sustainable consumption within a sustainable economy beyond green growth and green economies abstract in 1992 one unambiguous result of the unced conference was the need for changing consumption and production patterns with affluent countries taking the lead 20 years later at the 2012 uncsd little is left over and instead the green economy has been the theme pursued by the oecd the eu and other countries so the question needs to be answered if this is finally an attempt to put into practice what was promised 20 years ago or another diversion from what needs to be accomplished sustainable development is still a convincing concept if the original definition is taken avoiding the confusion caused by partisan interests reinterpreting the concept focussing on human needs fulfilment and respecting environmental limits it can still guide strong sustainable consumption green economy green growth on the other hand is a new terminology for what is known since 40 years as ecological modernisation it is indeed overdue but with its focus on efficiency and innovation it cannot guarantee to fulfil the brundtland sustainability criteria a factor analysis based on the i p a t formula demonstrates how optimistic the assumptions regarding future technologies must be to support the green growth concept consequently the authors pledge for a pragmatic risk avoiding approach by slimming the physical size of the economy this requires strong sustainable consumption including production as resource consumption which in turn requires a change of the societies institutional settings formal and informal mechanisms and orientations finally some elements of a strategy towards this end are pointed out with special emphasis on the role of non governmental organisations ngos through networking and advocacy they can both stimulate bottom up action and mobilise the pressure necessary for the institutional changes which are needed to mainstream strong sustainable consumption

positive feedback in skill aggregation across chinese cities this paper examines whether human capital levels diverged across chinese cities between 1990 and 2010 by employing a series of instruments for the initial human capital share consistent positive

consumer scapegoatism and limits to green consumerism an axiom that has shaped policy approaches to sustainable consumption has been that if more consumers understand the environmental consequences of their consumption patterns through their market choices they would inevitably put pressure on retailers and manufacturers to move towards sustainable production the result is the proliferation of green consumerism and consumption of green products eco labels to assist consumers in making informed ecologically conscious choices consumer awareness campaigns etc however this paper argues that the dominant focus on green consumerism as against the need for structural changes towards a broader systemic shift is unrealistic furthermore promoting green consumerism at once lays responsibility on consumers to undertake the function of maintaining economic growth while simultaneously even if contradictorily bearing the burden to drive the system towards sustainability given the scope of the sustainability challenge and the urgency with which it must be addressed this paper argues that the consumer is not the most salient agent in the production consumption system and so expecting the consumer through green consumerism to shift society towards scp patterns is consumer scapegoatism this paper draws on the discursive confusion over discourse and practice of sustainable consumption in an attempt to clarify the differences between green consumerism and sustainable consumption and to provide a broadened framework for sustainable consumption policy design that enables wellbeing and ecological sustainability without propagating the economic growth dogma that has a stranglehold on contemporary policy making

towards sustainable de growth medical survey data as predictors for estimation of niche market value gluten free beer market case abstract big brewing companies often look for sustainable resource and energy management rather than for minimization of negative social impact or maximization of positive ones that s why sustainable degrowth in production sounds like nightmare to them several activities on market such as demand for product personalization force manufacturers response but few niche markets with huge personalization potential are still underestimated by big producers to bridge the gap between company profits and sustainable de growth the useful tools for niche market value estimation which could help in investments decision making have been worked out the medical data reports were used to assess the socio demographic characteristic of customer of gluten free beer this market is still in its starting phase as big producers are not especially interested in beer products which require significant investments in production process a celiac disease cd is chronic inflammatory enteropathy induced with presence of gluten its prevalence is estimated as 1 100 which suggest that 1 person per 100 absolutely can t drink typical barley wheat beer the equations for calculation model were elaborated based on medical reports of cd occurrence in poland and then in europe total population and adult population data in 2013 eurostat the bart haas report of beer production in 2013 and average prices of gluten free beers manufactured and sold in europe the final formulas of beer production increase and the value of gluten free beer market have been elaborated results reveal that almost 6 5 million of adult people in europe must comply with gluten free diet value of gluten free beer market in europe is estimated as 3 3 billion eur annual for average price 3 eur for 0 5 l introduction of gluten free beer into market will increase production by at least 0 1 up to even 1 it is a value in range of 0 55 5 5 million hectolitres per year

