Welcome back SCORAI members,
We are making great progress on the development of our upcoming SCORAI conference for 2023! Thank you all for your continued input and feedback as we try and put together the best possible event for everyone. We are almost exactly 1 year away from the conference, so please mark your calendars for July 6 - 9! Keep those calendars open, because we have some important dates coming up on the horizon for the conference.
  
Transforming Consumption-Production Systems Toward Just and Sustainable Futures
This joint 5th SCORAI, 21st ERSCP, and Wageningen University conference will be held at Wageningen University in the Netherlands on July 6-9, 2023. This inter- and trans-disciplinary conference will provide a crucial opportunity to discuss recent advancements in sustainable consumption and production. It will provide a platform for building and enhancing connections between research, practice, and policy to increase understanding and action of how to move transformations to SCP forward.
Please see below key dates in preparation for the conference, and continue reading the newsletter to find our call for submissions.
Key Dates
August 30, 2022: Abstract submission opens
November 28, 2022: Last date for abstract submission
December 16, 2022: Early-bird registration opens
January 10, 2023: Notification of decisions (proposals accepted/rejected)
March 20, 2023: Preliminary program published
March 25, 2023: Final date for presenters to register
April 10, 2023: Updated program published
April 20, 2023: Early bird registration ends
May 30, 2023: Full conference paper submission ends (only for special issues track)
June 15, 2023: Regular registration ends
July 6-9, 2023: SCORAI-ERSCP-WUR 2023 Conference in Wageningen
This conference will provide a platform for exploring a wide range of practices, experiences and policy initiatives in the context of cutting-edge interdisciplinary sustainable consumption and production research. We invite scholars and practitioners, such as business representatives, innovators, policy makers, activists, and members of communities engaged in sustainable consumption initiatives, to participate with concrete ideas, methods and examples of how to inspire learning and change. We encourage discussion and reflection on the links and gaps between theory and practice. We seek to better connect research and action for sustainable consumption and production with strategies for transformative change.
The official website for the conference will open in the second week of July. Stay tuned!
Thank you!
Your Board: Ashley, Ginnie, Halina, Liz, Philip, Valerie
|
|
Wait a minute... there's an upcoming conference? I better follow @SCORAI_net on Twitter to stay up to date!
|
|
What overturning Roe v. Wade means for pregnant people in pollution hotspots
Grist
Communities near polluting sites tend to be disproportionately lower income and people of color — populations that are more likely to need abortion care in the first place. The climate is changing, and everyone on Earth will have to deal with that reality as it develops. When activists emphasize that social, environmental, and economic inequities are all connected, it can feel overwhelming to grasp the vast and fundamental features of our society that must change. But it simply means that there is a version of our future in which additional burdens — barriers to reproductive healthcare, lack of affordable housing, stagnant wages — make all of the challenges of climate change acutely worse for already vulnerable communities, and there is one in which those burdens are alleviated by intentional, forward-thinking, and realistic policy.
|
|
Should rich countries degrow their economies to stop climate change?
DW
The degrowth movement want rich countries to stop chasing GDP in a desperate bid to stop the planet from heating — but both supporters and critics are gambling on prosperity and climate stability for billions of people.
|
|
UN sustainable development goals failing to have meaningful impact, research warns
The Conversation
Sustainable development goals are found wherever UN bureaucrats and international diplomats meet. You’ll see the 17 flags of the SDGs in the lush gardens of the UN headquarters in New York. Posters listing the SDGs hang in government offices all around the world. Dozens of international meetings are held to discuss them each year. And yet, it is fair to ask: do these global goals actually change anything? Do they tangibly influence the actions of governments, business leaders, mayors, UN bureaucrats and university presidents? For the last few years, a growing community of social scientists has considered this question. With 61 colleagues from around the world, researchers from The Conversation analysed more than 3,000 academic studies that scrutinised aspects of the SDGs. Findings are published in the journal Nature Sustainability, and a more detailed assessment will soon be published as a book.
|
|
If we eat more climate friendly foods we can gain 1,200,000 life years
SustainableConsumption.se
If the Swedish population switched 50% of all red meat and charcuterie to vegetables and legumes we could we could gain 540 000 life years over a period of 20 years. That is equal to half a million people living one year longer than they otherwise would have. After 30 years we would have gained 1 200 000 life years. And men stand to benefit more since they eat more red meat than women do. These are the results from a new study by Liselotte Schäfer Elinder and Emma Patterson, both researchers at Karolinska Instutet in Stockholm. They studied three simple substitutions to more climate friendly food, which also benefit health, expressed as fewer premature deaths from cardiovascular disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and/or colon cancer.
|
|
Feeling pessimistic about the climate crisis and want to hear about some of the people working to make positive change? Why not listen to, and watch, Doomer Optimism, a podcast about localized, actionable solutions to the climate crisis, and the wider crucible of our time, hosted by SCORAI Board Member Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) and Jason Snyder (@cognazor).
