Volume 1 ● Issue 1 

Spring 2005 

ISSN: 1548-7733

Journal Editor

Maurie Cohen (New Jersey Institute of Technology) 

Managing Editor

Amy Forrester 

Editorial 

Editorial on Sustainability e-Journal

E.O. Wilson (Pellegrino University Research Professor, Harvard University)...........................................1

Articles 

The role of local ecological knowledge in sustainable urban planning: perspectives from 

Finland

Vesa Yli-Pelkonen & Johanna Kohl (University of Helsinki, Finland)..............................................3

Integrated water resources management: evolution, prospects and future challenges 

Muhammad Mizanur Rahaman & Olli Varis (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland).................15

Symposium: Sustainable Consumption 

Sustainable consumption in national context: an introduction to the symposium 

Maurie J. Cohen (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA)............................................................22 

The politics of sustainable consumption: the case of the Netherlands 

Susan Martens & Gert Spaargaren (Wageningen University, The Netherlands)..................................29 

Sustainable consumption à la française? Conventional, innovative, and alternative 

approaches to sustainability and consumption in France

Samy Sanches (King’s College London, United Kingdom)...............................................................43 

The new politics of consumption: promoting sustainability in the American marketplace

Maurie J. Cohen, Aaron Comrov, & Brian Hoffner (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA)..........58 

Community Essay 

Sustainability science – and what’s needed beyond science

Paul H. Reitan (University of Buffalo, USA)...............................................................................77 

Published online ● http://ejournal.nbii.org 

email: ejournal@csa.com 

 & 
Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy 

http://ejournal.nbii.org 

© 2005 Wilson Spring 2005 | Volume 1 | Issue 1 

EDITORIAL 

E.O. Wilson 

Pellegrino University Research Professor, Harvard University 

 

Editorial on Sustainability e-Journal 

As a member of the Advisory Board of 

Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, I am deeply 

encouraged by the launching of this new e-journal. The 

challenging endeavor of launching a new scholarly 

publication has been supported by an innovative 

partnership [between CSA, the National Biological 

Information Infrastructure (NBII), and Conservation 

International (CI)], who have put together a stellar board of 

editors to guide the journal as it develops a community of 

contributors and readers. The professionals, academics, 

and policymakers who have joined this effort are not only 

experts in their respective fields but are also committed to 

promoting productive debate on issues related to 

sustainability. The goal of the publication — to establish a 

forum for cross-disciplinary discussion of natural and 

social sciences, practices, and policies related to 

sustainability — is an important step toward creating 

achievable sustainable practices through buy-in and 

consensus. 

 Starting a journal like Sustainability is a critical 

undertaking. The very term “sustainability” is murky and 

difficult to define and will only evolve into a coherent 

discipline through well-informed debate. Disciplines 

feeding into the field, as well as professionals already 

examining its practices, come from highly diverse arenas. 

The beliefs and priorities from different sectors, countries, 

and cultures are equally divergent. For example, 

examining how to sustainably manage a large and complex 

coral reef environment will draw dramatically different 

views from fisheries managers, scientists, local and 

indigenous peoples, and political players. Action will not 

be possible unless all parties are willing to compromise to 

reach consensus. Such negotiation is a tedious process, 

which must be held in an open forum. Sustainability will be 

a model for this activity. 

 In setting its timing, content, and editorial 

standards, Sustainability will address multiple needs in the 

community of researchers and practitioners concerned with 

sustainable practices. First, by keeping its editorial focus, it 

will provide support for — indeed push — stakeholders to 

construct explicit descriptions of how they see specific 

problems in which current practices are clearly 

unsustainable. It is easier to identify a practice that is 

unsustainable than to identify the core sources of that 

unsustainability, much less which ones should be addressed 

first to alter the practice. The problem often centers on 

defining the core conflicts in a way that is acceptable to all 

parties involved and that will lead toward a change in 

practices on the ground to enhance sustainability. 

Sustainability will also address the need for a 

coherent, identifiable, and central forum for the diverse 

community of people working on sustainability solutions. 

Because studies of sustainable practice problems are, by 

nature, cross-disciplinary, stakeholders are forced to read 

and interpret language, models, and references that are 

outside their home domains. These differences in discourse 

styles and expectations can, more easily than we’d like to 

admit, lead to misinterpretation. Much time can be wasted 

talking about semantics while skirting the substantive 

issues at hand. The editors and reviewers of Sustainability 

are committed to helping authors articulate their 

perspectives and the tools they create in ways that will 

resonate with the broadest possible readership. The journal 

will be a stable and consistent setting where stakeholders 

can safely formulate a new, rich language of sustainability, 

one that exemplifies a broad range of disciplinary cultures. 

In so doing, the journal expects to become a truly valuable 

asset for researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and 

others directly involved in studying sustainability problems 

and creating lasting solutions. 

A third need the journal will fill is serving as a 

central forum for discussion through the Internet. The 

Internet now offers us the tools to create new virtual 

communities by providing multiple channels for sharing 

information and developing the forward boundaries of 

expert knowledge. In the past, many research institutions 

focused primarily on the conduct of science; the work of 

disseminating and providing access to their information 

was considered to some extent an “add on.” The actual 

“usability” of the information for those who did not create 

it was secondary. This historical reality very much parallels 

the way that early computers — and their instructional 

materials — were produced. However, just as interface 

designs and online help systems have now become the 

litmus tests for the viability of computer software, so have 

the accessibility and usability of scientific information, 

particularly that supported by government funds. Today, 

most government research agencies have grown to think of 

themselves as information facilitators; they are charged 

with helping stakeholders easily find, understand, and use 
Wilson: Editorial on Sustainability e-Journal 

Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy | http://ejournal.nbii.org Spring 2005 | Volume 1 | Issue 1

2 

the information they produce. In launching this new 

journal, the partners are stepping forward as leaders, 

creating and disseminating the information and tools that 

are critical for understanding, and wisely managing, natural 

resources. Today, by mining the potential of the Internet, 

by creating new information technologies, and by 

supporting publications like Sustainability, we are 

broadening our role not only as an information provider, 

but also as a facilitator of information sharing and crossdisciplinary problem solving. 

 Of course, many communities of researchers 

have been reformed by the Internet, for instance in 

biomedicine, where centralized free bioinformatics 

resources like GenBank and PubMed have greatly added to 

the ability of the community to share and critique 

information. Without question, the connection between the 

National Institutes of Health and the National Library of 

Medicine (NLM) has been a powerful part of that growth. 

Through the NLM and its gateways, biomedical 

researchers can search in multiple systems for information 

from journals, drug trials, encyclopedic listings, toxicology 

references, book contents, data on clinical trials, abstracts 

from professional meetings, and dozens of other 

information resources. This cross searching has been built 

through collaborations of publishers, librarians, technology 

experts, and usability gurus to build user-friendly resources 

for researchers. Today, information providers and research 

institutions such as CSA, the NBII, and CI, are doing much 

the same with their collaborative resources. As the health 

of the environment becomes increasingly important in 

funding and political realms, the research community will 

increasingly turn to these powerful information resources 

to study the complex relationships between the health of 

the environment and that of human populations. 

 One way or the other, open access (which is not 

the same as free access) to scientific resources is inevitable. 

No doubt, it will take many years for institutions, 

publishers, librarians, authors, users (a.k.a., readers), and 

others to adjust to the new routes and costs of retrieving the 

information they need. Open access will certainly make all 

those involved in the production, distribution, and 

consumption of science more aware of how interdependent 

they are. Sustainability will play a central role in defining 

these components of community structure by presenting 

clearly written, robustly linked, and well-argued crossdisciplinary science in an open access forum. 
Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy 

http://ejournal.nbii.org 

© 2005 Yli-Pelkonen & Kohl Spring 2005 | Volume 1 | Issue 1

3 

ARTICLE

The role of local ecological knowledge in 

sustainable urban planning: perspectives 

from Finland 

Vesa Yli-Pelkonen* & Johanna Kohlǂ

*Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 65, FIN-00014 Finland 

(e-mail: vesa.yli-pelkonen@helsinki.fi) 

ǂ

Finland Futures Research Centre, Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland 

This paper is a study of the role of local ecological knowledge (LEK) as lay-expert knowledge in the urban 

land use planning process in Finland. The research addresses the importance of LEK, and the ways LEK 

is obtained and used. To obtain data, planning officials, biologists, and representatives of resident and 

nature associations were interviewed in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The results indicate that LEK 

exists among nature enthusiast, as well as local residents, and planners can obtain the knowledge in 

several ways, most notably through networks of knowledgeable key informants and local nature 

associations. Considering LEK in urban planning is important because it complements scientific ecological 

data and indicates places important to locals. Some of the challenges of using LEK include collecting it 

through participatory planning processes, distinguishing it from other information, valuing subjective 

knowledge, and empowering planning officials to use LEK. To enhance communication between 

stakeholders, social scientists should be integrated in the planning process. Furthermore, technical 

improvements, such as registers of key informants and more efficient use of nature associations’ 

knowledge, would be useful in applying LEK. 

KEYWORDS: environmental planning, indigenous knowledge, land use, urban planning, environmental awareness, community 

involvement, social sciences 

Introduction 

The loss of green spaces as a consequence of 

urbanization challenges us to consider the importance of 

urban nature more closely. Although urban nature, in the 

industrialized countries, is not typically a livelihood 

resource to residents, it does provide essential ecosystem 

services, including direct use, as in environmental, 

recreational and psychological services (Vandruff et al., 

1995; Bolund & Hunhammar, 1999; Lankinen & Sairinen, 

2000; Korpela et al., 2001), and in a wide array of 

educational and social services (Berkowitz et al., 2003; 

Sairinen & Kohl, 2004). 

The use of ecological information in the urban 

land use planning process to preserve green spaces and 

ecosystem services for urban residents has gained 

acceptance (Sukopp et al., 1995; Niemelä, 1999; Kansanen, 

2004). Presently in Finland, under the Land Use and 

Building Act of 1999, decisionmakers are required to base 

land use decisions not only on adequate ecological 

information from scientific studies, but also on the views 

and knowledge of local residents, nature enthusiasts, and 

other user groups and participants, who can provide 

information on an area’s biodiversity. 

Local participation with regards to urban nature 

has the potential to enhance the sustainable development of 

communities and their green environments (WCED, 1987; 

Redclift, 1993), especially if participants connected to the 

green spaces become integrated in planning (Kline, 2001). 

The literature has recently recognized the importance of 

such participation, perceived as one dimension of linking 

ecological and human social systems to guide sustainable 

urban land use planning (Grimm et al., 2000; Alberti et al., 
Yli-Pelkonen & Kohl: Local Ecological Knowledge in Planning

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2003; Pickett et al., 2004; Grimm & Redman, 2004; YliPelkonen & Niemelä, 2005). 

Several studies suggest that supplementing 

scientific data with local and traditional knowledge can 

broaden the information base needed for better 

decisionmaking regarding ecosystem and sustainable 

resource management (Berkes & Folke, 1998b; Berkes et 

al., 2000; see also Scoones, 1999). Most studies of local 

ecological knowledge focus on indigenous or rural 

communities and their ecosystems (Berkes & Folke, 1998a; 

Huntington, 2000; Olsson & Folke, 2001; Berkes et al., 

2003); however a few studies have addressed the potential 

existence and use of such knowledge among urban 

ecosystem users (e.g. Colding et al., 2003). Barthel (2005), 

for example, addresses local ecological knowledge and 

participation from the perspective of adaptive comanagement in urban parks. Devising a method by which 

local actor groups could make available their knowledge 

and thereby become an integral part of managing their 

urban ecosystem services of local green spaces would bring 

new dimensions to land use planning. 

Local Ecological Knowledge 

Local ecological knowledge (hereafter also LEK) 

refers to ecology as a natural science, and includes a 

person’s general knowledge of nature and a more specific 

local knowledge. The concept can also be understood as lay 

or experiential ecological knowledge, which can be a blend 

of learned scientific knowledge and knowledge based on a 

resident’s own observations and experiences from 

surrounding nature. As such, by definition, LEK is usually a 

hybrid and thus not strictly local or traditional (Clark & 

Murdoch, 1997; Nygren, 1999).1

 For instance, Olsson & 

Folke (2001) defined LEK in rural conditions as 

“knowledge held by a specific group of people about their 

local ecosystem” and “a mix of scientific and practical 

knowledge, being site specific and often involving a belief 

component.” In our information society, science is 

omnipresent, and experiential knowledge is most likely 

influenced by scientific information (Folke et al., 2003). 

Urban residents, whether or not well educated, follow 

popular scientific journals, newspaper articles, and 

television programs to obtain information on urban nature 

and ecology. This can have a great impact when residents 

are observing and valuing urban nature. 

When addressing local resident knowledge, it 

should be kept in mind that every interaction and interactor 

has a context and a background, and it is the context from 

which the construction of knowledge emerges. Furthermore, 

all knowledge is contextualized (Nowotny et al., 2001) and 

is a product of a social process (Hacking, 1999). Finally, 

local knowledge is usually strongly contextualized, 

containing elements such as experiences, beliefs, and fears 

that are dependent on the actors' roles in time and space 

(Kohl, unpublished; see also Hacking, 1999). Conversely, it 

should also be kept in mind that all research is 

contextualized (Nowotny et al., 2001), and scientific data 

 

1 Local refers to those urban people who live in or near the area of concern, 

or are in intense interaction with the area (such as people who live further 

away, but use the area’s recreational services). 

can be weakly contextualized, for instance, when scientific 

experiments or measurements are done systematically and 

in controlled circumstances. With such weakly 

contextualized knowledge the author, time, or place do not 

have the same relevance as with strongly contextualized 

knowledge (Nowotny et al., 2001; Knorr Cetina, 1999). 

Traditionally, expertise has been understood as 

emerging from a specific professional occupation or 

knowledge (Stehr, 1994), but according to Beck et al. 

(1994) institutional and scientific experts do not always 

know better, and strongly contextualized lay or experiential 

local knowledge can extend the concept of expertise (see 

Saaristo, 2000). In fact, who is an expert depends on the 

context (see Knorr Cetina, 1999) and each of us has much 

contextual expertise (Saaristo, 2000). 

Unlike ecological research information, which 

includes precise scientific knowledge about species 

composition, diversity, habitat requirements and 

characteristics, and population sizes (Yli-Pelkonen & 

Niemelä, 2005), LEK is not a result of a systematic 

scientific study; its strength is in a lengthy series of local 

observations (Folke et al., 2003). It is essential to 

incorporate this type of knowledge in planning through 

participation. 

Local Participation 

The social science literature has broadly described 

ideas regarding local participation and its link to ecological 

modernization and global participation. Ecological 

modernization (as a political program, on one hand, and as a 

theory of social change on the other (Spaargaren, 2000)) has 

described new possibilities for citizen participation, but its 

challenges have also been widely recognized (Spaargaren, 

1997). According to ecological modernization theory, the 

relationship between lay-actors (non-scientists) and experts 

(scientists), and the relationship between science and, for 

example, environmental policymaking, has undergone 

fundamental changes now that scientific uncertainties are no 

longer an internal matter for the scientific community 

(Spaargaren, 2000). 

Furthermore, a potential enthusiasm for local 

participation can be seen as a reflection of global 

participation (Yearley, 1996). Global environmental 

problems (loss of biodiversity, pollution, etc.) as well as 

local crisis (such as natural catastrophes) that have 

worldwide effects on variable scales (see also Gunderson, 

2003), have (with the help of global media) increasingly 

compressed the world. At least to some extent, global 

environmental problems are giving citizens, governments, 

and corporations a sense of global ties and of global identity 

for the occupants of spaceship Earth, which can make 

residents more willing to participate in the development of 

their local environment (Yearley, 1996). 