the dynamics of willingness to consume abstract it is increasingly acknowledged that the growing consumption in the north constitutes an important part of global environmental problems to improve the possibilities of dealing with this aspect of the problems this paper explores some of the driving forces behind the growth in consumption the first section introduces the environmental debate on consumption including the relationship between final consumption and the consumption of resources the recent political acceptance of dealing with consumption and the fundamental conditions for consumption growth in the north in the following sections a cross disciplinary approach is applied in a broad search for the driving forces behind the willingness to consume throughout the exposition two questions are explored 1 why are productivity increases largely transformed into income increases instead of more leisure 2 why is such a large part of these income increases used for the consumption of goods and services with a relatively high materials intensity instead of less material intensive alternatives the explanations are divided into three groups first the economic explanations including socio economic aspects related to the institutional set up of the economy second socio psychological explanations focusing on consumption from the perspective of the human being embedded in specific social relations third historical and socio technological explanations focusing on different aspects of everyday life the paper concludes with some reflections on the political implications of the analysis

community renewable energy at a crossroads a think piece on degrowth technology and the democratization of the german energy system abstract degrowth activists and scholars have questioned society s current levels of material throughput and energy use the energy sector is at the core of any modern economy and germany serves as an international showcase for the transition of a large industrialized economy to a low carbon energy system diverse actors organizational models and technologies have contributed to the initiation of germany s energy transition through a wide range of community renewable energy projects the think piece investigates how far these diverse actors embrace the aims of the degrowth movement it also provides a critical account of on the ground realities through six hypotheses and contrasts them with claims made by the degrowth movement it is suggested that community renewable energy projects are at a crossroads while many projects have familiarized thousands of people with alternative economic models there is little evidence of a general change in attitudes towards technology consumption or equity in conclusion a major effort is needed to open initiatives to less affluent actors oppose recent trends of commodification and prevent community renewable energy projects from being engrossed by the dominant political and economic system

a degrowth transition pathways for the degrowth niche to replace the capitalist growth regime abstract facing the intertwined environmental social and economic crisis requires us to seriously consider alternatives to the current capitalist system including the emerging concept of degrowth existing understandings of degrowth have focused on characterizing the shape the key elements and the proposals for a degrowth society however its dynamic and evolving nature as an alternative vision of the future and the dynamics of a transition toward degrowth are inadequately considered this paper seeks to address this conceptual gap through a reconceptualisation of degrowth as a radical niche innovation to the capitalist growth regime by extending the multi level perspective framework to the capitalist growth system we undertake a critical reconsideration of the multi level perspective exposing key assumptions of this framework grounded in capitalist economic theory through this we propose a pluriversal potential pathway for change to consider this further a bibliometric analysis is used to measure and visualize research activity in degrowth as a proxy for the processes of development of the degrowth niche then we return to the multi level perspective to consider two potential pathways for change involving the degrowth niche and the capitalist growth regime finally we point to areas for further research that build on this new conceptualisation of a degrowth transition

modelling sustainability performance to achieve absolute reductions in socio ecological systems as the world s natural resources dwindle and critical levels of environmental pollution are approached sustainability becomes a key issue for governments organisations and individuals with the consequences of such an issue in mind this paper introduces a unifying approach to measure the sustainability performance of socio economic systems based on the interplay between two key variables essentiality of consumption and environmental impact this measure attributes to every system a fitness value i e a quantity that reflects its ability to remain resilient healthy by avoiding ecological social and economic collapse as it consumes the available resources this new measure is tested on a system where there is a limited supply of resources and four basic consumption types the analysis has theoretical implications as well as practical importance as it can help countries organisations or even individuals in finding better ways to measure sustainability performance

why are we growth addicted the hard way towards degrowth in the involutionary western development path abstract by questioning the origins of the inertia facing the degrowth movement this contribution identifies property as the constitutive institution of capitalism and property expansion as the dominant socioeconomic process leading world societies to economic path dependence techno institutional lock in and eco social impasse demonstrating why and how property based economic rationality subordinates ecological and social considerations to capitalist requirements this paper stresses both the need for an inversion in the hierarchy of social norms and the systemic opposition to such an inversion which emanates from the capitalist industrial expansion the text also brings to light some disregarded processes underlying the current economic crisis by pointing out the institutional and technological locked in situation into which the western development path has led our societies

strong sustainable consumption governance precondition for a degrowth path this paper aims to link two debates and literatures at the cutting edge of sustainable development research and governance sustainable consumption and degrowth interestingly these literatures have only recently started to exchange and integrate insights despite their similar interest in the fundamental systemic challenges to sustainable development the paper argues that this lack of connection is due to a predominance of perspectives in sustainable consumption governance that focus almost exclusively on questions of efficiency gains this weak sustainable consumption governance however is not able to address the challenges to sustainable development arising from overconsumption in general or the rebound effect and distributive issues in particular in contrast a strong sustainable consumption perspective provides a basis for a promising inquiry into the linkages between consumption and sustainable development as well as a fruitful exchange with degrowth specifically it allows the delineation of relevant insights on the role of values in governance obstacles to political reform and promising political strategies for the degrowth debate and literature