Episode 38 of Doomer Optimism is a chat with Peter Allen (@pclarkallen) of Mastodon Valley Farm about ecological and regenerative farming, homesteading, rebuilding oak savanna, factory farming, and a ton more!
|
|
|
Call for Participation in the joint SCORAI, ERSCP and Wageningen University Conference
July 6-9, 2023, Wageningen, the Netherlands
August 30, 2022: Abstract submission opens
November 28, 2022: Last date for abstract submission
Just, equitable, and sustainable human development in the 21st century requires transforming systems of consumption and production. The window of opportunity to avert irreversible damage to key earth systems, such as climate and biodiversity, is closing fast. Resource-intensive consumption and production are key drivers of unsustainable development and require radical restructuring to accelerate transformations towards sustainable futures. The most recent IPCC report (April 2022) makes history in, for the first time, stressing the need to focus on the role of consumption in climate change, highlighting “...the potential of demand-side strategies across all sectors to reduce emissions is 40-70% by 2050”.
The timing of this call is auspicious. Once promising ideas, such as the sharing economy, transition towns, collaborative consumption, future visioning, or nudging, have not brought about change in consumption and production patterns at the scale and pace necessary. In response to the COVID pandemic, governments obtained an unprecedented mandate to establish ambitious recovery programs which could potentially lead to changing consumption patterns; however, it appears that responses have been largely aimed at economic rebounds and relative decoupling, while not initiating changes that can reduce demand and the dependency on fossil fuels.
Transformative social change is more likely at a confluence of a political window of opportunity, public receptiveness to change, and policy and research ideas ready for implementation and experimentation. We may be facing this confluence now. On the political front, the IPCC report provides a new framing for political and policy debate, and for explicitly making sustainable consumption key to progress towards sustainable futures. The COVID pandemic has demonstrated that lifestyle changes are not beyond the realm of possibility. On the research front, a growing body of interdisciplinary work has uncovered how various aspects of the social and material world impede or enable lifestyle changes, with important insights for modeling transformations toward just, equitable and sustainable systems of production and consumption.
Conference (sub)themes include, but are not limited to:
-
Sustainable consumption and lifestyles
-
Experiments, interventions, and case studies in sustainable lifestyles
-
Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic about lifestyle changes
-
Digitalization of work, consumption, and lifestyles
-
Social innovation and sustainable practices
-
Defining a fair living space: an international perspective
-
Sustainable production, sustainable business, innovation & design for sustainability
-
Methods for sustainable production and industry research
-
Sustainable industry and eco-industrial parks
-
Sustainability assessment and indicators
-
Sustainable innovation, business models, and sustainable management
-
Design for sustainability and sustainable behavior
-
Governance for sustainable consumption and production
-
The roles of local, regional, and (inter)national policy-making in transitioning to sustainable consumption and production systems
-
Policy in action: empirical case studies
-
Interactions between science, society, and policy
-
Drivers of change toward sustainable lifestyle: from international to local to cross-cultural perspectives
-
Engaging middle actors in advancing system change: professionals, experts, tradesmen, educators, business owners, etc.
-
Circular economy, circular society, and critical materials
-
Circular systems and circularity management
-
Circular business models
-
Circular design and circular products
-
Circular & closed-loop supply chains & value chains
-
Circular and sustainable procurement
-
From circular economy to circular society
-
Consumption in the circular society
-
Methods for circularity and circular economy
-
Alternative, diverse, and plural economics for sustainability transitions
-
Feasibility, desirability, and likelihood of transitioning to 1.5-degree lifestyles and economy
-
Wellbeing and care-centered approaches as frameworks for social transformations
-
Lessons from experiments with alternatives to GDP
-
Advances in steady-state economy and degrowth: research and practice
-
Experiments with guaranteed basic income and guaranteed basic services
-
Sustainable cities and regions and local action
-
Sustainable consumption and production in urban contexts
-
Urban design, buildings, and transportation for sustainable lifestyles
-
Making density attractive: theory and practice
-
Sustainable consumption and production in rural areas and sustainable tourism
-
Social movements, social learning, and social innovations
-
Discourses, dialogue, narratives, and social learning for strong sustainable consumption and production systems
-
Grassroots and social innovations for sustainable consumption and production
-
Societal impact of sustainable consumption and production research
-
Sustainable food, agriculture, and agri-business
-
Agri-food system transitions and biodiversity-positive agri-business
-
Sustainable food security and valuing water
-
Sustainable protein consumption and production (protein transition) and the shift to plant-based diets
Call for Participation
Researchers and practitioners from around the world are invited to submit session proposals and/or individual abstracts for presentation or posters. The submission system opens on August 30, 2022. Researchers and practitioners are welcome to propose full sessions and/or individual abstracts until November 28, 2022. Participation will be possible both in-person and online. During the submission process, individuals submitting proposals/abstracts will be asked to indicate whether they intend to participate on-site or online and which of the conference (sub)themes fits best for their submission (up to three themes can be selected). Session proposals/abstracts that are not aligned with any of the themed sessions are also welcome. All session proposals and individual abstracts will be reviewed by members of an International Review Committee listed on the conference website.