Literature on public participation experiences in 

Finland (e.g. Paldanius, 1997; Kortelainen, 2000; Bäcklund, 

2002; Koskiaho, 2002; Niemenmaa, 2002) has highlighted 

the challenges of local level participation. Urban planning 

situations have the same general challenges of local 

participation that Paldanius (1997) outlined. Key questions 

include: (a) who is able to participate, (b) what kind of 

attitudes and resources (knowledge, skills, and time) for 
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Figure 1. The relationship between Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) and scientific ecological 

information in planning and decision-making can differ according to the models M1, M2 and M3 

of Callon (1999). The arrows A, B, C and D depict the interactions between the elements, which 

are all part of the social process of planning. The dash lines of the interactions B, C and D 

illustrate their conditional existence. 

participation do stakeholders (residents, associations, and 

land use planners) have, (c) are the right participatory 

methods used in relation to plan situations and participation 

objectives, and (d) how is local participation integrated into 

the land use planning and decisionmaking process. 

One of the key issues in this study is the commitment with 

which lay people can participate in information production 

for decisionmaking. In order to understand lay people’s role 

in the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge, 

Callon (1999) focuses on the diversity of possible modes of 

non-specialist participation in scientific and technical 

debates. He presents three models to address and clarify this 

issue; the public education model (M1), which “is based on 

theirreducible opposition between scientific and popular 

knowledge”; the public debate model (M2), in which lay 

people have different levels of knowledge and can to some 

extent participate in information production; and the coproduction of knowledge model (M3), in which “lay people 

are actively involved in the creation of knowledge 

concerning them.” This study uses these models as a 

framework to examine the real-life case of using LEK in an 

urban setting (Figure 1). The models are not necessarily 

contradictory, but, depending on the situation, can co-exist 

and complement each other. 

According to Callon’s model M1, the subjective 

LEK of lay people has nothing to contribute to objective 

scientific ecological information on which planning and 

decisionmaking is almost solely based (interaction A). Due 

to the prevailing mistrust between lay people and science, 

and in order to reduce this mistrust, and thus reduce critical 

opinions (interaction B) and reach rational decisionmaking, 

scientific experts have to intensify educational and 

informative actions towards lay people (interaction C). 

According to model M2, local or lay knowledge, 

gathered by inquiries and public hearings from different 

actors or groups of actors, can enrich scientific expert 

information (interactions C and B), which forms a basis for 

planning and decisionmaking (interactions A and D), but 

even at its best is incomplete. Here this model is subdivided 

into M2a and M2b in order to better describe the different 

forms of participation (Kohl & Sairinen, 2004; Kohl, 2004). 

In M2a (called the public hearing model), planners hear 

local knowledge directly and genuinely from participants, 

and participation can influence the planning process. M2a 

illustrates the aim of the new participatory policy and, if 

this model is accurate, participation is working as the 

policymakers expected. However, even if participants are 

heard, there is a great risk that the participation still has a 

little influence on the final plan (interaction D). 

In M2b (called the public representation

model), local knowledge is heard, but indirectly through 

representatives of local participants. These can be, for 

instance, local resident or nature associations. Local 

knowledge has the potential to influence the planning 

process as well as in M2a, but the knowledge users have to 

remember that they are hearing the interpretation of the 

representatives. However, these representatives can 

potentially present the knowledge to users better than 

individual participants. 

If the model M3 proves to be the most 

appropriate for our case, then lay people have an essential 

role in the collective production of knowledge and scientific 

information (interaction C). With regards to planning and 

decisionmaking, LEK has become equally as strong as 

formal science (interactions A and B), or, in particular 

circumstances, has become more important (interaction B). 

This could happen, for instance, when scientific ecological 

information is scarce and LEK is perceived as an essential 

part of combined information production (see also Weber & 

Word, 2001). In all these models (such as in M2), it is 
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6 

possible that parts of both scientific information and local 

knowledge received by a planner through interactions A and 

B are lost in the process and may not be transmitted to the 

final plan (interaction D). 

This paper’s fundamental objective is to study the 

existence and the role of local ecological knowledge in 

Finnish urban areas, and to propose how it can be best used 

in the urban land use planning process as lay-expert 

knowledge. 

The study focuses on Finnish urban development, 

specifically in the Helsinki metropolitan area, where a great 

deal of nature has been retained within and around an urban 

area due to flexible residential planning and building. The 

potential existence of LEK in the Finnish urban settings is 

substantiated by the long tradition of Finns living close to 

nature in rural conditions, where the use of natural resources 

for livelihood and recreation resulted in lay people 

acquiring a deep knowledge of nature (Kangas & Kokko, 

2001; Relve, 2002). Although rapid urbanization after 

World War II changed this tradition, many Finns residing in 

urban areas still have a close relationship with nature and 

regularly use nature areas for recreation (Lankinen & 

Sairinen, 2000; Sievänen, 2001). 

Based on the aforementioned framework, the following 

research questions are addressed: 

1. Is LEK seen as an important factor in urban land use 

planning? 

2. What types and categories of LEK can be identified? 

3. What are the challenges associated with obtaining and 

using LEK in urban land use? 

4. In what ways can obtaining and using LEK be 

enhanced during the planning process? 

Methods & Data Gathering 

The study area was the Helsinki metropolitan area 

in Finland, which is a densely populated urban area, with 

76400 hectares (188792 acres) and 960,000 inhabitants.

Within this metropolitan area, numerous parks, forests, 

lakes, rivers, seashores, and inner bays are extremely 

important recreational resources (e.g. Lankinen & Sairinen, 

2000). 

The data were collected using semi-structured 

expert interviews (Flick, 1998; Huntington, 2000), a partly 

informal, conversation-like method that may reveal matters 

unlikely to be discovered using such methods as 

questionnaires (Flick, 1998). Direct verbal and non-verbal 

interaction allowed the interviewer to target specific data 

collection and to elicit motives behind the answers 

(Hirsjärvi & Hurme, 2000). 

The selection of interviewees was based on a 

snowball sampling and saturation methods (Hirsjärvi & 

Hurme, 2000; Berg, 2001). Several relevant and known key 

informants related to the planning of three districts in the 

Helsinki metropolitan area were first interviewed 

(Silverman, 2000). These informants were then asked to 

suggest associates who would be good sources of LEK 

information. Many of the suggested interviewees were also 

connected to the planning of these particular districts, but 

since the interviewees were asked to express their 

experiences and views related to LEK use in a more general 

level in urban planning, the description of the districts is not 

presented here. This sampling strategy was not truly 

random, but was used to gather information from 

individuals knowledgeable about the subject matter (Berg, 

2001). 

Altogether eleven land use planning professionals 

(architects, landscape architects, and engineers), three 

biologists (a consultant, an environmental planner, and a 

researcher), four representatives of local nature associations 

(three biologists and a nature photographer), and three local 

resident activists were interviewed. Considering the 

research resources (time and money) and the lack of new 

information in the last interviews (saturation), the twentyone interviews were considered adequate. 

It is accepted that a relatively small number of 

interviews can cause biases and lower representativeness, 

but then again the conducted interviews were meant to be 

in-depth and detailed, to gather more nuanced perspectives.

In addition, the sampling and interview methods can result 

in biased views if not treated critically. Each interview 

situation is always unique, and it is possible that in another 

situation the same person could have given slightly different 

answers (Flick, 1998). The interviewees were aware that the 

results would be published, and therefore it is possible that 

they gave ”socially desirable” answers. This should be 

acknowledged when applying or comparing the study 

findings to other urban areas. 

Interviews 

The interviewees were given the study’s goals and 

an outline of the interview questions a week prior to the 

interviews to prepare themselves. The interview questions 

addressed the following issues: the existence of LEK in 

urban areas, what kind of residents can be LEK sources, the 

importance of LEK in urban land use planning, the methods 

to obtain LEK and integrate it in the planning process, 

challenges related to obtaining and using LEK, and 

potential ways to promote LEK in urban planning. The 

concept of LEK was introduced to the interviewees in order 

to make sure they understood the study’s focus. The 

interviews were carried out on suitable premises during 

August 2002 - March 2004. The interviews lasted between 

60 and 90 minutes and were recorded on Minidiscs, which 

were later transcribed word-by-word. The interview data 

were then analyzed using qualitative content analysis (Flick, 

1998; Patton, 2002). The data transcribed were first 

classified by specific themes and categories, and then 

condensed for the most relevant phrases or parts (Kvale, 

1996). The language of the interviews was Finnish and the 

interview excerpts presented here, in the results section, are 

translations into English. 

Representativeness and Validity 

It should be kept in mind that this study’s 

conclusions are based on the results from a relatively small 

number of interviews from the Helsinki metropolitan area, 

which means that the situation in different urban areas, and 

with different participants, may be different. Thus, the 

study’s conclusions cannot be generalized (Berg, 2001), and 

are merely suggestions about how LEK could work in other 
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Figure 2. The results in a conceptual flow chart, with the ways and challenges of obtaining 

LEK are listed on the left-hand side, and the importance and challenges of using LEK on 

the right-hand side. The feed-back arrow from right to left indicates that the perceived 

importance of LEK and challenging elements in using LEK also affect obtaining LEK in the 

first place. This flow of knowledge can be seen as an interactive social process. 

urban areas. Although the Helsinki metropolitan area is by 

no means the largest and most dense urban area in Finland, 

we believe that some of the same processes regarding LEK 

could take place in other urban and urbanizing areas. In 

addition, given the wide experience and deep perspectives 

of the interviewees on land use planning, the results of this 

study could work as a starting point for addressing the issue 

of LEK in more detail and with a comparative approach in 

other urban areas. 

Results 

The results are presented according to the following 

categories: the conceptual meaning of LEK, the importance 

of LEK in urban land use planning, the ways that planners 

obtain LEK, the challenges of obtaining LEK through 

participation, and the challenges of using LEK. Figure 2 

illustrates the results in a conceptual flow chart, with the 

ways of obtaining LEK listed on the left- hand side, and the 

importance and challenges of using LEK on the right-hand 

side 

Concept of Local Ecological Knowledge 

The interviewees were first asked if they agree 

with the given definition of LEK. After some minor 

clarifications, all of them agreed with the underlying 

concept. The name of the concept itself was not directly 

familiar to all the interviewees, but understanding the 

existence and use of such knowledge had already become 

commonplace to most of the interviewed planning 

professionals. In addition, some of the interviewees added 

their own comments regarding the concept (Table 1, 

excerpts A-B). 

Importance of Local Ecological Knowledge in 

Urban Planning 

According to the interviewees, it is essential to 

consider the knowledge and opinions of people who know 

the area well, especially if planning aspires to be for the 

good of local users (Table 1, excerpts C-E). LEK can be an 

important addition to scientific ecological information and 

may become increasingly important where little or no 

nature studies are done in the area. For instance, local users 

may be aware of occurrences of important species. 

Population dynamics of certain species may vary from year 

to year, and local observations during a longer period of 

time may provide a better basis for decisionmaking. 

Table 1 Interview excerpts depicting how the interviewees 

understood the concept of LEK (A-B) and why they 

considered LEK important (C-E) 

A “I think this ecological knowledge of people can also be 

rather emotion-based and subconscious. People who have 

grown and resided among nature, have an ability, in a way, to 

feel that nature inside themselves, and that is local 

knowledge.” (planning official, architect) 

B “There are of course different levels of local ecological 

knowledge. For instance, there is usually a large gap (of 

knowledge) between nature enthusiasts and true nature 

experts.” (nature association representative, biologist) 

C “When it’s about a place with high nature values, the local 

knowledge, which can only be obtained from users, is 

important. But how we are able to value this knowledge, it’s 

more difficult. I think it very much depends on planners’ 

decisions, because they are the ones who convey the matter 

forward and wear it to words and decisions.” (planning 

official, architect) 

D “People who have worked here for longer time have often 

known about these nature enthusiasts - there have been 

networks by which these enthusiasts are to be found. If there 

is a place which is important to people, although there is not 

a specific nature value, it may have a huge meaning to the 

people living there.” (planning official, landscape architect) 

E “I think local ecological knowledge and nature issues in 

general will have a significant role in planning in the future. I 

have seen that ‘soft values’ have become more popular and 

there is a kind of new fascination in the nature enthusiasm. 

Especially as the large age classes become older, they have 

more time to use and they may want use that in nature.” 

(nature association representative, nature photographer) 
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The nature enthusiasts interviewed noted that if 

research information were available, local residents and 

nature enthusiasts could use these studies to find out more 

about the species in the area and thus confirm their 

occurrences. Some of the places important to local users 

may not necessarily be a habitat of certain species or 

include specific conservational values, but may nevertheless 

be of great personal importance. Local nature can be 

important to local users primarily through the world of 

experience and only secondarily through species 

occurrence. 

The interviews also revealed that a planner could 

be under competing pressure from the expectations of his or 

her own planning bureau and those of residents. In 

situations when the planner feels that official colleagues 

criticize her or his views (perhaps too ecology oriented) 

about area development, arguments from residents can 

become an important backup. 

Furthermore, as an interviewed landscape 

architect noted, the existence and accumulation of LEK may 

enhance local residents taking root in their home area, and 

thus lead to greater appreciation. For example, urban 

farmers in the vicinity of Helsinki know of several 

generations on their land, and are thus very much attached 

to it. In order to create good environments when developing 

new areas, it is worth listening to the people who 

are”rooted” in their environment. 

Obtaining Knowledge 

The interviewed users (planners, consultants, and 

environmental officials) can obtain LEK in several ways. 

First, they can actively look for local residents and 

enthusiasts who are interested in, and knowledgeable about, 

nature in the plan area. Second, residents and other 

participants, on their own initiative, can contact planning 

officials by means of statements or through a participatory 

process (Table 2, excerpts A and B). According to 

interviewed planners, persons knowledgeable about local 

nature, and at least somewhat familiar with scientific 

ecology, are the best sources (Table 2, excerpt B). More 

experienced planners may know several nature enthusiasts 

in the city, and additional knowledgeable and collaborative 

persons can be found as needed through personal networks 

(Table 1, excerpt D). However, establishing such local 

contacts may be a long-term project (Table 2, excerpt C). 

In addition to individual participants, knowledge 

can be found within local nature associations, which are 

important contacts, especially as information sources, but 

also because of their ability to gather, store, and distribute 

species information over time. For instance, if nature studies 

are to be made in the district, the associations can help in 

informing local nature enthusiasts about the need for 

additional information. Quite often nature associations will 

write their own statements regarding the plan. According to 

representatives of nature associations, people who have 

come to know an area’s nature, for instance through hiking, 

contact them. However, although they know the area 

thoroughly, they often feel that they do not have enough 

theoretical expertise to support their views. For instance, if 

they think that a particular area should be protected, the 

nature association could be an expert party, whose 

statements can weigh more than those of individual 

residents. 

Public hearings that incorporate participatory 

planning process are forums where certain themes can be 

discussed publicly, and matters regarding nature are more 

often reviewed (Table 2, excerpt D). However, the 

interviewed representatives of nature associations also 

criticized public hearings and participatory workshops 

(which will be addressed later). Furthermore, the 

interviewed planners emphasized the usefulness of ‘plan 

walks,’ where planners and local participants walk a route 

in the plan area and stop in places regarded as important. 

Participant comments, such as that “there are many frogs 

and snakes here in springtime,” are written down as 

planning information. 

