption (GRF-SPaC) was created in 2012 by and for the community of researchers and practitioners engaged in research on the worldwide transition to sustainable production and consumption systems. GRF-SPC strives to develop and strengthen methods of fundamental and applied research to achieve a deeper understanding of the possibilities and barriers to systemic change. Its ultimate goal is to enhance development and adoption of production and consumption policies, practices and systems which meet basic needs –especially of the poor and vulnerable- and provide prosperity, while conserving natural resources and protecting the environment (GRF-SPaC vision statement, 2013).
The next ten years will be critical in addressing key sustainability priorities, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental health threats, and the widening gap between rich and poor. These trends have been widely understood to be driven by unsustainable production and consumption patterns. Much has been learned over the years about this topic of “production and consumption,” covering a wide range of disciplines from economics to psychology, sociology, anthropology, ecology, neurology, science and technology studies, innovation studies, marketing and advertising research. However, much of this knowledge too often circulates within individual disciplines, methodologies and institutions, not having a common transdisciplinary framework and professional international institution/association to share and synthesize insights, perspectives and approaches across disciplines and geographic regions.
The GRF-SPaC research agenda proposes a plan for engaging researchers from different disciplines and geographic regions involved in different aspects and dimensions of research on sustainable production and/or consumption in a ten-year project, to further the conceptual development of such a transdisciplinary framework, examining and mapping the various areas of knowledge, methodologies, and theoretical systems, as well as investigating a number of key questions and themes pertinent to addressing the root drivers of these global trends.
Currently, the main research initiatives under GRF-SPaC explore the trends, drivers, and lock-ins in unsustainable consumer culture and production patterns, and analyze promising approaches to advance the transition to more sustainable production and consumption patterns and lifestyles. Multiple trends create a particular urgency for this research agenda. At a global level, an economic paradigm undermines the life support systems generating waste beyond the biophysical capacities of the planet while ecological disasters loom closer with continuous growth of the global population and affluence. These conditions necessitate absolute reductions in materials throughput, energy use and waste and toxic pollution production, and a transformation of the prevailing governance and business systems. Industrial economies are in critical need to identify sustainable pathways and new economic and cultural models. At the same time, in emerging economies like China, India, and Brazil, new middle classes are rapidly emerging that develop increasingly resource intense consumerist lifestyles juxtaposed with the persistence of deep poverty.
Addressing these issues calls for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches, and for approaches bridging science, policy and practice (mode 2 and even mode 3 science). This recognition is reflected in many adjacent sustainability research programs, such as Sustainability Science, Future Earth, and Earth Systems Science, supported by methodologies like scenario development and system dynamic modeling, visioning and backcasting, action research, learning by doing, and reflexive experimentation. These methods help us to understand complex, dynamic systemic challenges and feedback loops, non-linearity and bifurcations; and provide indications of how to catalyze and govern systemic transformations. In addition, there are research initiatives which increasingly question the mainstream economic growth paradigm, the persistence of unsustainable institutions, existing economic and power relations, as well as the links between the macro-systems and individual patterns of living and consuming, and approaches to overcome systemic barriers to transformative change.
Next to these novel approaches, traditional theories, frameworks, and methodologies remain necessary and relevant. These include trend analysis, extrapolation and decomposition analysis, especially of material flows, energy use, and consumption patterns in different regions and across the world; and include the development of indicators to measure progress as well as identifying early signs of a post-consumerist culture. They also involve scientific studies of educational approaches, advertising, marketing and social media, socio-technical and grassroots innovations, new business practices and ownership patterns, choice editing and infrastructure, ecovillages and ecocities, and the cultures of consumption.
Such investigations explore themes related to effective leadership, well-being and its indicators, infrastructures as enablers or barriers; actors and strategies in a transition to SPaC (including, but not restricted to; transition management and socio-technical transitions); as well as systemic issues and pathways to system change. These themes will involve topics related to social movements, jobs, livelihoods and employment as well as leisure time and lifestyles; economic growth, steady state, and degrowth; greening of supply chains; sustainable design and design approaches; development of product service systems; labeling and extended producer responsibility; verification; fair trade, and many others. In addition, studies are being undertaken in ecological ethics and values relevant for a low carbon society, and traditional practices and knowledge which can be mobilized to reinforce sustainability. Unsustainable production and consumption is also being analyzed in various economic sectors such as food/ agriculture, transportation, housing, energy, and tourism: globally, regionally, and locally. Barriers to change are investigative priorities.
There is a critical need for a transdisciplinary research framework and support structure for identifying these different research directions, questions and approaches - a need the GRF-SPaC research agenda is aiming to address. In particular, this global SPaC research agenda involves identifying methods and mechanisms for connecting researchers with policy makers, business, civil society, faith-based groups, and youth. It thus would provide a space to exchange knowledge and access the latest information on Sustainable Production and Consumption for those organizations and initiatives for which this is essential, and that are central for creating systemic change. The SPaC research agenda especially prioritizes the identification and promotion of knowledge on critical intervention points in different production/ consumption systems. Increasingly, research initiatives incorporate knowledge dissemination, engagement and brokerage to involve civil society and decision makers in the knowledge creation and implementation process.