-
SESSION PROPOSALS can be for (i) academic sessions or (ii) dialogue-debate sessions. Proposals should be 300-500 words long and propose a coherent themed session lasting either 60 minutes or 90 minutes. Each proposal should speak to (a) what topic/question the session is focused on, (b) why it is relevant for SCP/the conference themes, and (c) what the specific perspectives are that the session is conveying.
-
Academic sessions: Presentation and discussion of original research. A full line-up of individual speakers and discussant(s) should be included in the session proposal. Abstracts of academic research presentations lined up in this session do not need to be included in the session proposal but need to be submitted separately including the note that they are part of an academic research session and the name of the session proposal. Academic research sessions can be part of the special issue track (see below). Session organizers may choose whether or not they wish to organize their session as a full paper session (for which presenters submit a full paper prior to the conference) or a presentation-only session (for which presenters do not submit full papers in advance).
-
Dialogue-debate sessions: Discussion and debate around a particular thematic focus, integrating research and practice. These sessions can take a variety of innovative formats as proposed by the session conveners. This includes creative/innovative/interactive sessions, world café-style dialogues, a series of short lightning / Pecha Kucha talks, work studios, etc.; In addition to the required elements of a session proposal (see a, b, and c above), the format/flow of the session should be clearly described. The conference organizers provide additional information/inspiration on possible formats on the conference website.
-
INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATIONS PROPOSALS can be for (i) academic abstracts (ii) practitioner abstracts. They should be 300-500 words long, include a title, and list the names, institutional affiliations, city and country address, and emails of co-authors. Irrespective of the type of submission, author(s) are asked to indicate if the submission is part of a session proposal and if the submission is intended for oral presentation or as a poster presentation.
-
Academic abstracts should include information on the following aspects: (a) Problem statement, research questions/aim, theoretical approach, methods/inquiry approach, findings, conclusions, and practical and scientific implications. References can, but do not have to, be included. Submitters of academic research abstracts are asked whether or not they want their submission to be part of the special issue track (see below)
-
Practitioner abstracts should describe the purpose of the project as related to sustainable consumption and lifestyles, and the problem it sought to address. It should describe the main features of the project, its strengths and limitations, the potential for scalability, and its contribution to understanding how to transition toward sustainable production-consumption systems.
Special issue track: The conference organizers are planning to organize special issues in peer-reviewed academic journals. Individuals or session organizers interested in submitting their paper(s) to one of the special issues can indicate this during the submission process. It is intended to have dedicated full paper sessions at the conference where full conference papers will be circulated in advance and discussed to provide feedback to the authors that they can use to revise their conference paper for submission to the special issue. Participants interested in submitting a full paper to a special issue will be asked to submit their full conference paper until May 30, 2023, so that conference participants and session discussants have the opportunity to read the paper before the conference. Please note that this only applies to individuals or session organizers interested in submitting full paper(s) to the special issue track. For all other submissions, no full paper is required.
All session proposals and individual abstracts will be reviewed by the Scientific Committee using the following criteria:
-
Originality/Novelty: contribution to existing knowledge or novelty of knowledge application/utilization
-
Relevance/Focus: contribution to the conference theme and sustainable consumption and production research
-
Quality/Comprehensibility: clarity of inquiry approach and findings/conclusions derived
Session proposals and individual abstracts can be submitted at the conference website at: www.scp-2023-conference.com.
|
|
Call for Papers in Focus on Intergenerational Sustainability
Deadline for submissions: 31 August 2022
Submit Manuscripts and Learn More
Anthropogenic impacts to Earth's systems have placed humanity in a precarious position in which our gross consumption could lead to nonlinear changes to Earth Systems which could be non-conducive to societal development as we know it. As humanity's knowledge of Earth's planetary boundaries, and our transgression of them continues, it is of increasing importance that we begin to place our environmental research and assessments within the context of a 'safe operating space for humanity'. This is needed to ensure global sustainability research results work towards the definition, and transformation to, an intergenerational sustainable state as opposed to sustainable development focused solely on rate of change. This means understanding and obeying the boundaries and carrying capacity limits of the natural environment, whilst providing good life for everyone. Therefore, we should not focus on (potentially marginal) incremental improvements, but on understanding the environmentally safe operating space, and searching for ways to return from the current ecological overshoot to living within this space with just and good life for everyone.