Urban residents are heard both at the detailed and 

master plan levels. According to the interviews, residents 

are often more interested in the detailed plan level, unless 

the master plan concerns their own neighborhood. Here the 

difference between residential districts becomes clear; 

residents in certain areas are more active than elsewhere, 

possibly due to demographics. This applies to activities 

concerning green spaces, but also to challenges regarding 

participation and interaction. Perhaps due to the ”my own 

backyard” principle, matters regarding nature are discussed 

more often with residents during the detailed planning 

process, when specific resident knowledge can be 

considered. 

Table 2 Interview excerpts depicting how the interviewed 

planning professionals obtain LEK (A-D), and the challenges 

of obtaining LEK through participation (E-H) 

A “We try to keep a small unofficial register of nature enthusiasts 

in Vantaa, whose observations are important to us, and can 

even give new information on some species. For instance, if a 

chicken hawk has been seen nesting somewhere in Vantaa - it 

is rare. Sometimes this kind of information can be very 

knowledgeable, because a lot of nature specialists live in 

Vantaa. But given that we have many such experts here, they 

seem to be rather passive about their own environment and 

contacting us.” (environmental planner and biologist working at 

a local environmental center) 

B “I have received maps and letters, had conversations, it has all 

been good. However, the best collaboration I have had with 

such local residents who have been somewhat or well 

familiarized themselves with scientific ecology.” (planning 

official, landscape architect) 

C “It is a result of rather long-term work to find right and cooperative persons. The knowledge is compiled as small 

narratives, but often and unfortunately they stay just between 

the ears of planners. But that is part of the data we collect, and 

when the decisions are made, I argue that all those narratives 

have their own effect. Although we can’t write down all of them, 

the image we get about the situation comes both from the 

discussions with residents and facts.” (planning official, 

architect) 

D “In my opinion it is not so terribly difficult to bring ecological 

knowledge out in the open - nature matters often come up more 

easily than social matters.” (planning official) 

E “Residents should be able to participate the planning process at 

very early stage. If a planner has already done a lot of work 

with the plan and formed a strong vision/opinion about the plan, 

it is harder for outsiders to influence it ... it’s the planner’s 

baby!” (resident activist, retired architect) 
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F “Public hearings or discussions are often kind of eyewash, not 

very useful for us nature associations – people who really know 

do not have a change or time to express their knowledge there. 

We can better influence by written statements.” (representative 

of nature association, biologist) 

G “Resident associations are active but they often mainly care 

about their own ‘backyard’ and work very purposefully in that 

sense. It is better for nature associations to keep the distance 

from their territorial battles.” (representative of nature 

association, nature photographer) 

H “Local ecological knowledge easily stays between the ears of a 

person. The knowledge may exist, but these people have to 

also be socially active in order to bring out the knowledge. 

There are a lot of nature enthusiasts who are “lone wolves” – 

they don’t much talk to anybody, but may nevertheless have a 

massive knowledge base.” (resident activist, nature 

photographer) 

Challenges of Obtaining Local Ecological 

Knowledge Through Participation 

The interviews revealed that residents and nature 

enthusiasts often think that influencing the plan with their 

opinions and knowledge is rather difficult. One challenge 

seems to be timing; when a sketch of a new plan is 

introduced to the public, a certain number of basic 

conditions have already been determined, such as the master 

plan, aim of surface area to be built, and architectural 

vision. The planners are judicially obliged to consider the 

participants’ information, but if reservations have already 

been made regarding the construction, the new information 

cannot affect the plan proposal or the final implementation 

(Table 2, excerpt E). According to the legislation’s spirit, 

participants should be viewed as partners in the planning 

process; however participants sometimes perceive 

themselves as competitors with planners. But as was 

mentioned, even if planners would like to incorporate LEK, 

their hands can be tied by earlier decisions. 

Another challenge, according to the interviews, is 

notifying the participants publicly about the plan. Planning 

officials inform the public concerning the availability of 

plan preparation material, but these information channels do 

not always reach all interested parties. Local residents, and 

other participants, may feel that the release of information is 

inadequate or late. Participants have to keep their eyes and 

ears open, or they may read in the newspaper that the plan 

has just been approved. Participation requires devotion, 

tenacity, and interest in urban development. 

Yet another challenge is the method of 

participation. Public discussions are aimed at all interested 

parties, but it is rather uncommon that all participants are 

able to attend the forums at the same time. As excerpt F in 

Table 2 shows, some participants perceive that other 

methods of influencing the plan are more useful than public 

discussions. The success of the plan workshops depends 

largely on the kind of individuals that represent the local 

people and on their motives and values (Table 2, excerpt G). 

Furthermore, LEK can be obtained actively by means of 

questionnaires, which, as emphasized by the interviewed 

planners, need to be very clearly written. Moreover, it is not 

a given that the answers cover a wide enough array of 

residents to provide balanced information. The loudest 

opponents may well get their voices heard, while those who 

are satisfied stay silent. When considering all the obstacles, 

people may feel that influencing the process is very 

difficult, and if their opinions do not count much, they may 

stop participating. 

As several interviewees noted, there is a vast 

amount of LEK and ecological expertise about Finnish 

urban areas, but in order to use that knowledge, its holders 

have to be active participants. One reason for passivity 

(Table 2, excerpts A and H) can be the challenge of 

presenting knowledge and opinions publicly and in a 

language that can be understood by decisionmakers. 

Challenges of Using Local Ecological Knowledge 

Although much LEK can be available, the 

interviewees regarded using the knowledge as challenging. 

Planners receive a variety of information and opinions 

through public hearings, workshops, written statements, and 

other methods of communication. However, it is 

challenging to analyze the information in order to use it in 

the plan. Received information regarding local nature may 

vary from opinions, feelings, and experiences to very 

knowledgeable species observations and well-founded 

perspectives on the development of urban green areas. 

Although all of these can be useful for the planner, it is 

sometimes difficult to recognize accurate ecological 

knowledge, such as observations on species and biotopes 

and their functions. 

Planners prefer well-founded and reliable 

knowledge, but they must be able to determine how reliable 

the knowledge source is (Table 3, excerpts A-C). The 

interviewed planners emphasize that local knowledge must 

be treated critically, because it may easily contain 

inaccuracies. In the case of species or biotope observations, 

planners principally trust LEK sources, and this information 

can be verified on location if necessary. The situation 

becomes more difficult if the observation is several years 

old, because circumstances may have changed. However, an 

old observation may indicate that the area is of potential 

importance for biodiversity. If the local green spaces are 

obliterated or altered, the species lose their potential habitat. 

The issue of knowledge reliability and validity is 

related to its objectivity and subjectivity, and therefore to 

how it is valued. The interviewees often regard LEK as 

subjective (associated with opinions and feelings), which 

creates challenges in how to use the knowledge (Table 3, 

excerpts D-E). LEK can be very emotional, because 

ordinary residents may not be able to argue clearly about 

their experiences and opinions. However, as the interviewed 

planners note, emotional stances have their reasons, and a 

good planner tries to interpret what is at the root of these 

emotional outbursts. Furthermore, local participants can 

appreciate different elements of nature in different ways. 

For instance, for some residents certain trees can be close 

and familiar, i.e., associated with numerous memories, 

whereas others may see the same trees as ”just shading.” A 

planner, however, has to take both into consideration as a 

part of the planning process. The different perspective of 

each resident may thus become a dilemma for the planner 

who tries to incorporate these conflicting messages. 

What type of emphasis and value should LEK 

have, compared to scientific research information collected 
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Table 3 Interview excerpts depicting the challenges of using 

LEK 

A “Obtaining the knowledge and its reliability are challenges; if a 

resident tells about personal observations, it may not be as 

reliable as information from a consultant. But at least 

knowledge from residents would set ground for consultant 

studies - so I think that local ecological knowledge should be 

included in planning.” (planning official, architect)

B “Whoever has produced the information of a species or other 

matters, it has to be critically assessed in what kind of 

circumstances the observation was made in - some know 

species better than others, some are into birds for instance, 

and their observations are of course more credible. Lay 

observations are more uncertain, but have to be checked 

because the observation may nevertheless be just right.” 

(biologist working as consultant) 

C “We have the background assumption that local residents are 

the experts of their own living environment; and we thus ask for 

all observations, also clearly about the nature. I don’t know 

what would be the method that would increase ecological 

knowledge or matters related to it coming up. And reliability; 

perhaps our environmental center could be used to verify that 

information.” (planning official, architect) 

D “Science, beliefs, and interests are mixed together in the local 

ecological knowledge, and it makes it hard to value the 

knowledge. Matters that do not seem to fit into a situation may 

be left unmentioned unintentionally or half-unintentionally.” 

(planning official) 

E “I think that opinions, emotional matters and aesthetics are 

strongly a part of the local ecological knowledge - they clearly 

shape the knowledge for everyone, which is not necessarily a 

bad thing (to certain limits). Based on opinions, the individuals 

can start looking for more information and thus gain more 

knowledge.” (representative of nature association, biologist) 

F “Often the knowledge of nature enthusiasts is kind of common 

knowledge, like for instance I have. The knowledge of a 

specialized researcher is number one compared to that. But 

even an enthusiast finds, because the professional researcher 

does not necessarily step on the very place where something 

grows or is to be found. However, without the research fact and 

the judicial power it brings, there is just a battle of values on 

what should or should not be preserved.” (representative of 

nature association, nature photographer) 

G “It is very important that planners and decision-makers receive 

opinions and knowledge on nature from residents, particularly 

because the people in Finland have strong views on ecology 

and nature. These views should not, however, affect too 

overwhelmingly to decision-making, but the ecological 

questions in the planned area should be answered mainly 

based on scientific ecological expert information.” 

(representative of nature association, biologist) 

and produced by ecological experts, such as biologists 

working as consultants? Ecological research information is 

usually considered objective and the ”best available” 

information (Table 3, excerpt F). However, sometimes its 

reliability and objectivity have to be scrutinized, especially 

if the studies are made within a relatively short period of 

time or by inexperienced consultants. In these cases, LEK 

can be more reliable than an official study. Nevertheless, 

the presence of a nature conservation area next to the plan 

area requires official research information or at least very 

specific LEK (which has to be scientifically verified 

anyway). 

Due to the wide spectrum of lay-expert 

knowledge, some interviewed planners and biologists note 

that, from the city planning perspective, ecological expert 

information and lay participant knowledge and opinions 

should be processed and valued separately and then 

weighed against each other. Excerpt G (Table 3) depicts the 

relationship between ”research information” and LEK from 

a biologist’s viewpoint. 

Discussion 

Types and Categories of Local Ecological 

Knowledge 

Based on this study’s results, we developed a 

model that has five types of LEK, in order to understand the 

wide spectrum of such knowledge (Figure 3). Placing an 

individual under a certain type is highly context-dependent; 

for instance, an individual can be an ecological specialist 

and not possess local special knowledge. The descriptions 

of the different types of LEK include the degree of nature 

enthusiasm and participation and the related organizations 

that an individual may belong to. 

Our study also indicated that certain elements of 

LEK could be found in almost all types of LEK. We have 

categorized those elements as follows: 

1. Observations on local species and biotopes (patterns of 

nature) and their function (nature processes), including 

both spatial and temporal variability – embedded in all 

types of LEK except A, and emphasized in types D and 

E. 

2. Single local nature entities, such as objects that are 

familiar and valuable to participants (e.g. forest patch, 

meadow, brook, tree) – important in all types of LEK 

except A. 

3. ”Emotional matters,” such as opinions, feelings, and 

aesthetic values that can also result in silent or hidden 

appreciation of local nature, or a lack of appreciation – 

relevant in all types of LEK, also in A. Both 2 and 3 

include temporal variability – residents today may 

have different values than residents 20 years ago. 

An important issue in using LEK is how end-users 

are able to separate observed elements (categories 1 & 2) 

versus elements related to aesthetics and feelings 

(categories 2 & 3). Opinions and subjective viewpoints are 

important, and it is not always possible, or even necessary, 

to separate them. However, as the interviewed planners 

emphasize, if LEK’s observational elements are to 

complement ecological research information, the planners 

have to be able to distinguish natural scientific knowledge 

(such as what grows or lives where and when, and how 

these patterns have changed over time) from what 

participants regard as valuable. 

Furthermore, it is difficult to determine who has 

the right to decide which observational elements are most 

important (Söderman, 2003), or if the observational 

elements are more important than opinions, or which 

opinions are most important. Planners face this challenge 

when balancing different values related to plan areas. Today 

in Finland, certain species and biotopes are perhaps 

regarded as more valuable than just beautiful or revered 
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Figure 3. Five Types of Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK). 

(A) Less interested local resident; does not use local nature for 

recreation or otherwise, does not know or care much about (local) urban 

nature or nature in general (although may appreciate and have 

knowledge on pristine nature), does not care to participate locally. 

Related organization: none usually. 

(B) Interested local resident; does not much use local nature, but still 

regards it important and has some knowledge and opinions about it, may 

participate to some extent. Related organization: sometimes ‘local 

agenda’ or resident association. 

(C) Recreational nature enthusiast (local resident or a non-local user); a 

moderate use of local nature, has basic nature knowledge, has learned 

to know the area quite well by recreational use, enjoys being in nature, 

may participate. Related organization: ‘local agenda’ work group or 

resident association. 

(D) Experienced nature enthusiast (local resident or non-local user); has 

good general and local nature knowledge, may know some taxa quite 

well (e.g. birds, butterflies), has will and time to participate, may belong 

to a nature association. Related organization: general (or local) nature or 

environmental association (e.g. city level). 

(E) Ecological specialist (local resident or non-local user); high level of 

special knowledge of certain taxa or species, or ecology in general, 

usually through profession or/and long-term enthusiasm, may not always 

have time or will to participate, few in numbers, valuable support for local 

enthusiasts. Related organization: specialized nature association (e.g. 

birds or insects). 

landscapes or natural objects. This may be because 

‘observational’ information is easier to measure and 

legitimize than more aesthetics-based, and thus more 

subjective, information. Nevertheless, quite often these 

elements of LEK are tightly linked in an individual 

participant, as captured by the words of a nature enthusiast: 

“apparently nature appreciation is a kind of ‘all-inclusive 

package’; it includes both the species and the aesthetics they 

bring with them.” 

Meeting the Challenges of Local Participation: 

Obtaining and Using Local Ecological Knowledge 

Harrison & Burgess (2003) suggest that 

contextualized perspectives from local communities offer 

new insights about how individuals are engaged with 

society, and how more effective strategies for 

environmental communication and decisionmaking can be 

developed with participatory approaches. But this study 

demonstrates that such a participatory lifestyle is not 

suitable for all residents, since they often do not have 

enough resources, such as knowledge, time and skills, to 

participate effectively or at all. Moreover, other life 

situations can result in lack of participation, even if the 

residents could have relevant knowledge for planners. 

Moreover, if a resident puts time and effort into 

participation, many barriers often block actual influence. 

Such lack of success can lead to passive and frustrated 

attitudes toward participation (Arola, 2002). One solution is 

offering participants information, training, literature, and 

counseling (Paldanius, 1997). Lapintie (2002) noted the 

following challenges, which are familiar to all who have 

been involved in public participatory hearings or forums: 

too few participants given the extent of the impacted 

population, difficulties in finding a common language, 

hostility awakened by a too-complete plan sketch, and 

participant attempts to prevent any changes in their local 

environment (see also Fagence, 1977). 

Finding the right communication methods is one 

of the central issues. Although the knowledge and opinions 

of local participants might be expressed in a ”common” 

language, with less sophisticated terms and arguments than 

planners or decisionmakers use, the critical and deeply 

complex issues fundamental to the society-nature 

relationships and their transformation to planning decisions 

are voiced in local words (Davies, 2001; Yli-Pelkonen & 

Niemelä, 2005). 

