Understanding role models for change: a multilevel analysis of success factors of grassroots initiatives for sustainable consumption (original) (raw)
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Power and Politics in Sustainable Consumption Research and Practice, 2019
Since the 2000s, scholars and practitioners have located ‘community’ as a site of volunteer-based collective action capable of supporting and promoting sustainable consumption. More recently, a growing literature has articulated a constructive critique of such initiatives. Specifically, this literature has noted that community-based voluntary civic engagement does not necessarily advance inclusion and democracy and describes issues of representation emerging as unintended outcomes of this form of collective action. In this paper, we explore the issue of representation in community-based sustainable consumption projects through case studies from England, Canada and India. We draw on the case studies to examine who is represented in community-based sustainable consumption projects and how membership composition is associated with group goals, decision-making procedures, and distributive outcomes. We find that questions of who gets to take part (and who is excluded), and whom these projects represent are rarely raised, and that this silence produces both a democratic deficit and a particularly exclusive and middle-class form of green politics. With a view to being constructively critical, we explore how these issues of representation might be overcome, and what scope there is for addressing such issues through community-based initiatives, to realize visions of sustainable consumption that are inclusive.
Approaches for evaluating sustainable consumption initiatives1
2004
Klaus HUBACEK1, Katarina KORYTAROVA2, Willi HAAS2, Edgar HERTWICH3, Michael ORNETZEDER4, Helga WEISZ5 1 School of the Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK Phone +44-113-34-1631, Fax +44-113-34-6716, hubacek@env.leeds.ac.uk; 2 International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria; 3 Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway; 4 Institute for Social Innovations, Vienna, Austria; 5 The Department of Social Ecology at the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies of Austrian Universities (IFF), Vienna, Austria.
1 Approaches for evaluating sustainable consumption initiatives1
2015
The following selective overview investigates and discusses various approaches for evaluating sustainable consumption. This attempt to organise various research approaches is part of a larger study analysing research methods and driving forces for sustainable consumption. First investigations show that a wide variety of different approaches and methods do exist but the integration and cross-fertilisation between them has not been achieved to a satisfactory level. 1 WHAT MAKES A SUCCESSFUL INITIATIVE? The assumption behind international declarations and policy efforts addressing sustainable consumption is that consumers have some degree of control over the environmental and social impacts of their choices.2 The hope is that consumers will express their preferences3 for a clean environment and fair trade through their purchase decisions if they have information about the relevant impacts of their choices. Currently, such information is not available thus contributing to market failure...
Sustainable Consumption and Lifestyles and the Role of Small Scale Initiatives
2017
Background information The international conference "SustEcon Conference – The contribution of a sustainable economy to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals" took place on 25 and 26 September 2017 at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany (organised by the NaWiKo project). The focus of the conference was on the contributions of the sustainable economy to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This contribution can be observed on a number of different levels: Innovations toward achieving the SDGs are to be as much a topic at the conference as methodological questions about measuring sustainability. In addition to that, the differences between various discourses and concepts and their respective contributions to the sustainable economy were also featured prominently in the conference. A further topic of interest was the (political) framework conditions and barriers to a sustainable economy as well as the contribution of science to the SDGs.
Advancing sustainable consumption at the local government level: A literature review
Journal of Cleaner Production, 2019
The consumption of goods and services can be a driver of environmental and social impacts around the world. Understanding the role that the different levels of government can play in incentivising sustainable consumption is therefore critical. Using systematic review techniques, this paper reviews the latest evidence on the importance, effectiveness, successes and failures of local government in advancing sustainable consumption. We find that there is little focus on sustainable consumption in its entirety or whether it is being achieved at the local government level. Important consumption categories like food, procurement, water, waste prevention, clothing, other consumables or services are understudied. Evaluation of the outcome of sustainable consumption interventions was limited, and the assessment that was completed gave mixed results. The most popular policy instruments were of the less coercive administrative and informative type. Multiple barriers to the success of an intervention were identified, the top ones being funding; staff capacity, knowledge or data; lack of flexibility and lock-in to the status quo; lack of guidance or political will; administrative burdens; and lack of regulatory powers or tools. Sustainable consumption interventions by local government were most effective when they had strong leadership, good stakeholder engagement, participatory approaches and extensive consultations.
Sustainability
This paper studies features of grassroots ecopreneurs' leadership in their attempt to ignite transformations in production-consumption systems from the bottom up. It builds on a comprehensive approach of change agency based on institutional work, innovation, and learning intermediation literature. The paper describes grassroots ecopreneurs' interaction strategies to resource business models for sustainability. Empirical data comes from an action research project that consisted of implementing a sustainability experiment in Sur de Bolívar (Colombia). The experiment shows grassroots ecopreneurs' arrays of activities around making sense, shaping, securing support, nurturing, expanding, and scaling the value proposition, the business infrastructure, the customer interface and the financial model of their ventures. Our findings suggest that leading businesses transition into a more sustainable field requires grassroots ecopreneurs acting as change agents by performing a diverse array of boundary, practice, and knowledge circulation strategies, aiming at securing the societal and environmental impact of their ventures. Change agency manifests in the ways ecopreneurs maneuver to bring about transformations and strive to sustain it. The study contributes to a better understanding of processes of socio-technical change for sustainability in highly diverse institutional contexts, such as (but not exclusively) the developing world. An agency-based approach is proposed as an alternative to a managerial approach.
Moving Business/Industry Towards Sustainable Consumption
European Management Journal, 2002
The negative environmental impact of current consumption patterns is increasing and becoming more evident. Household/consumer behavior plays a significant role in shaping these patterns. A growing number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are focusing on this issue. The paper 1 examines how NGOs could play an important role as partners to business/industry in promoting sustainable consumption. It exhibits a number of mini case studies on innovative partnerships for product development, labeling, green purchasing, etc. Two essential factors for success have been identified: (1) Consumers need to feel empowered to make a difference through their behavior. (2) They should also be able to improve their quality of life. Furthermore, direct consumer outreach and partnerships with retailers are recommended as effective means of changing consumption patterns.
Sustainable consumption has become a central focus for national and international policies. The actions that people take and decisions they make to consume certain products and services or to live in certain way have direct impact on the environment as well as on personal and collective well-being (Jackson, 2005). Besides, individual behaviours are deeply embedded in social and organizational contexts that condition or influence their consumption choices. A wider responsible consumption movement-associated with ethical and green consumption-have arisen worldwide as community-based initiatives grounded on the active engagement of citizens in promoting sustainable lifestyles in the local and global context. Consumers are seen as active agents that assume ethical responsibilities in their consumption decisions, which also requires extent knowledge and education regarding environmental issues. In this context, public participation and social engagement are conceived as real educational process for social transformation, gaining social empowerment and collective learning (Uzzel, 1999; Lema-Blanco & Garcia Mira, 2015, Lema Blanco et al, 2016). Transitions literature (Seyfang, 2007) as well as recent theoretical approaches on transformative social innovation (Haxeltine et al, 2016) have provided empirical analysis on how social innovation-developed in different contexts and scenarios (Wittmayer et al, 2016)-permit people take part in solving problems processes, introducing alternative ways of knowing, doing and relating to alter current economic systems, throughout