This paradigm shift presents an opportunity to consider novel development pathways across sectors and regions, as well as the reconsideration and repurposing of previous research to place a focus on how the developments align with intergenerational sustainability. Thus, in this special issue we welcome research across spatial and temporal scales that provide quantitative or qualitative environmental research/assessments of product(s), systems, sectors, consumption profiles, relevant policies, or economic structures which integrate intergenerational environmental sustainability into the research/assessment.
This broad topic stretches across fields, and we welcome submissions covering (although not limited to):
- 'Safe and just operating spaces'
- Doughnut economics
- Sustainable consumption corridors
- Sustainable lifestyles
- Degrowth and economic reconfiguration
- Planetary boundaries
- Environmental economics
- Global carbon budget allocations
- Sustainable cities in the context of localized planetary boundaries
- Technological and behavioural change pathways
- Life cycle assessment/use of LCA studies in the context of sustainable consumption
- Rebound effects and/or systemic interconnectedness which could potentially hinder sustainable consumption
- System-level and individual lock-ins potentially hindering from reaching an environmentally sustainable society
The Guest Editors encourage the addition of social and justice perspectives within research articles. Particularly those that add perspectives of potential positive or negative social impacts (and feedbacks) associated with certain environmental developments, and universal basic services/needs to ensure a 'good life' while remaining within the Earth's carrying capacity.
Guest Editors
Jukka Heinonen, University of Iceland
Brynhildur Davíðsdóttir, University of Iceland
Kevin Joseph Dillman, University of Iceland
|
|
Call for Papers in Sustainability marketing and sustainability management: Exploring new perspectives on sustainable development
Opening Date for Submissions: 1 September 2022
Closing Date for Submissions: 15 October 2022
The main aim of this special issue is to explore new perspectives on sustainability and sustainable development by inviting studies focusing on sustainability-related topics in marketing and management, as well as encouraging interdisciplinary research in these areas.
Historically, the global attention to sustainable development arose when the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in their report “Our common future” proposed the concept of sustainable development, that is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”, and called for international efforts needed for addressing sustainability challenges (WCED 1987). More than three decades later, in 2022, the agenda of achieving sustainable development is far from being attained in our contemporary society that faces a deepening ecological crisis and widening social and economic inequalities. In the challenging times of the global pandemic, researchers across different disciplines continue the debate on how to achieve a better and more sustainable future, as well as explore novel approaches to attaining this vision. For example, green recovery, a perspective viewing economic recovery after the pandemic as an enabler of sustainability transition, represents an important new impetus for sustainable development (Gusheva and de Gooyert 2021; Lahcen et al. 2020). Although green recovery and other emerging perspectives on sustainable development (e.g. social-ecological systems (Reyers et al. 2018); systems of sustainable consumption and production (Schröder et al. 2019); social-ecological networks (Felipe-Lucia et al. 2021) provide critical insights and can potentially serve as catalysts for establishing sustainable organizations and transforming current business practices, they are still under-investigated in extant research.
In the disciplines of marketing and management, the interest towards research on sustainability and sustainable development has remarkably increased over the years. Prior research on sustainability marketing evolved from focusing on sustainable products and other elements of the marketing mix to addressing sustainable lifestyles and behavioral changes, and consequently to exploring transformative actions in relation to norms and institutions, among other topics (Kemper and Ballantine 2019). Management and organization studies on sustainability progressed from examining the impact of organizations on the natural environment to considering managerial issues in relation to environmental concerns, then to assessing corporate sustainability and sustainable organizations, and consequently to investigating socio-ecological wellbeing, the nature–human ecosystem, and alternative approaches to organizing for sustainability, among other topics (Ergene et al. 2021). Despite a continuously growing number of studies addressing sustainability-related topics in marketing and management, both disciplines still provide limited insights, which would have a transformational nature required for achieving a global agenda of a sustainable future (Davies et al. 2020; Ferns and Amaeshi, 2021; Nyberg and Wright 2020).
This special issue aims to advance the current state of research on sustainability and sustainable development in marketing and management by calling for contributions across the disciplines of marketing and management, and also interdisciplinary research including marketing and/or management perspectives. The special issue invites manuscripts based on empirical studies (utilizing quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods) or literature reviews. The manuscripts are expected to have strong conceptual and methodological rigor, and make both theoretical and practical contributions. Examples of possible topics of relevance for this special issue include, but are not limited to the list below. If in any doubt about a manuscript's fit with this special issue, do not hesitate to contact the Corresponding Guest Editor, Galina Biedenbach, at galina.biedenbach@umu.se.