Thus, it is necessary for planners in a 

participatory process to understand appropriately the 

language of locals (see also Bäcklund, 2002; Staffans, 

2004). This may not be a simple task, especially with 

ecological issues, due to the complexity of ecological 

systems and their value-laden understanding both to 

planners and locals (Kilvington et al., 2000). While planners 

are experts assigned to lead the planning process, they have 

to be ready to consider participants’ thoughts, knowledge 

and values, and through their own expertise ”filter” this 

information for planning and decisionmaking purposes. At 

times, it can be challenging for planners to cope with the 

uneven distribution of knowledge and activities of different 

focus groups. As Davies (2001) notes, “the big question is, 

how is it possible to consider the range of different views to 

make a just and equitable decision.” In order to develop 

methods to cope with these challenges, and to control both 

the ecological and social impacts of land use change, social 

scientists need to be involved in the planning process 

(Sairinen 2004; Sairinen & Kohl, 2004).

When developing participatory methods in urban 

planning, local participation should be innovative i.e. 

produce new knowledge with the special role of experiential 

knowledge, and communication should be as open and 

transparent as possible, so as to strengthen local democracy 

(Staffans, 2004). The participation process in planning 

projects is often bound to time (periodic); nevertheless, 

there should also be more established and continuous 

practices for participation to support and build a foundation 

for the periodic processes. 

In order to help lay participants (mainly LEK 

types A-C) to articulate their ecological knowledge and 

opinions as part of the planning process, participants should 

become more familiar with scientific ecology and with 
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language used by ecologists and planners (Weber & Word, 

2001), and also develop general skills of interactive 

participation and argumentation. Small technical solutions, 

such as better visualization, could improve the chances of 

LEK reaching the end-users’ attention (Tyrväinen et al., 

2003). For instance, it would be more illustrative if 

participants sent planning officials their observations, 

experiences, or opinions in map form, with additional 

comments attached. It would be rather easy, then, for the 

officials to check the situation on the marked location, if 

needed. In this way, LEK use could shift from Callon’s 

model M1 towards models M2 and M3. 

Slightly different measures apply with LEK types 

D-E, where Callon’s models M2 and M3 are potentially 

already working. As was noted, a vast number of specialists 

and nature enthusiasts with various interests dwell in urban 

areas. Local environmental centers (potentially in 

association with local nature associations) could keep a 

register of those nature enthusiasts, who could work as key 

informants, as is being done in some cities. This would 

direct important knowledge to city officials, while at the 

same time preventing controversies in advance. 

Urban planning could take into account more 

specialized ecological knowledge available in the national 

archives (e.g. data collected by bird enthusiasts) (Söderman, 

2003). This would require better communication between 

city officials and nature associations with these useful 

archives, and connection with GIS based municipal 

databases (e.g. Pedersen et al., 2004). In their own right, the 

specialized nature associations can use their own networks 

of local enthusiasts to monitor and respond to new plans in 

a wider area. For instance, a Helsinki-based bird-watchers 

association is setting up their own ‘plan board,’ in which 

bird enthusiasts all over southernmost Finland are 

networked. In each smaller area, local enthusiasts would 

take responsibility to monitor all the planning and inform 

the board about needed statements. Such large-scale 

networking requires extensive voluntary work and is thus 

not easily implemented. 

This study gives some support to the theoretical 

assumptions of the LEK models, although the design 

limitations presented in the methods section have to be kept 

in mind. According to this study, all the LEK models (M1, 

M2a,b, and M3) presented are visible in the Finnish urban 

detailed planning process, depending on the planning 

project and LEK type in question. Model M1 prevails when 

decisionmaking requires strictly official research 

information (e.g. due to a nature conservation area next to 

the plan area), or when participants are not able to transfer 

their potential knowledge to end-users. Reasons for the 

latter can be: (1) participants or planners think that there is 

not enough usable LEK available, (2) usable LEK is 

available, but the participants are not able to present it 

coherently to planners, (3) usable LEK is available, but 

even though the participants are able to communicate it, the 

planners, for some reason, do not use it. 

Model M2 (a,b) works when (1) both participants 

and planners see that such LEK, which complements 

ecological research information, is available; (2) 

participants are able to bring their LEK forward in the 

participatory planning process; and (3) planners are able to 

obtain LEK from participants according to the principles of 

participatory planning. This seems to work best with LEK 

types D-E, but types A-C are also considered. The potential 

non-transmittance of LEK to the final plan decision remains 

a problem. Model M3 can work in situations where 

ecological research information is scarce, and LEK (mainly 

types D-E) is known to be available. Nevertheless, this calls 

for informed and communicative planners and participants, 

who have the time and will to participate. 

Conclusions 

Based on Finnish legislation, land use planners 

must consider the knowledge of local stakeholders, who 

have information on an area’s biodiversity, in addition to 

scientific ecological studies. This article presents study 

results that support Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) in 

urban areas and its importance in land use planning. The 

study’s findings indicate that land use planners can obtain 

LEK from local key informants and nature associations. 

Based on the findings, the individuals who possess LEK can 

be roughly divided into five different types: less interested 

local residents, interested local residents, recreational nature 

enthusiasts, experienced nature enthusiasts, and ecological 

specialists. LEK from all these types can be useful to 

planners, although LEK from more experienced nature 

enthusiasts and specialists is regarded as easier to interpret. 

Moreover, almost all these types possess elements of LEK 

that can be categorized into species and biotope 

observations, single nature objects valuable to individuals, 

and emotional matters (opinions and aesthetic values). 

Considering LEK in urban planning is important 

because it can complement ecological research information 

and indicate objects and places important to stakeholders. 

Collecting LEK faces numerous challenges, many of them 

related to general difficulties of public participation. The 

challenges found in using LEK include distinguishing LEK 

from other information, valuing subjective knowledge, and 

the capability of planning officials to use it. In order to 

develop methods to meet these challenges and control both 

the ecological and social impacts of land use change, social 

scientists should be integrated into the planning process. 

With help in participant and planner communication, 

planners could better learn to interpret LEK of all types. 

Furthermore, technical improvements, such as key 

informant registers and more efficient use of nature 

association knowledge, would be useful. We hope that this 

study’s findings can work as a starting point for land use 

planners and other stakeholders in facilitating better 

understanding of the role of LEK in urban planning. 

Even if all the measures that we present as ways 

to advance LEK use, and to complement scientific 

ecological information, were implemented, the core issue 

still is how the knowledge is finally used (Olsson & Folke, 

2001). If, alongside scientific information, LEK is available, 

and the tools to obtain and use it exist, decisionmakers still 

need the will to enhance sustainability by maintaining a 

certain amount of urban green space with a certain 

”ecological quality level” under the pressure of planning 

new residential areas for the growing urban population. This 

will largely depend on the prevailing values of urban 
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residents, key professional actors, and, perhaps most 

importantly, politicians. 

Acknowledgement 

The research (ECOLINK project) was funded by the Helsinki 

University Environmental Research Centre (HERC). We thank the 

members of the ECOLINK steering group: Pekka Kansanen, Peter 

Clark, Harry Schulman and Jari Niemelä.

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Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy 

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© 2005 Rahaman & Varis Spring 2005 | Volume 1 | Issue 1 

15 

ARTICLE 

Integrated water resources 

management: evolution, prospects and 

future challenges 

Muhammad Mizanur Rahaman & Olli Varis 

Water Resources Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, PO Box 5200 Espoo, 02015 Finland 

 (e-mail: mizanur.rahaman@hut.fi; olli.varis@hut.fi ) 

This paper analyzes the evolution of the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) at 

international conferences over the past three decades and addresses the prospects of IWRM in resolving 

the current water crisis. It also identifies seven crucial challenges to implementing IWRM. Our rivers and 

aquifers are the life-blood of the planet. To achieve sustainable development, we must manage our most 

vital natural resource, water, in an integrated manner, or precisely through Integrated Water Resources 

Management. Since water is fundamental to many aspects of life, and to the surrounding natural 

environment, there is a need not only to review IWRM’s evolution in the last three decades, but also to 

identify future challenges to its implementation. 

KEYWORDS: water resources, water management, sustainable development, conferences, international agreements, rivers, world 

problems, developing countries, water conservation 

Introduction 

In 2002, at the Johannesburg World Summit on 

Sustainable Development (WSSD), The Technical Advisory 

Committee of the Global Water Partnership defined 

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) “as a 

process, which promotes the coordinated development and 

management of water, land and related resources in order to 

maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an 

equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of 

vital ecosystems,” and emphasized that water should be 

managed in a basin-wide context, under the principles of 

good governance and public participation. 

Historically, we can go back centuries, if not 

millennia, to discover forerunners of the present IWRM 

paradigm. In a number of countries, water management has 

been institutionalized in an advanced and integrated way 

over centuries. In Valencia, Spain, for example, multistakeholder, participatory water tribunals have operated at 

least since the tenth Century. Embid (2003) writes that Spain 

was probably the first country to organize water management 

on the basis of river basins, as it adopted the system of 

confederaciones hidrográficas in 1926. Over the last several 

decades, there have been serious attempts to implement 

IWRM in different global regions. In the 1940s, an early 

version of IWRM occurred when the Tennessee Valley 

Authority began to develop the water resources for that 

region (Barkin & King, 1986; Tortajada 2004). A later 

example occurred in 1960 in Hessen, Germany, where 

Integrated Water Resources Management Planning was 

prepared on the basis of a multidisciplinary integrated 

approach (Berg, 1960, cited in Kaitera, 1963). 

At the United Nations Conference on Water in the 

Mar del Plata (1977), IWRM was the recommended 

approach to incorporate the multiple competing uses of water 

resources. Although in the 1980s, water disappeared, for the 

most part, from the political agenda, the situation changed in 

the 1990s, thanks to the efforts of a number of conferences 

and international organizations. Efforts such as the 

International Conference on Water and Environment (1992), 

Second World Water Forum (2000), International 

Conference on Freshwater (2001), World Summit on 

Sustainable Development (2002) and Third World Water 

Forum (2003) collectively led to breakthroughs that thrust 

IWRM onto the political agenda. 

Driven by the question of the main challenges to 

implementing IWRM, this paper reviews the evolution of 

IWRM as a concept from Mar del Plata 1977 to Kyoto 2003 

and address the prospects of IWRM in resolving current 

water crises. It then identifies seven crucial—but often 

overlooked—challenges in current practice, which should be 

addressed when implementing IWRM.
Rahaman & Varis: Integrated Water Resource Management

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IWRM in the International Agenda FROM 

Mar del Plata 1977 to Kyoto 2003 

A critical review of the evolution of IWRM in the 

international agenda, from the UN Conference on Water held 

in Mar del Plata in 1977 to the Third World Water Forum of 

Kyoto in 2003, follows. 

United Nations Conference on Water (Mar del 

Plata 1977) 

In 1977, the UN Conference on Water was held in 

Mar del Plata, Argentina. Its goals were to assess the status 

of water resources; to ensure that an adequate supply of 

quality water was available to meet the planet’s socioeconomic needs; to increase water use efficiency; and to 

promote preparedness, nationally and internationally, so as to 

avoid a water crisis of global dimensions before the end of 

twentieth century. 

The conference approved the Mar del Plata Action 

Plan, which was the first internationally coordinated 

approach to IWRM. The plan had two parts: a set of 

recommendations that covered all the essential components 

of water management, and twelve resolutions on a wide 

range of specific subject areas. It discussed assessment of 

water use and efficiency; natural hazards, environment, 

health and pollution control; policy, planning and 

management; public information, education, training and 

research; and regional and international cooperation (Biswas, 

2004). 

The Mar del Plata conference was a success, in 

part due to the active participation of the developing world 

and the discussions on various aspects of water management, 

specifically the country and region specific analyses. The 

conference considered water management on a holistic and 

comprehensive basis, an approach recognized as one of the 

key IWRM issues in the 1990s. To provide potable water and 

sanitation facilities to all, and to accelerate political will and 

investment in the water sector, the conference recommended 

the period 1980 to 1990 as the International Water Supply 

and Sanitation Decade. 

The Mar del Plata conference was undoubtedly a 

major milestone in the history of water resources 

development for the 20th century. Viewed from any 

direction, the conference has become an important yardstick 

in water resources management, particularly for IWRM. 

Regrettably, transboundary water resources management was 

not discussed comprehensively, and an implementation 

scheme for the Action Plan was not developed during the 

discussion (Biswas, 2004). 

While the 1980s were key as far as implementing 

the Mar del Plata principles, gradually, water faded from 

international agendas, so much so that the Brundtland 

Commission Report (WCED, 1987), which laid the 

cornerstones to the concept of sustainable development in 

international policy, hardly addressed the issue of water. 

International Conference on Water and 

Environment - Dublin 1992 

Fifteen years after the Mar del Plata Conference, 

water was back on the international agenda. In January, 

1992, the International Conference on Water and the 

Environment (ICWE) was held in Dublin, Ireland to serve as 

the preparatory event, with respect to water issues, to the Rio 

United Nations Conference on Environment and 

Development (UNCED) Conference. 

The Dublin Conference was expected to formulate 

sustainable water policies and an action program to be 

considered by UNCED. The conference reports set out the 

recommendations for action at the local, national, and 

international levels, based on the following four guiding 

principles (ICWE, 1992): 

• Principle one recognized fresh water as a finite, 

vulnerable, and essential resource, and suggested that 

water should be managed in an integrated manner. 

• Principle two suggested a participatory approach, 

involving users, planners, and policymakers, at all 

levels of water development and management. 

• Principle three recognized women’s central role in the 

provision, management, and safeguarding of water. 

• Principle four suggested that water should be 

considered as an economic good. 

The fourth principle became highly debated and 

was opposed by water professionals from the developing 

world. They argued that no water development initiatives 

could be sustainable if water was considered an economic 

good without considering the issues of equity and poverty. 

The main successes of the Dublin conference were that 

it focused on the necessity of integrated water management 

and on active participations of all stakeholders, from the 

highest levels of government to the smallest communities, 

and highlighted the special role of women in water 

management. The Dublin conference recommendations were 

later consolidated into Chapter eighteen of Agenda 21 in Rio 

de Janeiro, 1992. 

The major limitations of the Dublin conference 

were that it was, for the most part, a meeting of experts 

rather than an intergovernmental meeting, and that it did not 

consider the outcomes of Mar del Plata. Unlike Mar del 

Plata, there was a lack of active participation from the 

developing world, which was later heavily criticized. Many 

water professionals and decisionmakers from the developing 

world not only criticized the Dublin principles, especially the 

fourth, but also criticized the failure of the participants to 

indicate how the principles could be implemented in the 

context of complex water management scenarios in the 

developing countries. 

The shortcomings of the Dublin Principles would 

later be addressed in the Second World Water Forum and the 

concurrent Ministerial Conference in 2000. In spite of the 

aforementioned problems, current thinking regarding the 

crucial issues of IWRM is heavily influenced by the Dublin 

Principles. 
Rahaman & Varis: Integrated Water Resource Management

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Second World Water Forum & Ministerial 

Conference (The Hague 2000)

On 17-22 March 2000, the Second World Water 

Forum was held in The Hague, the Netherlands, with more 

than 5,700 participants from all over the world. Unlike Mar 

del Plata and Dublin, this Forum did not just gather 

intergovernmental participants and experts, but included a 

range of stakeholders related to water management from the 

developing and developed world. This would become key to 

the Forum’s success, and to its participants’ satisfaction. 

