Sustainable consumption is quickly becoming one of the major topics of interest for academics and practitioners engaged in environmental, social, and economic discourse. One of the primary reasons for this interest is that unsustainable consumption patterns and levels especially in the industrialized countries are a major cause if not the major cause of environmental degradation in the world today.

Naturally, the recognition of the importance of sustainable ways of consumption has spurred numerous research efforts using various approaches and foci ranging from psychological and sociological determinants of consumption behavior to cultural, institutional, and environmental effects and influences.

However, one of the major influences on consumption choices and constraints for strategies to promote sustainable ways of consumption has been insufficiently studied to date: globalization. To bridge this gap an interational research network there found to bring together existing methodologies and to develop new ideas how to analyse this field of research.

From 02.06. to 04.06.2000 the Norwegen research institut ProSus arranged a first meeting in Oslo. In November 2000 a "Workshop on Sustainable Household Consumption" took place in Tewnte (NL). Titel: "Impacts, Goals and Indicators for Energy, Transport and Food".

SERI members Francois Schneider and Sylvia Lorek attended to the Prosus/CSTM workshop, discussing possible future themes of research. To structure the research issue "Globalization and Sustainable Consumption" Sylvia Lorek and Doris Fuchs (CSTM) presented a report.

download [ pdf]

Project partners

• Germany:
  Wuppertal Institute
  

• Netherlands:
  University of Twente; CSTM
  University of Groningen
  
  
• Norway: ProSus, Oslo

The network is open for other partners. (For regular updates see the ProSus website.)