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available at: https://preflight.paperpal.com/partner/emerald/balticjman/submit
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/bjm#author-guidelines
Guest Editors
Galina Biedenbach, Umeå University, Sweden, galina.biedenbach@umu.se
Johan Jansson, Umeå University, Sweden, johan.jansson@umu.se
Virginija Poškutė, ISM University of Management and Economics, Lithuania, virpos@ism.lt
|
|
|
Thank You for Your Continued Support!
 As the year has now reached its midpoint and the clock starts ticking for our 2023 conference, we wanted to extend our deepest thanks to everyone who has made a recent contribution to support our work.
Many thanks to: Frieder Rubik, John Stutz, Julia Steinberger, Tom Abeles, Ashwani Vasishth, Benyamin Lichtenstein, Carol Holst, Kira Jen Matus, Richard Wilk, James Speth, Tom R. Bowerman, Peter Victor, John Cross, Vanessa Timmer, Angelina Korsunova, Kuishuang Feng, Monica Guillen Royo, John de Graaf, Anders Hayden, Michael Maniates, Inge Røpke, Goretty Dias, Wendy Wuyts, Jaclyn Fierro, and Jacob Halcomb.
Please, if you are able, consider donating to directly impact SCORAI's capacity to continue to bring you high quality blogs, newsletters, listserv discussions, and, of course, conferences. We are so close to meeting our fundraising goals, and your help in bringing us to that means the world to us. To donate, please go to: https://scorai.net/contribute/
|
|
|
|
Listed in chronological order, from coming-soon to farthest out on the horizon.
|
|
|
ReSToRE 2 - Researching Social Theories, Resources, and Environment International Summer School
4-8 July 2022 | University College Dublin, Ireland
After the success of ReSToRE 1 in the summer of 2019, the Irish Centre for Research in Applied Geosciences (iCRAG) and International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) have decided to organise ReSToRE 2 on July 4-8th, 2022, in University College Dublin.
Run under the patronage of UNESCO, ReSToRE 2 aims to nurture an interdisciplinary and experiential learning environment for geoscientists and social scientists to address cross-cutting topics and to create a network for all participants and contributors. Specifically, the summer school seeks to bring early-career academics and professionals from developing and developed countries together in the same physical space to foster conversations at the nexus of Earth Sciences and Social Sciences.
We encourage all early-career academics and professionals who are interested in exploring these topics to apply to spend a week with us at the ReSToRE 2 summer school. You can find more information about ReSToRE and how to apply at this website. If you have any questions, please contact: restore@icrag-centre.org.
|
|
|
2022 Toronto Conference on Earth System Governance
21-23 October 2022 | Toronto, Canada
The conference is hosted by the University of Toronto, and the University of Waterloo together with the Earth System Governance Project. This year’s conference theme is: Governing accelerated transitions: justice, creativity, and power in a transforming world.
Important Dates:
- Final Registration Deadline for Presenting Authors: 1 September 2022
- Full papers due: 1 October 2022
The 2022 Toronto Conference will be organized around the five analytical lenses structuring the new earth system governance research agenda, as captured in the Earth System Governance 2018 Science and Implementation Plan; and a sixth stream focusing on specific issues and challenges that emerge as efforts are made to accelerate the social, political, and technological shift towards more fundamentally sustainable and inclusive social-ecological systems, societies and polities.
The Earth System Governance Project is a longstanding global research alliance that seeks to mobilise research at the interface of global environmental change and governance, across local to global scales. The project brings together a highly interdisciplinary research community spanning disciplines such as international relations, political science, human geography, urban studies, development studies, and sustainability science, among others.
Learn More and Register
|
|
|
Transitioning to Systems of Sustainable Consumption and Production: From Knowledge to Action
7-18 November, 2022 | Virtual
The Systems of Sustainable Consumption and Production Knowledge – Action Network is organizing an online symposium and you are invited to join! The need for systems of sustainable consumption and production is increasingly urgent, now more than ever. Far-reaching changes are required, but many challenges remain: How to transition to SSCP, build resilient, zero-impact industries and governance, overcome systemic inequality and injustice, and integrate new technologies, policies, and practices into everyday life? The SSCP KAN’s role is to provide a platform to tackle these challenges in a way that leads to real-world action and impact. This conference will be an opportunity to meet these challenges by showcasing examples of bridging research and knowledge production with implementation, education, and action. You are invited to join the discussion!