With its theme, From Vision to Action, the Forum 

brought together a wide array of documents addressing 

visions produced and structured by the World Water Council 

and invaluable views in reforming the water sector, better 

addressing the need to integrate water management. Unlike 

Dublin, The Hague Forum carefully considered the outcomes 

of previous water initiatives and acknowledged water’s 

social, environmental, and cultural values. 

The participants of The Hague forum suggested 

applying equity criteria, along with appropriate subsidies to 

the poor, when systematically adopting full-cost water 

pricing. The Forum acknowledged that food security, 

ecosystem protection, empowerment of people, risk 

management from water related hazards, peaceful boundary 

and transboundary river basin management, basic water 

demands, and wise water management are achievable 

through IWRM. 

To meet the challenges related to IWRM, the 

Ministerial Declaration (WWC, 2000) called for 

institutional, technological, and financial innovations; 

collaboration and partnership at all levels; meaningful 

participation of all stakeholders; establishment of targets and 

strategies; transparent water governance; and cooperation 

with international organizations and the UN system. 

“Making Water Everybody’s Business” was 

another theme. Water privatization and public-private 

partnerships were widely promulgated as means to achieve 

the vision objectives. However, many water professionals 

opposed privatization, arguing that the water sector is 

interrelated to many functions that demand government 

presence, i.e. flood control, drought alleviation, water 

supply, and ecosystem conservation (Shen & Varis, 2000). 

The Forum also acknowledged that the right to 

land and access to water is key to breaking out of the poverty 

trap. Moreover, it was pointed out that water could empower 

people, and women in particular, through a participatory 

management process. 

Unlike Mar del Plata and Dublin, at the Hague 

Forum the main challenges to implementation were 

discussed extensively and, afterwards, the Forum’s visions 

were converted into action programs for the participating 

countries. This led to the birth of the Global Water 

Partnership, which now plays a central role in coordinating 

the Framework for Action. 

The Second World Water Forum was successful 

not only for putting IWRM on the political agenda, but also 

for endorsing the active participation of the developing 

world’s water stakeholders, and for gathering world water 

leaders and communities together. 

International Conference on Freshwater - Bonn 

2001 

In close co-operation with the United Nations, 

Germany hosted, in December 2001, the International 

Conference on Freshwater in Bonn. The aim of the 

conference was to contribute to solutions for global water 

problems, and to support preparations for the World Summit 

on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, 

2002, and the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, 2003. 

The conference reviewed all previous water 

resources development principles and recognized that there 

was often a gap between policy development and practice. In 

a novel way, the Bonn Conference focused on practical 

implementation, not only identifying challenges and key 

targets, but also recommending action programs to 

implement policies in the field (ICFW, 2001). 

The Bonn Keys, which summarized the conference 

discussions, highlighted the key steps toward sustainable 

development through meeting water security needs of the 

poor, and promoting decentralization and new partnerships. 

To achieve these steps, it suggested IWRM as the most 

capable tool. 

The Bonn Conference recommended prioritizing 

actions in the fields of governance, mobilizing financial 

resources, building capacity, and sharing knowledge. The 

Bonn Recommendations for Action addressed, at the lowest 

appropriate level, issues such as poverty, gender equity, 

corruption mitigation, and water management. The 

Conference identified a set of actions necessary to mobilize 

financial resources: strengthening public funding 

capabilities, improving economic efficiency, and increasing 

official assistance to developing countries. In the field of 

capacity building, it prioritized the need for education and 

training regarding water wisdom, research, effective water 

institutions, knowledge sharing, and innovative technologies. 

The Conference also recommended that WSSD harmonize 

water issues with overall sustainable development objectives 

and integrate water into national poverty reduction strategies. 

The Bonn Conference should be commended by 

the water world for connecting the views of the developing 

and developed world and impartially divulging practical 

implementation problems. It also provided action programs, 

a historical milestone for making IWRM truly effective in 

the field. The key success of the Bonn Conference was the 

adoption of the Bonn Recommendations in the WSSD Plan of 

Implementation (WSSD, 2002). 

World Summit on Sustainable Development -

Johannesburg 2002 

The World Summit on Sustainable Development 

(WSSD), held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2002, 

should be recognized as a success because it put IWRM at 

the top of the international agenda. 

The WSSD’s Plan of Implementation includes 

IWRM as one of the key components for achieving 

sustainable development. It provides specific targets and 

guidelines for implementing IWRM worldwide, including 

developing an IWRM and water efficiency plan by 2005 for 

all major river basins of the world; developing and 

implementing national/regional strategies, plans, and 
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programs with regard to IWRM; improving water-use 

efficiency; facilitating public-private partnerships; 

developing gender-sensitive policies and programs; 

involving all concerned stakeholders in a variety of 

decisionmaking, management, and implementation 

processes; enhancing education; and combating corruption. 

For the most part, it seems that the Bonn 

Conference recommendations were adopted within WSSD, 

and IWRM has now become the most internationally 

accepted water policy tool. The WSSD outcomes also 

encouraged major donors to commit themselves to 

implementing IWRM in the developing world. A number of 

broad strategic partnerships were declared at Johannesburg; 

the EU, in particular, launched a series of partnerships on 

Water for Sustainable Development with Africa, Eastern 

Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. 

The international political recognition, at WSSD, 

of IWRM as the mechanism to achieve sustainable water 

management will dramatically and positively change the 

water world for the years to come. It is probable that IWRM 

will become the most integral part of all water initiatives, as 

was observed at the third World Water Forum in Kyoto, 

2003. 

The Third World Water Forum - Kyoto 2003 

Over 24,000 people from around the world 

attended the third World Water Forum, held in March 2003 

in Kyoto, Japan. The key issues were safe, clean water for 

all, good governance, capacity building, financing, public 

participation, and various regional topics (TWWF, 2003a). 

A two-day Ministerial conference resulted in the release of 

a ministerial declaration on a range of water issues, 

including water resource management, safe drinking water 

and sanitation, water for food and rural development, water 

pollution prevention and ecosystem conservation, as well as 

disaster mitigation and risk management (TWWF, 2003b). 

The forum again recommended IWRM as the 

way to achieve sustainability regarding water resources. 

The ministerial declaration addressed the necessity of 

sharing benefits equitably, engaging with pro-poor and 

gender perspectives in water policies, facilitating 

stakeholder participation, ensuring good water governance 

and transparency, building human and institutional 

capacity, developing new mechanisms of public-private 

partnership, promoting river basin management initiatives, 

cooperating between riparian countries on transboundary 

water issues, and encouraging scientific research. 

The ministerial declaration also vowed support to 

enable developing countries to achieve the UN Millennium 

Development Goals, and for developing IWRM and water 

efficiency plans in all river basins worldwide by 2005, the 

target set at the World Summit on Sustainable 

Development (TWWF, 2003b). Putting stakeholders and 

water ministers from around the world together in a MultiStakeholder Dialogue (MSD) table for the first time in 

water history was another key achievement. In addition, a 

proposal to establish a network of websites to follow the 

Portfolio of Water Actions received the fullest support of 

all participants. This will result in information sharing and 

promote cooperation between countries and international 

organizations. 

A range of organizations and countries-including 

the World Water Council, Global Water Partnership, 

UNESCO, UN-HABITAT, FAO, UNEP, IUCN, UNICEF, 

Australia, the Netherlands, the EU, and Japan - made 

commitments to develop the water sector. Over 100 such 

commitments have been confirmed, and this number could 

double (TWWF, 2003a). 

IWRM: Overly General Maxims Must Be 

Avoided 

Seven Factors Towards a Successful IWRM 

Implementation 

The last three decades of summits and megaconferences were essential in raising the international 

community’s awareness of the urgency of integrated water 

management. Over time, wise water management has been 

recognized as an effective way to improve quality of life. 

Three decades of conferences have resulted in many 

commitments to IWRM that, unfortunately, were often not 

implemented. 

Although IWRM is the current buzzword of 

water resources development, future challenges remain in 

reducing the gap between theoretically agreed policies and 

implementation. 

The integration of different sectors related to 

water management is very challenging. Moreover, the 

problems and solutions associated with IWRM 

implementation in different regions may not be universal. 

Overly general or universal policies and guidelines for 

implementing IWRM may become counterproductive. 

Below, we highlight seven points and approaches 

that need to be addressed by water professionals far more 

carefully than in the contemporary guidelines to 

successfully implement IWRM. 

Privatization 

Privatization and public-private partnership were 

extensively disseminated at the Hague forum, the Bonn 

conference, and the WSSD summit. Although the 

privatization concept presently discourages subsidies, it 

overlooks the fact that, in Europe, initial water infrastructure 

development was based on massive subsidies. Some critics 

fear that privatization may encourage fragmentation, which 

IWRM seems to overcome. Privatization of the marketable 

aspects of water may result in single-purpose planning and 

management, which raises a question of open information 

channels and transparency. Moreover, for the developing 

world where basic infrastructure is not yet complete, a 

question remains of whether applying full cost recovery is 

ethical or practical. 

Water resource management by public or 

government organizations also has many success stories, e.g. 

in Finland and other European countries (Shen & Varis, 

2000). It is important that IWRM not only deals with water 

supply and wastewater treatment, but combines many other 

functions, including flood control, poverty alleviation, food 
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production, ecosystem conservation, drought management, 

and sustainability, and that the government’s presence is 

vital in the effective implementation of IWRM. 

Therefore, privatization of the water sector needs 

to be approached with caution, and the issue’s many facets 

must be considered far more than is happening in today’s 

ideological debate. 

Water as an Economic Good 

Water is recognized as an economic good in many 

international declarations, such as those reviewed above, as 

well as in the policies of major lenders and donors. However, 

there is a risk in fostering the notion of water as a 

commodity, because it shifts the public perception away 

from a sense of water as a common good, and from a shared 

duty and responsibility. A simple and straightforward 

solution, designed on the basis of pure economic efficiency, 

has the potential of ending up unsustainable. 

For the improvement of water infrastructure in the 

developing world, subsidies are vital. The principle of full 

cost recovery sometimes handicaps developing nations that 

are striving to provide basic needs by subsidizing their basic 

water infrastructure (Rahaman & Varis, 2003). 

However, water is a basic human need and access 

to minimum quantities of safe water (20 liters per person per 

day) should be everyone’s right. Lack of access to safe 

drinking water, sanitation, and irrigation is directly related to 

poverty and poor health. For example, in South Asia 300 

million people have no safe drinking water and 920 million 

people have no adequate sanitation (WWC, 2000). 

In many developing countries, the very poor 

actually pay a great deal for water relative to their income, 

but these costs are often hidden. Water is priced by all urban 

societies, and the poor often have no choice but to pay high 

prices, spending between 5-10% of their income; however, 

in contrast in most industrialized countries, the lower-middle 

class spends 1-3% of their income on potable water and 

sanitation (Selborne, 2000). For example, in OECD countries, 

households spend about 1% of their income on water; on the 

other hand, in Onitsha, Nigeria, the poor spend as much as 

18% of their income on water (Rogers et al., 2002). 

The application of economic principles to the 

allocation of water is acceptable, and provides a simple tool 

for the development of water services in a more efficient 

direction. However, water should not be treated as a marketoriented commodity when it comes to domestic use for very 

basic needs (Gunatilake & Gopalakrishnan, 2002), 

particularly for people in extreme poverty. More discussion, 

analysis, study, and commitment are needed in deciding 

whether water is a common or an economic good. 

 

Transboundary River Basin Management 

Water should be recognized as a tool for 

community development, peace building, and preventive 

diplomacy. Water can have an overreaching value capable of 

coalescing conflicting interests and facilitating consensus 

building among societies. To incorporate all of the physical, 

political, and economic characteristics for a river basin, a 

process for cooperative watershed management is vital. For 

this reason, water should be managed based on river basins, 

not only on administrative boundaries. 

The necessity of river basin management received 

positive attention at the Hague Forum, the Bonn Conference, 

and the WSSD summit; however, no clear mechanism for 

implementing the river basin management concept into 

practice has been suggested. Existing river basin 

commissions all over the world face difficulties enforcing 

basin plan provisions in other sectors, as well as regarding 

riparian governments. Other challenges include the lack of 

effective local participation, the absence of formal 

agreements on international water allocations, the limits on 

pollution, and the economic and military power imbalance 

between upstream and downstream countries. 

An increasing number of countries are 

experiencing water stress;1

 nevertheless, in most river basins, 

mechanisms and institutions to manage water resource 

disputes are either absent or unsatisfactory (UNESCO & 

Green Cross International, 2003). Not only should plans and 

goals be developed, but so should practical frameworks for 

implementing joint river basin management through efficient 

institutions and productive participation of all riparian states. 

In addition, a greater focus on legal institutional 

arrangements is necessary, as it is practically absurd to 

implement integrated policy without some legal bindings. A 

common policy, including a supporting legal framework, is 

vital for implementing integrated transboundary river basin 

management. 

Restoration and Ecology 

In the last three decades, the highly visible effects 

of environmental degradation have sparked public outcry, 

particularly in the United States and Europe, resulting in 

river restoration initiatives. “Channelization” is the term 

used to embrace all processes of river channel engineering 

for the purposes of flood control, drainage improvement, 

maintenance of navigation, reduction of bank erosion, and 

relocation for highway construction. 

Channelization, together with a myriad of other 

activities, such as construction, land-use change, 

urbanization, and waste disposal, creates a wide range of 

biological impacts, principally on benthic invertebrates, fish, 

and aquatic vegetation. In addition, due to the lowering of 

water tables in adjacent floodplains, natural vegetation and 

wildlife are also threatened (Brookes, 2002). 

In North America, Europe, and the former Soviet 

Union, 71% of the large rivers (premanipulation mean 

annual discharge >350 m3

/s) are affected by dams and 

reservoirs, inter-basin diversion, and water abstraction 

(Buijse et al., 2002). Headwaters are impacted by the 

construction of dams, which cause the most damage, 

whereas lowland sections are mostly affected by floodplain 

reclamation and channelization. 

As a consequence, riverine floodplains are among 

the most endangered landscapes worldwide (Olson & 

Dinerstein, 1998). In Germany (Junk, 1999) and along the 

Mississippi (Gore & Sheilds, 1995), for example, only about 

 

1 A country is said to experience "water stress" when annual water supplies 

drop below 1,700 cubic meters per person.
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10% of the former floodplains are in a near natural state. In 

most riverine systems after damming or channelization, 

hydrological connectivity between the river and its 

floodplain is restricted to groundwater pathways in which 

geo-morphological dynamics are mostly absent; migration of 

permanent aquatic organisms, such as fish or aquatic 

mollusks, has ceased, affecting overall biodiversity (Buijse et 

al., 2002). 

IWRM principles do not clearly focus on or 

address the mechanism of river restoration, which is 

necessary for the sustainable water resources management in 

areas that have undergone or are presently subjected to 

notable modifications. 

Fisheries and Aquaculture 

Fisheries and aquaculture are crucial for human 

survival and poverty reduction; they provide an inexpensive 

source of protein to meet nutritional demands in many parts 

of the world, and therefore should command special attention 

within IWRM. 

Unfortunately, fisheries are generally undervalued 

in terms of their contribution to food security, income 

generation, and ecosystem functioning (LARS2, 2004). FAO 

(2000) estimates that between 15 and 20% of animal protein 

consumed by humans is derived from aquatic animals, and 

that fish is eaten more than any other type of animal protein. 