the physical dimension of international trade part 2 indirect global resource flows between 1962 and 2005 global trade is increasingly being challenged by observations of growing burden shifting in particular of environmental problems this paper presents the first worldwide calculations of shifted burden based on material flow indicators in particular direct and indirect physical trade balances this study covers the period between 1962 and 2005 and includes between 82 and 173 countries per year the results show that indirect trade flow volumes have increased to around 41 billion tonnes in 2005 the traded resources with the highest share of associated indirect flows are iron hard coal copper tin and increasingly palm oil regarding the burden balance between regions europe is the biggest shifter whereas australia and latin america are the largest takers of environmental burden due to resource extraction to evaluate the findings from a global perspective the results are analysed in terms of resource flow induced environmental pressure related to a country s land area in terms of total and per capita area resource endowment and population density seem to be more relevant in determining the physical trade balance including indirect flows than income level

new foundations for ecological economics abstract ecological economics has been repeatedly described as transdiciplinary and open to including everything from positivism to relativism i argue for a revision and rejection of this position in favour of realism and reasoned critique looking into the ontological presuppositions and considering an epistemology appropriate for ecological economics to meaningfully exist requires rejecting the form of methodological pluralism which has been advocated since the start of this journal this means being clear about the differences in our worldview or paradigm from others and being aware of the substantive failures of orthodox economics in addressing reality this paper argues for a fundamental review of the basis upon which ecological economics has been founded and in so doing seeks improved clarity as to the competing and complementary epistemologies and methodologies in part this requires establishing serious interdisciplinary research to replace superficial transdisciplinary rhetoric the argument places the future of ecological economics firmly amongst heterodox economic schools of thought and in ideological opposition to those supporting the existing institutional structures perpetuating a false reality of the world s social environmental and economic systems and their operation

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

the happiness of cities florida r mellander c and rentfrow p j the happiness of cities regional studies this research examines the factors that shape the happiness of cities whereas much of the existent literature has focused on the happiness of nations it is argued that in addition to income which has been found to shape national level happiness human capital levels will play an important role in the happiness of cities metropolitan level data from the 2009 gallup healthways survey are used to examine the effects of human capital on city happiness controlling for other factors the findings suggest that human capital plays the central role in the happiness of cities outperforming income and every other variable florida r mellander c and rentfrow p j 2009 gallup healthways florida r melland

market and non market determinants of private consumption and their impacts on the environment abstract the view of consumption as an activity combining market and non market elements with the aim of attaining life enjoyment targets allows one to focus on the social and institutional determinants of the border between market and non market components of the consumption process and to consider the interrelations of market and non market domains of social life as a possible source of the environmental degradation which derives from consumption activities in this paper an analytical framework is proposed in which the view of consumption as a social process and the neo ricardian theory of prices and profits are combined to yield an evaluation of consumer efficiency and of its environmental effects the paper argues that the social and institutional framework in which consumption is embedded significantly determines the impact of human activities on the natural environment and that environmental degradation is intimately connected with a distortion in the consumption process towards a predominance of market relations and an excess of labour in industrial society two examples household energy conservation and private transportation illustrate the analytical framework and suggest the importance of redrawing the border between market and non market domains of social life in environmental policy

environmentally sustainable household consumption from aggregate environmental pressures to priority fields of action unsustainable consumption patterns of the north or rather of the global affluent consumers class have been identified by agenda 21 as one of the key driving forces behind the unsustainable development however neither accounting based on the system of national accounts sna nor household economics provide the proper instruments to assess the environmental impact of household decision making eco efficiency assessments as familiar in the business sector provide no appropriate tool for households as an alternative an environmental space based assessment scheme is suggested covering the major pressures on the environment caused by household decisions the methodology is used twice once to analyse the environmental relevance of the main activity clusters of household consumption and once to identify the dominant acts of consumption within each cluster the latter provide the basis for deriving environmental performance indicators a rough analysis of household influence potentials permits to identify housing eating and mobility as the three priority fields for action for minimising the environmental impact of households extending the influence analysis actor matrixes are derived allocating influence and thus responsibility for environmental pressures to different groups of economic agents