Scheduling: Three, 2 to 3-hour long sessions, once per week, scheduled at different times (to allow for participation by a global audience)*
Format: Online, Zoom & Slack/Discord
Call for sessions proposals
Ideally, we ask for sessions that showcase the cutting-edge of SSCP knowledge and action. We highly encourage session organizers to include the voices of practitioners, stakeholders, and non-academic collaborators. SSCP KAN WGs are expected to take a leading role in organizing sessions on relevant topics.
Possible sessions might feature…
- …findings from transdisciplinary or action-research SSCP projects
- …diverse perspectives on SCP that follow different ways of knowing
- …innovative entrepreneurs/business models
- …art and mixed media components
- …different formats (ie. workshops, interactive methods, discussion) for sessions welcome
Session proposals should include the names and affiliations of the session organizers and speakers, the title of the session, a session abstract, individual presenter abstracts, and any additional information on session format or technical needs.
Paper proposals should be no more than a single A4 page and contain the appropriate names and affiliations, title of the paper, a paper abstract, and any additional information on session format or technical needs.
All submissions should be made via Conference Maker. Submission and participation in the conference are completely free of charge. Upload all session proposals by June 14th, 2022.
All submissions will be evaluated by a scientific committee. Any questions or concerns can also be directed to sscp_kan@futureearth.org.
The Future Earth SSCP KAN Online Conference 2022 Organizing Committee
Steven R. McGreevy (University of Twente)
Jaco Quist (TU Delft)
Daigee Shaw (Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica)
Ria Lambino (Research Institute for Humanity and Nature)
Charles Chiu (Center for Sustainability Science, Academia Sinica)
Kartika Anggraeni (Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production)
Ginnie Guillen-Hanson (Tampere University)
Learn More and Register
|
|
 Can guided introspection help avoid rationalization of meat consumption? Mixed-methods results of a pilot experimental study
Cleaner and Responsible Consumption
Pascal Frank, Katrin Heimann, Viktoria Kolbe, Carolin Schuster
The need for reducing meat consumption in affluent countries is increasingly recognized as crucial to minimizing carbon footprint. However, confronting individuals with rational arguments can prompt emotional discomfort, which is often relieved by engaging in rationalization processes stabilizing current consumption patterns. Mindfulness research suggests that making people aware of their emotional reactions through introspection can reduce these rationalization processes.
In this mixed-method pilot experimental study, we inquired whether a single guided introspection, inspired by the micro-phenomenological interview technique, can alter individuals' experience of and abilities to deal with cognitive dissonance. Furthermore, we asked if such an intervention can stimulate attitude or intention changes concerning meat consumption. After inducing cognitive dissonance by exposing participants to pictures of the slaughter of a cow, the intervention group (n = 36) participated in the guided introspection, while the control group (n = 39) played solitaire. Self-report questionnaire measures of emotional discomfort, rationalization strategies, and attitudes towards meat consumption were administered before and after the intervention. Also, open-ended responses to participants’ experience of the study were analyzed.
Quantitative results show significantly lower negative attitudes toward reducing meat consumption in the intervention group compared to the control group (partial η2 = 0.107). Qualitative results indicate that these participants are more aware of negative emotions while engaging less in rationalization strategies. We conclude that our study indicates some potential for guided introspection to affect dissonance resolution and provide suggestions for future research.
|
|
 Climate Justice for Women and Girls: a Rule of Law Approach to Feminist Climate Action
International Development Law Organization
Women and girls have the right to effectively participate in and lead efforts to achieve climate justice. An explicitly feminist approach to climate change, based on the rule of law, is needed to ensure women’s inclusion in decision-making processes related to climate governance, equal access to justice, resolution of conflict over natural resources, and the enactment of inclusive and effective climate laws and policies.
IDLO’s Policy Brief Climate Justice for Women and Girls: A Rule of Law Approach to Feminist Climate Action highlights three key elements of a feminist approach to delivering climate justice:
- Empowering women and girls to claim their environmental rights and actively participate in decision-making processes
- Strengthening regulatory frameworks and institutional capacity for feminist climate action
- Enhancing women’s rights to land and other natural resources
Drawing on these insights, the policy paper issues a call to action in the form of recommendations for policymakers and practitioners:
- Recognise and promote women’s active leadership and participation in climate decision-making and governance at all levels, including in the justice sector
- Empower women and girls to realize their environmental rights, especially climate-vulnerable women such as indigenous women and women affected by climate migration
- Support climate action by women- and youth-led organizations, and increase financial support for frontline women environmental human rights defenders
- Reform laws, policies and justice institutions to make them more responsive to the climate needs of women and girls, in line with international human rights standards and national development plans
- Strengthen women’s rights to land and natural resources, including through better tenure security, elimination of discriminatory laws, and greater gender-responsiveness of customary and informal justice institutions
- Foster an approach to climate finance that promotes more equitable funding for women-led climate change adaptation and mitigation initiatives
- Mobilize global multi-stakeholder coalitions to accelerate feminist action for climate justice.