In 1999, the world average consumption of fish, crustaceans, 

and mollusks was 16.3 kg per person. Among the world’s 

thirty countries with the highest proportion of fish 

consumption, twenty-six are developing nations. Fish is 

particularly important for the nutrition of the poor.

Aquaculture is the most rapidly growing industry 

when looking at protein production for human consumption. 

Although aquaculture and coastal and marine fisheries do not 

directly rely on freshwater, the input of nutrient and 

sediment from inland streams, particularly into estuaries and 

coastal zones, results in an interplay between marine and 

inland water ecosystems that is not addressed sufficiently in 

the present IWRM debate. The same goes for fisheries. 

Need to Focus on Past IWRM Experience - 

Integrating Lessons Learned 

Although IWRM has received increasing 

international attention in recent decades, historical 

precedents present lessons. The current IWRM mechanisms 

have not properly considered similar previous attempts. 

Lessons from past initiatives are vital to the implementation 

of IWRM principles and policies. During the 1970s, many 

European countries implemented a considerable number of 

comprehensive watershed plans that resemble today’s 

IWRM plans. One example is Finland, which produced 

basin-wide plans,2

 institutionalized the process by 

establishing the National Board of Waters, and implemented 

those plans. One of many implementations was the 

countrywide construction of municipal wastewater treatment 

plants, which at that time were already more advanced than 

 

2

 see, e.g., the plan for the Lower Kymi River; NBWF 1974, which served 

as a guiding framework for water districts authorities in Finland after 

Vakkilainen, 2003.

current plants in many countries that promote IWRM 

worldwide. Unfortunately, the current IWRM mechanism 

does not focus on this kind of highly balanced experience in 

integrated plans, which would facilitate more concrete 

IWRM development. 

Spiritual and Cultural Aspects of Water 

Water is the common symbol of humanity, social 

equity, and justice. It is one of our compelling links with the 

sacred, with nature, and with our cultural heritage (Dooge, 

2003). A case in point is the Ganges River in South Asia, 

which has a very strong spiritual and cultural significance to 

all Indians, Bangladeshis, and Nepalese. Regrettably, the 

current IWRM mechanism does not acknowledge water’s 

spiritual and cultural dimensions. Without recognizing these, 

it is possible that all efforts towards sustainable water 

resources management may be piecemeal and ephemeral. 

Conclusion 

IWRM has unquestionably become one of the 

mainstream initiatives discussed by governments. The major 

challenge remains its effective implementation in the field. 

The conviction that IWRM can provide sustainable water 

security for every citizen into the twenty-first century has 

forced water professionals and IWRM to become more 

responsible to world citizens, especially towards the poor. 

The main hurdle lies in the practical 

implementation of the theoretically agreed-upon IWRM 

policies (Lahtela, 2001, Biswas, 2005). IWRM could be 

reduced to an idealistic buzzword if water professionals fail 

to overcome this hurdle. The seven points discussed in this 

paper should be incorporated within IWRM policies and 

principles to overcome implementation challenges and to 

ensure sustainable water resources management. 

A practical challenge to the concept of IWRM is 

found at two levels. First, water is related to development 

and societies in countless ways. Its priorities and relative 

importance vary enormously from one place to another. 

Second, water must be seen as one factor in a broader 

context (Varis, 2005). 

We have a feeling that, whereas summit meetings 

scrutinize and promote concepts such as Integrated Water 

Resources Management, Integrated Forestry Management, 

Integrated Pest Management, and so forth, the different 

concepts and related policies are not integrated. This paper 

has discussed only some of the shortcomings in meeting 

IWRM challenges. The palette examined was not 

comprehensive since, as mentioned before, conditions vary 

enormously, but these issues are important in many 

localities, even though neglected in the concurrent IWRM 

discourse. We leave the second level of challenge to future 

analyses, since it, indeed, deserves a profound and focused 

analysis. The water sector is sparse in integrating its 

integrated plans, compared to other tightly related sectors, 

such as energy, agriculture, and forestry. This would be 

comical if it were not true.
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21 

Acknowledgement 

The authors wish to express their gratitude to Professor Pertti 

Vakkilainen for his critical and useful comments, guidance and 

suggestions during the writing of this publication. The comments 

and ideas of Tommi Kajander and Virpi Stucki are greatly 

appreciated. 

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Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy 

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© 2005 Cohen Spring 2005 | Volume 1 | Issue 1 

22 

ARTICLE 

Sustainable consumption in national 

context: an introduction to the special issue 

Maurie J. Cohen 

Graduate Program in Environmental Policy Studies, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights 

Newark, NJ 07102 USA (email: mcohen@adm.njit.edu)

International institutions over the past decade have begun to emphasize the need to reduce the 

environmental impacts of heavily consumerist lifestyles in affluent nations as a precondition for 

sustainable development. Originally outlined in Agenda 21, and discussed at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, 

sustainable consumption has now emerged as a definable domain of global environmental politics. At the 

level of high environmental politics, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 

(OECD), the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), and the United Nations 

Environment Program (UNEP) have played key roles in reframing environmental deterioration as a 

consumption problem, rather than a production problem. However, within specific national contexts 

policymakers and social activists are seeking to engage with the difficult conceptual and political 

dilemmas posed by contemporary modes of material provisioning. This introductory overview highlights 

the historical background on the nascent issue of sustainable consumption and summarizes the three 

comparative case studies that follow: the Netherlands, France, and the United States. The experiences of 

these countries suggest that the concept of sustainable consumption is quite malleable, and its practical 

application is shaped by the political culture and policy styles of specific national contexts. 

KEYWORDS: sustainable consumption, environmental impact, international agreements, politics, environmental policy, cultural 

values, case studies

Introduction 

 

The common assessment, rendered even before 

the formal proceedings began, was that the 2002 World 

Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 

Johannesburg was a dismal failure. It is true that this 

desultory follow-up to the carefully scripted jamboree held 

in Rio ten years earlier did not climax any monumental 

agreements. However, with the passage of time, the 

conference in South Africa may come to be seen as a 

strategic turning point. One of the most significant 

outcomes of the so-called Rio+10 gathering was the 

decision enjoining the international community—and more 

specifically wealthy nations—to redouble their attention 

during the coming decade on the environmental costs, 

economic inequity, and social malaise associated with 

heavily consumerist lifestyles. 

This commitment, if it proves durable, represents 

a policy realignment of historic proportions. After all, for 

the past thirty years, international institutions (and national 

governments) have actively underplayed the role of 

material and energy consumption as a source of 

unsustainable patterns of development and failed to 

recognize consumers as serious interlocutors in policy 

design and implementation. Although prominent reports, 

such as Limits to Growth, stressed the implications of 

unprecedented volumes of resource throughput, they did 

not conceptualize consumers as purposeful actors. Implicit 

in these treatments was the notion that shopping—

necessary though it might be—was a sordid activity, one 

aggravated by the cunning ploys of unscrupulous 

marketers, who goaded hapless consumers to buy a 

seemingly endless arsenal of frivolous products. 

Absent a well-founded understanding of 

consumer motivation, it is not surprising that the producers 

(as opposed to the consumers) of goods became the targets 

of regulatory scrutiny. From the earliest days of the modern 

environmental era during the late 1960s and early 1970s, 

the common wisdom has been that air pollution, toxic 

waste, and so forth are the unfortunate outcomes of 

producers’ failure to internalize a sense of proper 

stewardship. Policy makers formulated a variety of 
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23 

measures—ranging from the heavily punitive to the 

vaguely voluntary—to encourage a more resolute 

commitment and to adapt the system of incentives guiding 

managerial decisions. 

We can trace this sweeping dismissal of 

consumers—as both intermediaries and end users—to three 

root causes. First, policymakers typically regard individual 

consumption as a sovereign domain and, as such, beyond 

the legitimate reach of public intervention. To be sure, the 

protective shell around material acquisition is not 

impervious and the regulation of consumption sometimes 

occurs. Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, for instance, are 

notable consumer goods that most societies subject to 

heavy controls. Indeed, in many instances, governments 

have learned how to turn the oversight of these goods into 

important revenue sources, a dynamic that creates a whole 

set of issues beyond the scope of this discussion. 

Nonetheless, in most affluent countries, neo-liberal 

thinking cautions against using public policy to unduly 

manage consumer decisionmaking. 

Second, governmental legitimacy is heavily 

grounded in the need to perpetuate economic growth and to 

ensure steady expansion of the domestic economy (see, for 

example, Dryzek et al, 2003). While it may be appropriate 

to dampen consumption during inflationary periods, or to 

discourage a ballooning trade deficit, the general rule is that 

a little consumption is good, but more is better. To the 

dominant cast of mind, a purposeful effort to alter—or 

more pointedly to discourage—consumption seems quite 

silly. 

Finally, it is an article of faith among most 

policymakers that consumers have insufficient technical 

expertise about the social and environmental implications 

of their decisions. The necessary knowledge and 

institutional capacity to ameliorate consumption’s 

untoward effects are understood to reside in the engineering 

departments of major corporations. Such thinking 

conveniently conflates with the vilified portrait of large 

industrial firms painted by many environmentalist and 

consumer advocacy organizations, and it reinforces 

regulatory ideas such as the polluter-pays principle. In 

other words, the obligation to promote social and 

environmental responsibility is most appropriately assigned 

to producers because their irresponsible actions create the 

problems in the first place. 

For these reasons, political debate has not 

traditionally considered material consumption; instead we 

have devoted ourselves to fostering technological 

innovations aimed at incremental environmental 

improvements—or at least preventing further deterioration 

in the face of ever-expanding economic growth. The 

preparatory meetings to the Rio conference, however, 

showed the contradictions of this approach. Negotiations 

during the prior decade to forge a global response to ozone 

depletion, and the emergence of climate change as a 

fiercely contested arena, brought into bold relief the 

wealthy nations’ culpability (Cohen, 2001). Following 

these proceedings, most industrialized countries continued 

to sidestep the problem. However, a handful of national 

governments and secondary policy-making bodies began to 

devote attention to the untoward consequences of consumer 

practices. In particular, the Nordic countries convened a 

series of symposia on the environmental implications of 

consumption, and the Organization for Economic 

Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United Nations 

Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), and 

the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) 

launched work programs around this theme. This joining up 

of activities created a platform for sustainable consumption 

and contributed to the issue’s relatively high visibility at 

Johannesburg. 

The next section of this introduction reviews the 

emergence of sustainable consumption as a definable area 

of international environmental politics and the role of these 

various institutions. We then engage in a comparative study 

of how sustainable consumption has conceptually evolved 

in three national settings: the Netherlands, France, and the 

United States. This investigation points to the absence of a 

uniform strategy. Because of impinging political 

prerogatives, historical predeterminants, and cultural 

orientations, sustainable consumption is being differently 

framed in each of these nations. The current debate over the 

efficacy of managing consumer decisionmaking provides 

an opportunity to assess the program’s conceptual status 

and to consider the intersection between cultural and 

environmental politics in these three settings. 

Agenda 21 and Sustainable Consumption 

 Although some of the discussion at the 1972 

United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 

Stockholm—most notably by Indira Gandhi—showcased 

material consumption in affluent countries, the issue failed 

to galvanize robust international attention. Such a 

politically volatile agenda was deemed impolite and, more 

to the point, threatened an emerging consensus about the 

need for a largely technical ensemble of environmental 

management strategies. Critical scrutiny of the global 

North’s resource-intensive lifestyles was effectively 

prohibited until the preparatory meetings convened to work 

out the details of Agenda 21 and Rio’s other centerpiece 

documents. 

Two major drivers were responsible for 

reintroducing consumption during these organizational 

activities. The first, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, gave new 

prominence to global environmental problems. Forerunner 

countries and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 

sought to use the momentum generated by the ozone accord 

to press an ambitious future vision. A second factor was the 

palpable suspicion among developing nations about the 

underlying intentions of global environmentalism. 

Concerns about how widening production controls would 

affect their economic prospects caused poorer countries to 

charge that wealthier countries needed to make painful 

economic adjustments. These initiatives encountered their 

stiffest resistance in the fourth chapter of Agenda 21, which 

considers the relationship between material consumption 

and sustainable development. 

 A broad coalition of affluent countries, led by the 

United States, was loath to include any substantive 

treatment of the environmental implications of 

consumption. However, developing countries insisted on 

broadening the list of factors that contributed to global 

ecological deterioration beyond the obligatory reference to 
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24 

population growth. Proponents of this perspective drew 

attention to developed nations’ outsized greenhouse gas 

emissions and rates of natural resource appropriation. 

Using ecological footprint analysis, developing countries 

demonstrated that their contribution to climate change and 

other large-scale ecological problems was, on a per capita 

basis, trifling by comparison to the voracious appetites of 

their prosperous counterparts. 

 For three decades, the conventional view had 

indisputably ascribed environmental decline to poverty and 

unbridled population growth in the global South. Affluent 

nations interpreted this assault by China, India, and others 

as disparaging affluence, and they aggressively resisted this 

reassignment of responsibility. Under these circumstances, 

negotiators preparing for the Earth Summit had profound 

difficulty completing their work and, in the end, left 

unresolved the thorniest questions. Nonetheless, Chapter 4 

of Agenda 21 does advance the view that “the major cause 

of the continued deterioration of the global environment is 

the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, 

particularly in industrialized countries, which is a matter of 

grave concern, aggravating poverty and imbalances.” 

Sustainable consumption was also given prominent 

attention in the Rio Declaration on Environment and 

Development, where Principle 8 encourages the signatories 

to “reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of 

production and consumption.” 

To be sure, the controversies that burst into the 

open during the lead-up to Rio had been fomented 

elsewhere. For instance, the Brundtland Commission 

chided the industrialized countries for the “short-sighted 

way in which we have often pursued prosperity” and 

envisaged that “major changes in policies will be needed to 

cope with the industrial world’s high levels of 

consumption” (WCED, 1987). The European Commission, 

during this same timeframe, was formulating its Fifth 

Environmental Action Programme and similar contentions 

animated its deliberations. Several novel initiatives by 

national governments—most significantly the Netherlands’ 

National Environmental Policy Plan—sought to shift some 

environmental policymaking attention to consumers (van 

der Straaten, 1992; Bennett, 1991). As a result, by the time 

the heads of state assembled in Rio, sustainable 

consumption had already made substantial headway in its 

steady climb onto the global policy agenda. 

 

Sustainable Consumption During the Post-Rio 

Period 

 In the immediate aftermath of the contentious 

battles over Agenda 21, the Nordic Council of Ministers 

and the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment organized 

a series of workshops to assuage international tensions. The 

intent of these conferences was to gather together 

representatives of the affluent nations as part of a process 

of forging a shared definition of sustainable consumption 

and to formulate a common strategy for addressing the 

issue. Because of the difficulties of devising a politically 

satisfactory approach regarding the implications of 

consumers’ decisionmaking, consumption was initially 

subsumed by the broader, more anodyne rubric of 

“sustainable production and consumption.” This tactical 

move made it possible to give a passing glance to 

consumers, while conveniently maintaining allegiance to 

more familiar strategies that emphasized producers. The 

result was that eco-efficiency, clean production, and other 

managerial approaches designed to harmonize economic 

and environmental objectives received heavy attention 

during the early 1990s, and sustainable consumption 

temporarily disappeared from view. In the minds of most 

policymakers, sustainable consumption—to the extent that 

it was not simply a subset of sustainable production—

would be advanced using product labeling schemes along 

the lines of the Nordic countries’ Blue Swan and 

Germany’s Blue Angel. 