where do the poor live this paper argues that the distribution of global poverty has changed and that most of the world s poor no longer live in countries officially classified as low income countries lics it is estimated that the majority of the world s poor or up to a billion people live in middle income countries mics this pattern is largely as a result of the recent graduation into the mic category of a number of populous countries the paper discusses the trends in the distribution of global poverty and opens a wider discussion on the potential implications for aid and development cooperation

the system boundaries of sustainability abstract the energy systems of the western industrialized nations have passed through different stages of development and fundamental energy crises over the course of their history 14th 18th and the end of the 20th century these crises have contributed decisively to the transformation of the energy system and of european societies the various historical energy systems their system boundaries and the restrictions resulting from them have decisively influenced the opportunities for development in european societies based upon this knowledge the question arises as to what energy system boundaries a future sustainability strategy will have to deal with the different sustainability concepts strong and weak sustainability imply different system boundaries for an energy system aiming at sustainable development climate change the design of the future energy system and the finiteness of the fossil energy system are the restrictions for the future energy system hence the boundaries of the sustainability system are determined by four dimensions based on the finiteness of the fossil energy system the development of a post fossil energy system the problem of climate change and the chosen sustainability paradigm this sustainability approach could enable sustainable development opportunities for the present generation without affecting the welfare of future generations

the determinants and welfare implications of us workers diverging location choices by skill 1980 2000 abstract from 1980 to 2000 the rise in the us college high school graduate wage gap coincided with increased geographic sorting as college graduates concentrated in high wage high rent cities this paper estimates a structural spatial equilibrium model to determine causes and welfare consequences of this increased skill sorting while local labor demand changes fundamentally caused the increased skill sorting it was further fueled by endogenous increases in amenities within higher skill cities changes in cities wages rents and endogenous amenities increased inequality between high school and college graduates by more than suggested by the increase in the college wage gap alone jel d31 i26 j24 j31 j61 r23

labor subsidies and just cause employment laws in an efficiency wage model efficiency wage models differ from standard labor market models in that wages do not necessarily clear markets wages act as devices to encourage work effort or more generally to increase productivity firms set their wages above the market clearing level and there is involuntary unemployment there are several reasons firms set wages high one is that this may increase employee morale and so lead to greater effort as observed by solow 12 salop notes that high wages may reduce labor turnover and so allow the firms to avoid turnover costs 10 high wages may also reduce the workers incentive to shirk on the job if shirking increases the chance of losing an attractive position see shapiro and stiglitz 11 akerlof and yellen give examples of other motivations for efficiency wages 1 this article uses a shirking model to discuss optimal government policies economists have placed little emphasis on government policies in such models shapiro and stiglitz do discuss employment subsidies and unemployment benefits 11 2 an employment subsidy or a reduction in unemployment compensation increases employment in their basic model as in most shirking models a suboptimal employment level is the main distortion so the two policies can increase efficiency 3 if firms choose minimum acceptable effort levels to ask of their workers as in this paper there is a second distortion both the employment and the effort levels are too low to be optimal employment subsidies still lead to greater employment but also lead to a reduction in effort these policies reduce one distortion while making the other more severe the net effect on efficiency is ambiguous section ii presents the model section iii considers the welfare effects of unemployment compensation two subsidies and just cause employment laws these two subsidies are wagerate subsidies paid based on the total wage bill and employment subsidies paid per worker

product services as a research field past present and future reflections from a decade of research in the last decade many researchers institutes and programs in the eu paid attention to product service systems pss given this massive effort it is time to take stock is pss research a theoretical field in its own right is the pss concept indeed the road to the factor 10 world is it the road to enhanced competitiveness what is needed to really use the potential of the concept this paper discusses these questions summarizing the analysis done in the pss review book new business for old europe various eu sponsored projects and the conceptual approach chosen in a new research network on sustainable consumption and production called score 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

smart cafe cities testing human capital externalities in the boston metropolitan area abstract existing studies have explored only one or in some cases two mechanisms by which human capital externalities percolate at the macrogeographic levels this study however uses the 1990 massachusetts census data to test four mechanisms at the microgeographic levels in the boston metropolitan area labor market we propose that individual workers can learn from their occupational and industrial peers in the same local labor market through four channels depth of human capital stock marshallian labor market externalities jacobs labor market externalities and thickness of the local labor market we find that all types of human capital externalities are significant across census blocks different types of externalities attenuate at different speeds over distances for example the effect of human capital depth decays rapidly beyond three miles away from block centroids we conclude that knowledge spillovers are very localized within a microgeographic scope in cities that we call smart cafe cities