|
|
 Pedagogy of agency and action, powers of 10, and fractal entanglement: Radical means for rapid societal transformation toward survivability and justice
Energy Research & Social Science
Mark S.McCaffrey, Jean LéonBoucher
The practical and moral imperative implied by the climate activist slogan “system change, not climate change” requires a toolkit of tactics—from the strictly legal (which will vary by location) to the militant, from the individual to the global scale—that offer alternatives to the dominant neoliberal, techno-capitalist paradigm. Here we call for an expanded conversation as we present a triad of “out of the box” tools to help spur deep social transformation: 1) pedagogy of agency and action, inspired by Paolo Freire's revolutionary theory of change; 2) the Powers of 10 framework, harnessing the ten orders of magnitude between a single individual and everyone on the planet to examine and analyze interwoven social scales and systems; and 3) the motif of fractal entanglement as a tool for examining barriers and opportunities for social transformation at every scale. We argue that while there are opportunities for transformation across scales, from the micro and individual scale to the macro planetary/global sphere, decentralized, community-based meso-scale efforts to mitigate and adapt to global change provide a practical “sweet spot” between an individual human being and all humanity, between a person and the planet.
|
|
 The effects of visual sustainability labels on consumer perception and behavior: A systematic review of the empirical literature
Sustainable Production and Consumption
Johann M. Majer, Heike A. Henscher, Paula Reuber, Denise Fischer-Kreer, Daniel Fischer
Demand-side mitigation solutions such as changing peoples' consumption behaviors can substantially help limit climate change (IPCC, 2022). Labelling schemes are a promising tool to promote more sustainable consumption behavior by reliably informing the consumers about the performance of a product regarding a range of environmental, ethical, or social aspects. However, labelling has been conceptualized in different ways, approached from various disciplinary backgrounds, examined through diverse research designs, and tested across manifold product categories and contexts. The present research synthesizes the dispersed empirical evidence on the effects of visual sustainability labels on consumer perception and behavior by systematically reviewing the literature. In a two-step screening process, a set of predetermined criteria was used to ultimately identify 26 eligible studies. We narratively and quantitatively synthesized the empirical findings. Our aggregated findings suggest that labels do have positive effects on psychological and behavioral outcome variables. In addition, we identify a number of important moderating variables that can be categorized as individual factors of the consumers, as context factors in the purchase situation, and as factors inherent in the label itself. However, the reviewed body of literature reveals deficiencies in studying interactions of labels and external factors and in studying actual behavior change in field settings. Based on these insights gained from the systematic review, we propose avenues for advancements in the field of research and highlight implications for promoting sustainable consumer behavior.
|
|
Global review of human waste-picking and its contribution to poverty alleviation and a circular economy
Environmental Research Letters
Jandira Morais, Glen Corder, Artem Golev, Lynda Lawson, and Saleem Ali
Across the globe, the livelihood of millions of people relies on the recovery and sale of valuable materials previously discarded as waste. In developed countries, this is mainly incorporated into the official recycling and resources recovery sector, while in developing countries the informal waste picking activities often make a major contribution. Waste picking provides important opportunities to people who have few or no marketable skills and education and no alternative sources of income to survive. However, waste pickers' living conditions remain deplorable, and their working conditions continue to be dangerous due to hazardous waste. Given the social, economic, and environmental benefits waste pickers bring, and particularly their contribution to circular economy goals in developing nations, the role of waste pickers has mostly been undervalued on the development agenda. This paper examines the literature on waste pickers around the world, their working and living conditions, and explores the issue of formalisation. A total of 45 papers published from 1994 to 2022 were reviewed, covering case studies on waste pickers from 27 different countries. We analyse the content of these papers based on a list of key themes: poverty, health, stigma, environmental factors, informality, and formalisation. We find that the informal status of waste pickers, and the question of them being formalised into a Municipal Solid Waste Management sector is discussed extensively in the literature, and we delve deeper into this theme. Formalisation can potentially bring considerable improvement to the lives of waste pickers, including legal recognition, safe working conditions and fair bargaining mechanisms. In practice however, we find that formalisation policies take significantly different forms from one country to another and often fail to provide these benefits.