 The OECD is responsible for rescuing 

consumption from a production-dominated policy approach 

(see, for example, OECD, 1998). Following the Earth 

Summit, the Environment Directorate of the Paris-based 

organization launched, in close collaboration with the 

World Business Council for Sustainable Development 

(WBCSD), a work program on sustainable production and 

consumption. By the mid-1990s, particularly within 

northern Europe, a menu of production-dominated 

approaches to enhance the transparency of firms’ 

environmental performance—for example, ISO 14001—

had begun to gain popular acceptance. The OECD’s 

challenge was to develop intellectual space for 

consumption considerations that was separable and distinct 

from conventional environmental policy categories. 

Numerous sources supported this effort. For 

instance, a joint committee of the Royal Society of London 

and the United States National Academy of Sciences 

(1997) issued an unprecedented report on the 

environmental implications of consumerism. Departing 

from customary dispassionate technical prescriptions, this 

document noted that “consumption patterns of the richer 

countries may have to change; and for global patterns of 

consumption to be sustainable, they must change.” At the 

same time, a handful of European governments, riding a 

wave of public environmental concern during the mid- and 

late-1990s, issued a flurry of consultation reports that gave 

consumption surprisingly high prominence. For example, in 

1998 the United Kingdom released Sustainable 

Development: Opportunities for Change, stating “to 

promote . . . more sustainable production and consumption 

we need to stimulate and support those influences which 

encourage producers to provide better goods and services 

while using resources more efficiently.” This swelling 

appreciation for the interactions between consumption and 

the environment included efforts by national and regional 

scientific research councils. On the international level, the 

World Bank devoted the 1998 issue of its Human 

Development Report to sustainable consumption. 

 Sustainable consumption has also become an area 

of increasing NGO activity, and the object of several global 

forums. Groups such as the International Institute for 

Environment and Development, the Northern Alliance for 

Sustainability, Consumers International, the European 

Network for Socially Responsible Consumption, and the 

NGO Caucus for Sustainable Production and Consumption 

have contributed a great deal of the intellectual content to 

these proceedings. 
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Sustainable Consumption and the United 

Nations Environment Program 

 Sustainable consumption, in many respects, is the 

most obdurate challenge of the sustainable development 

agenda, and the OECD has provided an important context 

for working through the numerous conceptual and political 

dilemmas (Lafferty & Meadowcroft, 2000). However, 

UNEP’s current interest in sustainable consumption may be 

much more consequential over the long term. Launched in 

1998, UNEP’s sustainable consumption efforts are housed 

within the Division of Technology, Industry, and 

Economics (DTIE), and officials seek to engage a range of 

stakeholders—businesses, governments, and NGOs—in 

developing strategies to promote environmentally 

responsible consumption. While UNEP’s activities to date 

have primarily concentrated on the dissemination of 

information and the creation of a global network, the 

organization’s multidimensional plan of action is becoming 

more proactive (Marras, 2003). 

 First, UNEP has sought to engage the advertising 

and communication industries in pursuing sustainable 

consumption practices. This initiative is attempting to draw 

marketing professionals into a dialogue and to highlight 

green consumerism for future expansion. UNEP is 

currently working with the European Association of 

Communication Agencies, the World Federation of 

Advertisers, and the World Association of Opinion and 

Marketing Research Professionals. Prominent firms—for 

example McCann Erickson—have even collaborated with 

UNEP on specific projects. 

 Second, in partnership with the Society for 

Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), 

UNEP has launched a program promoting life-cycle 

analysis to evaluate products’ environmental impacts over 

the full span of their lives—conventionally viewed as 

design, construction, use, and disposal. This initiative rose 

out of the 2000 Malmö Declaration, and it received added 

impetus two years later during the proceedings at 

Johannesburg. It is also building upon European legislation 

to force product designers to focus on integrated product 

policies (Rubik, 2001; Rubik & Scholl, 2002; see also 

Reinhard, 2003). 

 Third, a related UNEP work program seeks to 

move the field of environmental management in a more 

holistic direction and to inspire innovative modes of 

policymaking that are not simply oriented around pollution 

remediation. Environmental policies have customarily 

concentrated on specific product or process attributes, 

instead of the system features in which these activities take 

place. A key motivation behind emergent fields such as 

ecological design and industrial ecology is the need to 

construct new consumption (and production) systems that 

emphasize services instead of material throughput—for 

example, personal mobility instead of widespread private 

vehicle ownership (Allenby, 1999). 

 Fourth, UNEP has recognized the primacy of 

youth consumption and has been working to engage people 

between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four in public 

discussions regarding the environmental impacts of their 

lifestyles. Conducted in collaboration with the United 

Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization 

(UNESCO), the youthXchange program rejects the prior 

generation of environmentalist thinking that maligned 

consumers for their anti-ecological sensibilities. Instead, 

the point of departure is an awareness that “youth behavior 

is a mix of cynicism and idealism, of hedonism and the 

desire to do the right thing. Any communication effort that 

intends to promote sustainable consumption among youth 

has to start from these contradictions” (UNEP, 2004). 

Accordingly, the project recognizes the important role that 

global brands and peer pressure play in the lives of young 

consumers, and attempts to use product loyalty to 

encourage commitments to sustainable development and 

human rights. 

 Finally, UNEP is working with professional 

procurement societies to foster information exchange about 

the environmental dimensions of institutional procurement 

and to develop an international system of consistent 

standards. This activity is actually supporting a quiet 

revolution in the organizational acquisition of goods and 

services. Started initially to encourage governmental 

entities and publicly visible corporations to buy paper with 

recycled content and fuel-efficient fleet vehicles, so-called 

“sustainable procurement” now uses the purchasing 

expertise and budgets of large institutions to encourage 

more environmentally attentive consumption (Mastny, 

2003). 

Sustainable Consumption at Johannesburg and 

Beyond 

The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable 

Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg was destined from 

the start to be a sobering affair. Commitment to the grand 

ideals of sustainable development prominent in Rio ten 

years earlier had dissipated, and conference organizers had 

only a few shop-worn successes to profile. Moreover, the 

strategic decision to assign lead responsibility for 

sustainable development to national governments had come 

under a hail of criticism. During the Earth Summit’s 

aftermath, only a handful of forerunner countries had 

bothered to formulate national sustainability plans (Lafferty 

& Meadowcroft, 2000). It has been far more common for 

political leaders to express token support for sustainable 

development, but then to step back when difficult decisions 

challenged prevailing priorities. 

Because of this diffident record, sustainable 

development proponents were under tremendous pressure 

to demonstrate unambiguous resolve for Agenda 21, 

originally agreed to at Rio. As part of its effort to 

reenergize global support for sustainable development, the 

WSSD Plan of Implementation advanced three 

“overarching” objectives: eradicating poverty, changing 

unsustainable production and consumption patterns, and 

protecting and managing natural resources. With respect to 

sustainable consumption, the document asserts that 

Fundamental changes in the way societies 

produce and consume are indispensable for 

achieving global sustainable development. All 

countries should promote sustainable 

consumption and production patterns, with the 

developed countries taking the lead and with all 
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26 

countries benefiting from the process . . . 

Governments, relevant international 

organizations, the private sector, and all major 

groups should play an active role in changing 

unsustainable consumption and production 

patterns. 

 The plan proceeds to delineate, in an ambitious 

level of detail, the need to promote technological 

development, to encourage transparency, to eliminate 

market distortions, and so forth. To advance this program, 

WSSD conferees charged UNEP (and UNCSD) with 

developing a ten-year framework for action on sustainable 

consumption. This charge will inevitably raise not only the 

issue’s international visibility, but the stakes for global 

environmental institutions. 

Sustainable Consumption in National Context 

 Despite sustainable consumption’s growing 

profile within international environmental politics, the 

concept does not engender uniform understanding across 

different national settings. This is perhaps unsurprising. 

After all, political culture is a key variable of state 

intervention, and countries approach policy issues with 

characteristic styles. The foundational research for this 

observation was conducted during the 1950s and 1960s, 

and scholars interested in comparative environmental 

policy have regularly drawn on these insights (see, for 

example, Enloe, 1975; Lundqvist, 1980; Richardson, 1982; 

Vogel, 1986). 

 During the past decade, due largely to the 

European Union’s expanding role, this work has taken on a 

new relevance (Wallace, 1995; Christiansen, 1996; Skou 

Andersen & Liefferink, 1997; Jänicke & Weidner, 1997; 

Hanf & Jansen, 1998; Binder, Jänicke, & Petschow, 2001). 

In particular, Martin Jänicke’s studies of institutional 

capacity has shaped the overall research trajectory, but 

other important perspectives have also developed out of 

investigations into the cultural foundations of 

environmental policy-making systems (Jasanoff, 1986; 

Wynne, 1987; Jamison & Baark, 1999; Smith & Phillips, 

2000). Also significant has been research in the related area 

of comparative technology policy that has sought to assess 

the varying ways that countries approach innovation (for an 

overview see Nelson, 1993). The most recent wave of work 

within this tradition has sought to contrast the policy styles 

shaping efforts to encourage sustainable development, to 

catalyze processes of ecological modernization, to 

formulate green plans, and to adjust to a future shaped by 

climate change (see, for example, O’Riordan & Jäger, 

1996; Baker et al, 1997; Lafferty & Eckerberg, 1998; 

Sonnenfeld & Mol, 2000; Dalal-Clayton, 1996). 

The studies that comprise this premier issue of 

Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy build on this 

tradition by examining how a cross section of affluent 

countries is currently responding to the challenges posed by 

sustainable consumption. While most discourse on the need 

to modulate consumerism has been framed at the 

international level, national governments, at least for the 

foreseeable future, will be responsible for implementing 

policy programs. 

 This collection examines the pursuit of 

sustainable consumption as a policy issue in three 

countries: the Netherlands, France, and the United States. 

The contributors examine, from a comparative standpoint, 

the rhetorical debates surrounding sustainable consumption, 

as well as the actual policy tools and techniques being 

formulated to achieve its objectives. While these studies 

focus primarily on the institutional and administrative 

features of sustainable consumption in specific national 

contexts, the collection also highlights more generally the 

national policy styles of the respective countries. 

There has to date been very little investigation of 

how sustainable consumption is being assimilated as a 

policy concept. The prevailing tendency has instead been to 

examine, from an apolitical perspective, a handful of 

technical devices, such as ecological taxation and ecolabeling, and to assess the potential of these approaches for 

“greening” consumer behavior. These economic and 

informational campaigns certainly have a role in any 

serious effort to transform contemporary consumerism. 

However, the seemingly intractable qualities of the 

“consumption problem” create a need to approach the issue 

more creatively and to link up with other political 

objectives. The following studies seek to shed light on 

these efforts to widen the audience for discussions of 

sustainable consumption. 

 The first study examines the Netherlands, which, 

by most assessments, occupies a leadership position in 

international environmental affairs. Over the past two 

decades, the country has managed to leverage its relatively 

small size and its moral reputation to advance a progressive 

environmental agenda. One of the first countries to 

recognize the inadequacies of a rigid environmental policy 

framework, as early as the mid-1980s the Netherlands 

released a series of multi-year planning reports—or 

National Environmental Policy Plans—to move toward an 

adaptive system predicated upon formidable targets and 

integrated management. Ever since, the Dutch have 

arguably been at the forefront in developing substantive 

programs to manage the adverse environmental impacts of 

material consumption. 

 The article by Susan Martens and Gert 

Spaargaren describes the political dynamics underlying the 

Netherlands’ leading role and documents its experience in 

fostering sustainable practices among Dutch consumers. 

This policy program shares many elements with a broader 

commitment to ecological modernization. Originally 

formulated in the context of production to enhance the 

environmental efficiency of certain manufacturing 

operations, the concept has also been applied to consumer 

decisionmaking. In the Dutch case, the need to cultivate 

new forms of consumption has not been the exclusive 

province of environmental officials. Rather, a much larger 

range of policy perspectives has been brought to bear on 

the tenacious dilemmas associated with environmentally 

significant consumption and nearly the entire array of 

ministerial portfolios in the Netherlands has contributed to 

this effort in some capacity. While sustainable consumption 

has achieved a high level of political legitimacy, its 

proponents continue to encounter significant resistance, and 

the various initiatives launched to date evince mixed 

success. Nonetheless, regarding the practical mechanics of 
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27 

shifting practices, the Netherlands has committed itself to a 

notable process of social learning, and Dutch policymakers 

have begun to accumulate valuable experience. 

 The second contribution examines the status of 

sustainable consumption in France. While material 

provisioning occupies a storied historical position in the 

country’s cultural politics, its environmental dimensions 

have not received prominent attention. Indeed, 

environmentalism as a political voice has struggled in 

France, and the government has been slow to respond to 

pressure for environmental reform. Measured against its 

European and international counterparts, France is regarded 

by most informed observers as an environmental laggard 

or, at best, a reluctant partaker. 

 Samy Sanches, however, demonstrates that if one 

adopts a broad interpretation, over the past decade a highly 

animated politics has developed in France around 

sustainable consumption. Motivated in large part by a 

desire to preserve cultural autonomy in the face of 

globalization, French political leaders have latched onto 

several themes entirely consistent with sustainable 

consumption. Furthermore, the French public has begun to 

join up their concerns about consumerism, working hours, 

domesticity, leisure, and so forth. The political debate 

spurring the 1998 decision to reduce the French workweek 

to 35 hours has fostered a civic consciousness about the 

virtue of more sustainable livelihoods. 

 The third, and final, study considers sustainable 

consumption in the United States. Given the very modest 

attention that American political leaders and policymakers 

have devoted to the notion of sustainability, inclusion of the 

country in a review of sustainable consumption may strike 

some readers as a bit curious. To be sure, uptake of the Rio 

commitments in the United States has been poor, and active 

consideration of consumerism’s adverse environmental 

impacts does not garner much formal political interest. 

Nonetheless, many parts of the country have surprisingly 

vibrant grassroots activity aimed at resisting and reforming 

mainstream consumption practices. Sizable bands of anticonsumerism activists, anti-television protesters, 

advertising opponents, voluntary simplifiers, green 

consumers, and others have begun to coalesce around an 

agenda broadly consistent with sustainable consumption, 

although not organized under such a rubric. 

The American political system, hamstrung by a 

complex division of power among different branches of 

government, a deep commitment to partisanship, and a 

sclerotic two-party setup, has rarely evinced proactive 

domestic policymaking. The historical pattern demonstrates 

that change at the national level only occurs as the outcome 

of a combination of untiring local agitation and 

demonstrable action by a critical mass of individual states. 

My article highlights how this process is again playing 

itself out in the case of sustainable consumption. Although 

it is too early to determine whether these inchoate activities 

will coalesce into a meaningful social and political 

movement, a growing number of Americans appear 

discontented with prevailing consumption. 

Viewed in the round, these three studies point to 

an emerging disconnect between the highly rationalistic 

international notions of sustainable consumption and that 

developing in specific national contexts. At the global 

level, efforts to transform consumerist lifestyles are largely 

rooted in technical debates about the relative merits of 

economic and informational tools. In contrast, closer to the 

ground, sustainable consumption is becoming fused with 

other public concerns about the consequences of 

consumerism. Much of this activity is not joined up with 

the high politics of sustainable consumption, but rather is 

driven by diverse social objectives that can range from 

insulating children from the impacts of television to 

protecting cultural resources jeopardized by globalization. 

This appropriation process suggests that the pursuit of 

sustainable consumption will become a flexible endeavor, 

one that sympathetic policymakers and issue promoters will 

adapt to the opportunities and constraints of specific 

national contexts. 