the paradox of growth critique narrative analysis of the finnish sustainable consumption and production debate abstract academic discussion on economic growth and the environment has made a comeback under the auspices of the degrowth debate to date however literature on the topic has been mainly theoretical and empirical studies of actual policy discussions have received less attention this article contributes to the debate with a narrative policy analysis of interviews with members of finland s committee on sustainable consumption and production narrative policy analysis is suitable for complex policy cases by tracing and comparing the different stories non stories and counterstories in the debate the analysis clarifies the issue and paves the way for solutions we found that it is common even among business and ministry representatives to criticize the current growth bound economic system from the perspective of narrative policy analysis however this critique only increases uncertainty and complexity in the policy field which paradoxically leads to a strengthening of the dominant growth stories we suggest that constructing a complete degrowth story is essential for supporting democratic deliberation on sustainability robust institutional support for degrowth work together with research and experimentation are important milestones on the way

what does it really mean to be a strongly sustainable company a response to nikolaou and tsalis abstract in a recent issue of this journal nikolaou and tsalis 2018 published a paper titled a framework to evaluate eco and social labels for designing a sustainability consumption label to measure strong sustainability impact of firms products in their paper the authors n t develop a method for identifying strongly sustainable companies as a basis for consumer communication n t test their method on a case study of five chemical companies and conclude that two of these are strongly sustainable essentially because they had obtained a higher number of eco labels than the average across the five companies while we agree with n t on the relevance of applying a strong sustainability perspective in the assessment of companies we are afraid that their method can lead to misguided consumer communication at the root of this concern is that n t 1 use a market average as reference to decide whether a company has a strong or weak sustainability performance and 2 use the number of eco labels as an environmental indicator we lay the foundation of this response by briefly accounting for the academic origin of the weak strong sustainability dichotomy we then present our argument against the method presented by n t this is followed by a proposal for how to improve the method finally we discuss state of the art in strong sustainability assessments of companies taking into account other existing methods that draw on the planetary boundaries concept and life cycle assessment

linking daly s proposition to policymaking for sustainable development indicators and pathways abstract the statement that in the full world increasing the ultimate efficiency expressed as service throughput is the necessary condition for humanity to achieve high levels of well being within ecological limits is honoured as daly s proposition in this paper the purpose of this paper is to make daly s proposition effective guidance for policymaking related to sustainable development for this aim this paper puts forward the indicator ecological well being performance which is composed of the human development index and the ecological footprint to measure the ultimate efficiency furthermore by means of matrix analysis and factor decomposition analysis the respective pathways for countries at different stages of development to make the sustainable development transition were discussed the g20 countries were taken as the cases to conduct the research the empirical results show that improvements in well being and increases in throughput level are not necessarily positively related the relationship between the two depends on how countries control throughput levels and improve the ecological well being performance which also explains different performances on the sustainable development transition in a simple way this contribution provides new methods and criteria to track and evaluate national performance on sustainable development by referring to daly s original theories

the growth discourse growth policy and sustainable development two thought experiments abstract this paper addresses three aspects of growth the discourse the policy and the impacts the growth discourse claims that the central factor for social economic political and environmental progress is economic growth it is assumed to create wealth and provide the necessary means for social and environmental purposes on the basis of the growth discourse different growth policies can be derived based on different economic and political ideologies in order to reveal the implications of de facto degrowth two thought experiments are conducted for physical and economic end to growth strategies the latter is capable of meeting environmental objectives but implies significant social tensions and hardships and calls for transition strategies consisting of carefully designed steps

green entrepreneurship in transition economies a case study of bosnia and herzegovina abstract the countries with transition economies are under pressure to increase entrepreneurial activities that will enable fast growth with minimum impact on natural resources despite specific challenges the economies in transition face development of sustainable entrepreneurship has not been in focus of the academic research this leaves some open questions such as those concerning the role and mode of operation of public policies level of risk and its influence on entrepreneurship creativity role of knowledge in diffusing entrepreneurial values and fostering aspirations externalities created for the society and the connection between sustainability and entrepreneurship this paper aims to introduce a discussion on sustainable entrepreneurship in countries with economies in transition the research carried out included i review of literature and statistical data on entrepreneurial environment ii structured interviews with representatives of government civil society business sector and academia to understand the society s perception of green entrepreneurship and iii analysis of case studies on green entrepreneurs it can be concluded that entrepreneurs in economies in transition do not seem to be ready to respond to the challenges or to take any risks by investing in green business but also that the government and educational institutions do not recognize their own role and fail to support the development of green entrepreneurship for those green oriented businesses the key sociological constructs are personal motivation and mission locality and a forward thinking orientation in terms of sustainability all businesses managed to achieve the economic environmental and social value creation without any support from the government