|
|
Community repair in the circular economy – fixing more than stuff
Local Environment
Karin Bradley & Ola Persson
In the circular economy discourse it is stressed that products ought to be repairable and that repair work is assumed to be growing. However, repair can be organised and performed in different ways – by corporate entities, independent repairers, laypersons and communities. Some corporations are integrating repair and maintenance into their offering, while simultaneously restricting consumers to open, repair or modify their products. In opposition to such developments, there is a movement for “right to repair”, which works for consumers’ legal rights to repair and modify products, pushing for the free availability of spare parts and manuals. Recent years have also seen a growth of repair cafés and other forms of DIY community repair spaces. This paper explores the discourses of DIY community repair through two Swedish case studies – an NGO-led nationwide repair campaign and a local government initiative of open DIY repair spaces. Our case studies show how DIY community repair works towards enabling all, particularly marginalised groups, to participate and live well in a low-impact future. In contrast to the mainstream circular economy discourse, the purpose of community repair is not only about repairing broken stuff and reducing waste, but about building social relations and practicing non-consumerist forms of citizenship. By elucidating these different perspectives on repair – who is to perform it, with what skills and for what purposes – we highlight how the transition to future, more circular economies, can be enacted and steered in ways that allow for different roles and powers for citizen-consumers.
|
|
 Promoting pro-environmental behavior through citizen science? A case study with Chilean schoolchildren on marine plastic pollution
Marine Policy
Carla-Sophie Wichmann, Daniel Fischer, Sonja Maria Geiger, Daniela Honorato-Zimmer, Katrin Knickmeier, Katrin Kruse, Anna Sundermann, Martin Thiel
Plastic marine debris (PMD) polluting marine habitats is a pressing anthropogenic global environmental problem and its reduction requires the commitment of government and industry, and the collaboration of the public. Environmental citizen science projects (CSPs) have flourished and are widely regarded as having positive effects on participants’ knowledge, perception and behavior. This study examines how participation in a CSP on PMD, which included a scientific sampling of PMD on local beaches, affected Chilean schoolchildren’s (9–18 years) problem perception and personal involvement, including self-reported behavior. A pretest-posttest design was used, with an experimental group (CSP participants, n = 494) and a control group (n = 318). Educational and behavioral effects of the intervention were assessed using items based on the norm activation model. Both groups showed high initial problem perception and involvement regarding PMD. A mixed model multivariate analysis of variance revealed that engagement in the CSP did not result in significant changes of almost all dependent variables, except for a small positive effect on ascription of harm. Age substantially affected the outcomes and was included as a covariate. The findings suggest that pro-environmental behavior change cannot be expected from participation in environmental CSPs alone; it requires the incorporation of auxiliary educational activities in the project design specifically conceptualized for targeting this learning objective.
|
|
Forthcoming: Perceptions regarding sustainable innovation in marketing in the Brazilian fast food sector
International Journal of Sustainable Development
Adriana Beatriz Madeira, Fabiana Gama De Medeiros, Gilberto Perez
This study sought to understand experts perceptions regarding sustainable innovations in marketing in the fast food sector in Brazil. As a research method, it used in-depth interviews and convenience sampling, with eight interviewees, including researchers, managers and consultants with at least 10 years of experience in the fast food sector. By analysing the content of the interviews (using the 13 pre-existing categories from the literature review, plus two new categories that emerged), it was noted that the interviewees found it difficult to identify the concept of sustainability. In addition, the Brazilian context appears to be an obstacle for the adoption of more sustainable consumption habits by the population in general, owing to an educational gap. The interviewees indicated the need to develop public policies for the country to enable the implementation of sustainable innovations. There is little evidence of specific sustainable innovations in the fast food sector in Brazil.
|
|
|
We're very pleased to welcome 11 new SCORAI members who joined the network since our last newsletter, bringing our organization's total membership to 1,408 individuals. New members include:
- Richard Lorch, Buildings & Cities, London, UK
- Orlane Moynat, University of Geneva, Switzerland
- Pia Laborgne, Karlsruhe Transformation Centre for Sustainability and Cultural Change, Karlsruhe, Germany
- Edouard Toulouse, La Madeleine, France
- Hanna Eggestrand Vaughan, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
- Emy Demkes, De Correspondent, Arnhem, Netherlands
- Vilde Blix Huseby, University of Oslo, Norway
- Tullia Jack, Lund University, Sweden
- Sahand Kaveh, London, UK
- Jens Bergener, TU Berlin, Germany
- Jörgen Larsson, Chalmers, Gothenburg, Sweden
|
|
About SCORAI
SCORAI (Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative) is an international knowledge network of researchers and practitioners committed to building a flourishing and ecologically-sound society by changing the way we consume. We advance research, disseminate knowledge, impact policies and support campaigns. SCORAI recognizes that technological innovation alone is insufficient to address climate change and environmental threats. Therefore we support transformative changes in the economy, institutions and culture.
|
|
|
|
|
|