In summary, the urgent need to catalyze a sustainability transition raises questions about the applicability of science and research, challenging traditional political economic distinctions of Northern and Southern consumers, the wisdom of technological “progress” and the withering of traditional wisdom, exposing the untenable logic of infinite economic growth and orchestrating a call to reexamine our practical understanding of well-being and development. These questions require an ambitious integrative agenda bringing together research covering a wide range of research traditions and experience. The GRF-SPaC research agenda is designed to take up the challenge to provide timely answers.
The next ten years will be critical in addressing key sustainability priorities, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental health threats, and the widening gap between rich and poor. These trends have been widely understood to be driven by unsustainable production and consumption patterns. Much has been learned over the years about this topic of “production and consumption,” covering a wide range of disciplines from economics to psychology, sociology, anthropology, ecology, neurology, science and technology studies, innovation studies, marketing and advertising research. However, much of this knowledge too often circulates within individual disciplines, methodologies and institutions, not having a common transdisciplinary framework and professional international institution/association to share and synthesize insights, perspectives and approaches across disciplines and geographic regions.
The GRF-SPaC research agenda proposes a plan for engaging researchers from different disciplines and geographic regions involved in different aspects and dimensions of research on sustainable production and/or consumption in a ten-year project, to further the conceptual development of such a transdisciplinary framework, examining and mapping the various areas of knowledge, methodologies, and theoretical systems, as well as investigating a number of key questions and themes pertinent to addressing the root drivers of these global trends.
Currently, the main research initiatives under GRF-SPaC explore the trends, drivers, and lock-ins in unsustainable consumer culture and production patterns, and analyze promising approaches to advance the transition to more sustainable production and consumption patterns and lifestyles. Multiple trends create a particular urgency for this research agenda. At a global level, an economic paradigm undermines the life support systems generating waste beyond the biophysical capacities of the planet while ecological disasters loom closer with continuous growth of the global population and affluence. These conditions necessitate absolute reductions in materials throughput, energy use and waste and toxic pollution production, and a transformation of the prevailing governance and business systems. Industrial economies are in critical need to identify sustainable pathways and new economic and cultural models. At the same time, in emerging economies like China, India, and Brazil, new middle classes are rapidly emerging that develop increasingly resource intense consumerist lifestyles juxtaposed with the persistence of deep poverty.
Addressing these issues calls for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches, and for approaches bridging science, policy and practice (mode 2 and even mode 3 science). This recognition is reflected in many adjacent sustainability research programs, such as Sustainability Science, Future Earth, and Earth Systems Science, supported by methodologies like scenario development and system dynamic modeling, visioning and backcasting, action research, learning by doing, and reflexive experimentation. These methods help us to understand complex, dynamic systemic challenges and feedback loops, non-linearity and bifurcations; and provide indications of how to catalyze and govern systemic transformations. In addition, there are research initiatives which increasingly question the mainstream economic growth paradigm, the persistence of unsustainable institutions, existing economic and power relations, as well as the links between the macro-systems and individual patterns of living and consuming, and approaches to overcome systemic barriers to transformative change.
Next to these novel approaches, traditional theories, frameworks, and methodologies remain necessary and relevant. These include trend analysis, extrapolation and decomposition analysis, especially of material flows, energy use, and consumption patterns in different regions and across the world; and include the development of indicators to measure progress as well as identifying early signs of a post-consumerist culture. They also involve scientific studies of educational approaches, advertising, marketing and social media, socio-technical and grassroots innovations, new business practices and ownership patterns, choice editing and infrastructure, ecovillages and ecocities, and the cultures of consumption.
Such investigations explore themes related to effective leadership, well-being and its indicators, infrastructures as enablers or barriers; actors and strategies in a transition to SPaC (including, but not restricted to; transition management and socio-technical transitions); as well as systemic issues and pathways to system change. These themes will involve topics related to social movements, jobs, livelihoods and employment as well as leisure time and lifestyles; economic growth, steady state, and degrowth; greening of supply chains; sustainable design and design approaches; development of product service systems; labeling and extended producer responsibility; verification; fair trade, and many others. In addition, studies are being undertaken in ecological ethics and values relevant for a low carbon society, and traditional practices and knowledge which can be mobilized to reinforce sustainability. Unsustainable production and consumption is also being analyzed in various economic sectors such as food/ agriculture, transportation, housing, energy, and tourism: globally, regionally, and locally. Barriers to change are investigative priorities.
There is a critical need for a transdisciplinary research framework and support structure for identifying these different research directions, questions and approaches - a need the GRF-SPaC research agenda is aiming to address. In particular, this global SPaC research agenda involves identifying methods and mechanisms for connecting researchers with policy makers, business, civil society, faith-based groups, and youth. It thus would provide a space to exchange knowledge and access the latest information on Sustainable Production and Consumption for those organizations and initiatives for which this is essential, and that are central for creating systemic change. The SPaC research agenda especially prioritizes the identification and promotion of knowledge on critical intervention points in different production/ consumption systems. Increasingly, research initiatives incorporate knowledge dissemination, engagement and brokerage to involve civil society and decision makers in the knowledge creation and implementation process.
In summary, the urgent need to catalyze a sustainability transition raises questions about the applicability of science and research, challenging traditional political economic distinctions of Northern and Southern consumers, the wisdom of technological “progress” and the withering of traditional wisdom, exposing the untenable logic of infinite economic growth and orchestrating a call to reexamine our practical understanding of well-being and development. These questions require an ambitious integrative agenda bringing together research covering a wide range of research traditions and experience. The GRF-SPaC research agenda is designed to take up the challenge to provide timely answers.