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© 2005 Martens & Spaargaren Spring 2005 | Volume 1 | Issue 1 

29 

ARTICLE 

The politics of sustainable consumption: the 

case of the Netherlands 

Susan Martens & Gert Spaargaren 

Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, De Leeuwenborch, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN, Wageningen, The Netherlands 

(e-mail: susan.martens@wur.nl; gert.spaargaren@wur.nl) 

The environmental pressure associated with contemporary modes of material provisioning in 

advanced countries suggests the need to foster more sustainable consumption. Despite growing interest 

in sustainability, the Netherlands currently has few effective and legitimate measures in place that focus 

on the role of citizen-consumers. Existing policy styles and instruments have not reduced significantly the 

environmental impacts of consumption. An explanation for this inadequacy resides in the technocratic 

origins of environmental policymaking and the pronounced tendency to rely on the presumed rationality of 

producers situated on the supply side of production-consumption chains. A central issue, therefore, 

becomes the organization of an overt politics of sustainable consumption. We explore here possible 

alternatives to facilitate sustainable consumption in the Netherlands and review the policy initiatives that 

non-governmental organizations and the Dutch government have to date undertaken. The analysis 

evaluates these efforts through a theoretical framework designed to chart the development of a 

democratic vision of sustainable consumption. 

KEYWORDS: sustainable consumption, politics, developed countries, environmental impacts, public awareness, economic policy, government policy, 

non-governmental organizations

Introduction 

As early as 1972, the Dutch government introduced 

the concept of “ecologically adjusted behavior.” The 

country’s environment minister at the time declared, “In a 

society as we know it, economic growth has to be 

controlled; it is not just about production, but also about 

critical consumption and responsible living.” Since the first 

upsurge of ecological awareness in the early 1970s, 

environmental considerations have become a regular 

feature of everyday life and the consumption practices 

attached to it. Dutch consumers have become accustomed 

to paying ecological taxes on gasoline, to separating their 

organic wastes, and to subscribing to a wide array of “green 

electricity” schemes. From these observations, we might 

conclude that environmental considerations have gained a 

degree of independence from traditional aspects of 

consumer decisionmaking that are inspired by economic 

comparisons, comfort and convenience Nonetheless, the 

domestic environmental pressures attributable to 

consumption remain high. 

Consumption politics in the Netherlands during the 

1970s and 1980s were organized around information 

campaigns to educate people about topical environmental 

problems and their personal responsibilities in helping to 

ameliorate them. Often, the government delegated these 

tasks to environmental education centers and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that issued—usually 

with public financial support—moral appeals for critical 

and “correct” consumption behavior. During this period, 

discussion focused on limiting overall consumption as the 

solution to environmental problems, with substantially less 

attention to alternatives that could lessen harmful 

household practices. Policymakers devoted considerable 

rhetorical energy to sustainable consumption during these 

years, but they often failed to produce tangible programs. 

The first Netherlands Environmental Policy Plan 

(NEPP), published in 1989, marks the beginning of more 

comprehensive consumption policymaking. The NEPP 

identified households as one of its environmental policy 

target groups, particularly with respect to their vital 

position in production-consumption chains. The 1989 

document treated consumers as independent and potentially 

critical actors, with power to influence production. 

Moreover, the NEPP acknowledged that consumers were 

“not [an] easily accessible target group.” While 

environmental policymakers in the Netherlands have come 

to accept that consumption requires special attention, and 
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30 

that they should tailor initiatives to consumer requirements, 

the issue remains highly problematic. By the time the 

Dutch government released its third version of the NEPP a 

decade later, consumers were no longer treated as one of 

the target groups; instead, more sustainable consumption is 

to be achieved on the basis of ongoing product innovations 

(VROM et al., 1998). These circumstances suggest that 

politicians and policymakers cannot decide whether to 

approach sustainable consumption from a consumer- or a 

producer-led perspective (Vermeulen, 2000). 

Contentions that the future success of Dutch 

environmental policy depends on how these initiatives 

ultimately address the everyday practices of citizenconsumers are (once more) gaining ground (Beckers et al., 

2000). If consumption is indeed a social phenomenon, then 

we need to take a fresh look at how to accomplish social 

transformation and what the major consequences will be. In 

other words, how will the Dutch style of environmental 

policymaking be affected by an emphasis on sustainable 

consumption? How will an invigorated politics of 

sustainable consumption influence the routines of everyday 

life, the levels of personal comfort, and the features of 

contemporary life that citizen-consumers in the Netherlands 

regard as indispensable? 

By analyzing past and present initiatives, we hope 

to arrive at a set of insights that might guide the country’s 

future efforts in this area. In seeking to understand the 

current political status of sustainable consumption in the 

Dutch context, we draw on the theory of ecological 

modernization, which appears at present to be informing 

the activities of many of the relevant actors (see, for 

example, van Driel et al., 1993; Mol and Spaargaren, 1993; 

Duyvendak et al., 1999). The recommendations we present 

for the development of a politics of sustainable 

consumption are also embedded in this view. 

We argue that policymakers should not confront the 

issue of consumption from a one-sided perspective 

informed exclusively by environmental scientists and 

commitments to limit aggregate consumption. In this sense, 

we do not endorse efforts to “tame the treadmill of 

consumption” as a narrow objective (see also Princen et al., 

2002). Policy programs that aim to lessen the 

environmental consequences of consumption by reducing 

(or radically restructuring) consumption will likely lead to 

questionable social and economic outcomes. These socalled de-modernization strategies tend to underestimate 

the potential to improve the environmental consequences of 

contemporary consumption by promoting more 

ecologically rational practices. Without taking a strong 

position on the desirability of limiting consumption in the 

absolute sense, we maintain the need to embed 

consumption in policy objectives developed by democratic 

environmental reform processes over the last several 

decades. 

In addition, the involvement of citizen-consumers is 

indispensable in formulating environmental criteria that 

will steer the transformation of consumption practices. This 

participation is essential with respect to policies that 

emphasize the role of consumers (for instance, when 

considering the use of eco-labels), as well as in terms of the 

politics and policies that highlight the role of citizens (for 

instance, when reconfiguring the local or national water 

system or when formulating Agenda 21 activities). Both 

situations require a strong emphasis on active citizenconsumer contributions, and imply a need for strategies that 

privilege actors and institutions within civil society. Such a 

perspective suggests that a shift in governance—motivated 

by the development of new sustainable consumption 

policies—is the main driver behind several political 

changes presently underway in the Netherlands. 

The next section discusses the factors that have 

prompted Dutch policymakers to take a special interest in 

sustainable consumption and the conventional approaches 

that they have applied. We then assess the current state of 

environmental politics in the country and explain how 

developments in this sphere have contributed to the 

conceptualization of new strategies to green consumer 

behavior. We then appraise several policy experiments 

carried out by NGOs and relevant government ministries to 

facilitate more sustainable consumption. The conclusion 

reflects on those initiatives that we deem to be most 

promising, describing how these pilot programs can serve 

as useful building blocks for a future policy program, as 

they combine a democratic environmental perspective with 

an equally strong focus on the everyday life of citizenconsumers. 

Greening Consumption: The Dutch State of 

Affairs 

Before describing some of the more striking 

features of Dutch consumption patterns and their related 

environmental effects, it is important to explain our 

conception of consumption practices. We refer to 

consumption not as isolated purchasing behaviors, but 

instead as a broad concept that encompasses the “buying, 

using and disposal of products and services within the 

contexts of social practices, or consumption domains.” We 

use the terms “consumption domain” and “social practice” 

interchangeably when discussing the specific setting in 

which consumption occurs. There is, of course, a 

distinction between the two concepts. The notion of a social 

practice refers to clusters of everyday routines that are 

bound in space and time and are common among citizenconsumers—for example, dwelling or personal care. Social 

practices also include many types of activities that cannot 

be considered “consumption” in the conventional sense. 

The term “consumption domain,” in its strictest usage, 

refers to a certain segment of consumer expenditure and 

excludes activities such as house cleaning. We consider it 

analytically preferable to refer to social practices when 

discussing the state of ecological modernization, since this 

includes a broader range of activities. However, 

consumption domain is currently the more widely used 

concept among the Netherlands policymakers. 

Per capita consumer expenditures in the 

Netherlands have approximately tripled during the second 

half of the twentieth century. While there have been, during 

this period, some significant changes in provisioning 

patterns, the dematerialization anticipated by scholars and 

policymakers has not occurred (RIVM, 2003). The adverse 

environmental impacts of consumption—the generation of 

toxic air emissions, the production of solid wastes, and the 

depletion of natural resources and energy—continue to 
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increase. The third version of the NEPP estimated that 

consumption in the Netherlands was responsible for 10% 

of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, 4% of its 

releases associated with acidification, 19% of its discharges 

contributing to eutrophication, and 14% of overall solid 

wastes (see Table 1). 

Table 1 Various Consumption-Related Emissions in the 

Netherlands Relative to Total Emissions. 

Emission Category Percent 

Greenhouse Gas Emissions 10 

Acidification Emissions 4 

Eutrophication Emissions 19 

All Wastes 14 

Source: VROM (1998)

Recent debates also have emphasized the spatial 

dimensions of consumption, an outcome that is not 

especially surprising given the Netherlands’ high 

population density. Within this context, the Dutch 

ecological footprint—particularly the landmass necessary 

for carbon dioxide sequestration—has been a frequent point 

of discussion. Of course, actual estimates vary depending 

on the method of calculation, but some local NGOs contend 

that citizen-consumers in the Netherlands occupy two to 

three times their “fair share” of the Earth’s surface. The 

National Strategy for Sustainable Development, released in 

2002, assessed the country’s ecological footprint in terms 

of average global productivity: the appropriated landmass 

was about 11 million hectares (approximately 0.2% of the 

global total), while the Dutch population comprises 16 

million people (0.26% of the world total), and the country’s 

land area is 33,943 square kilometers(0.026% of the global 

total) (VROM, 2002a, 2002b; see also Postma, 2000 and 

Ros, 2001). Although commentators seem to agree that the 

Netherlands’ ecological footprint needs to be reduced, few 

concrete policies have resulted. 

 Most technical studies that map the 

environmental effects of consumption focus on the socalled “direct” and “indirect” uses of energy. In this regard, 

the general trend among Dutch citizen-consumers is one of 

continued growth. The percentage increase in per capita 

energy use (from 35 GJ in 1946 to 120 GJ in 1995) 

exceeded even that of consumption in monetary terms. The 

largest expansion in energy use occurred between 1960 and 

1980, largely due to the introduction of central heating and 

the expansion of personal automobile ownership. 

Efficiency improvements in the supply sectors somewhat 

offset this growth in energy consumption; in the absence of 

these advances, per capita energy use would have increased 

by a further 40 GJ by 1995 (Vringer et al., 2001; SCP, 

2001). 

Direct and indirect energy use among Dutch citizenconsumers is primarily attributable to a limited number of 

consumption domains (see Table 2).1

 The largest share of 

energy consumption in 1995 was assigned to three 

domains: home, food, and housing (with leisure rapidly 

increasing). 

 

1 Refer to Vringer et al. (2001) for a complete description of these 

consumption domains.

The relative importance of these consumption 

domains is likely to change over time. For example, 

researchers suggest that by 2030 the amount of energy 

consumed for holidays will exceed that used for housing. 

Food and home energy consumption will also decrease, 

while that used for at-home and away-from-home leisure 

will rise sharply. On an aggregate level, the energy use is 

expected to grow. Notwithstanding the slow rate of 

dematerialization and efficiency improvements in the 

supply sectors, energy use among Dutch citizen-consumers 

is projected to increase between 56 and 74% by 2030 (1995 

baseline), making it difficult to meet both national and 

international targets. In terms of sustainable development, 

it becomes clear that consumer behavior is an essential area 

for environmental politics and policymaking. 

Table 2 Energy Consumption of the Major Consumption 

Domains in the Netherlands as Shares of National Total. 

Consumption 

Domain 

Energy 

Consumption 

(Percent) 

Definition of Domain 

Home 29 Maintenance, improvement, 

and heating 

Food 23 Obtaining, storing, 

preparing, and eating 

Dwelling 8 Cleaning, gardening, and 

decorating 

Indoor 

Leisure 

7 Reading, watching 

television, talking on 

the telephone, and so 

forth 

Outdoor 

Leisure 

6 Sports, cultural activities, 

and so forth 

Source: Vringer et al (2001)

Sustainable Consumption Initiatives: From 

Alternative Consumer Culture to the Creation of 

Green-Niche Markets 

As outlined earlier, environmental considerations 

have gained a certain degree of independence from the 

other factors that motivate Dutch citizen-consumers. On a 

more abstract level, the issue of sustainable consumption 

has become embedded in different initiatives involving 

individuals, social groups, and industries. Over the last 

several decades, public discussions regarding the 

environmental implications of provisioning have developed 

in various directions. These deliberations have been framed 

in terms of the need to forge new styles and qualities of 

consumption, to interrogate the characteristics of 

consumption practices, and to involve different actors in 

the development of alternative practices.2

 

An interesting—though decidedly peripheral—

manifestation of interest around sustainable consumption in 

the Netherlands is the so-called “Platform True Prosperity.” 

This project is a joint initiative coordinated by more than 

two-dozen organizations (NGOs, consumer groups, 

charities, religious organizations, and trade unions). 

Proponents are seeking to foster a more balanced society 

and to link up with personal motivations to demonstrate 

 

2 By the 1970s and 1980s, certain segments of Dutch society had already 

begun to turn their attention to the need for “new lifestyles.” Initiatives 

consistent with this perspective were pursued primarily within the context of 

the ecumenical social movement that dedicated several newsletters and 

seminars to the topic.
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that non-material values (such as silence and personal 

networks) can enhance quality of life. Organizations and 

individuals connect to the Platform by sharing ideas or by 

establishing small innovation projects—for example, 

regional non-monetary exchange economies and local 

community-garden projects. In some respects, the 

motivations that animate the True Prosperity discourse (an 

emphasis on the non-material qualities of life and a critical 

perspective on the culture of consumption) resemble those 

that informed the de-modernization strategies common in 

the Netherlands during the 1970s and 1980s. 

Another campaign is the National Initiative for 

Sustainable Development (NIDO) that brings together 

industries, governments, civil-society groups, and scientists 

to develop and implement thematic programs promoting 

sustainable development. In contrast to True Prosperity, 

NIDO does not seek to bring about general changes in 

(consumption) culture, but the organization’s adherents 

develop competencies in those social sectors that can 

promote sustainable-system innovations and transitions. 

One NIDO program specifically designed to create market 

opportunities for sustainable products is the “green 

products” initiative, which works to transform current 

sustainable consumer products and services niches into 

mainstream markets. To realize this goal, various 

associations of producers and consumers, research 

institutes, and governments are working collaboratively on 

marketing strategies for green consumption alternatives. 

In addition to these relatively large-scale initiatives, 

numerous smaller, independent activities in the Netherlands 

aim to develop tangible options for greening specific 

consumption aspects. Sponsored primarily by private 

companies, these projects are introducing green products 

and services. Prominent examples of environmentally 

sound products are solvent-free paints, biodegradable 

detergents, green-electricity schemes, and a number of 

product groups categorized under other environmental 

labels. Less apparent examples of product innovations are 

the “green savings” and “green investment” programs that 

the financial services industry and the national government 

have introduced since the mid-1990s (de Wit, 2002).3

Uneven development 

Current social debates regarding sustainable 

consumption in the Netherlands are less intense and 

morally focused than they were during the 1970s. Both 

governmental and non-governmental actors today are more 

pragmatic, emphasizing practicable ways to organize 

emerging green markets and to promote sustainable 

consumption. These efforts have enlarged the number of 

sustainable alternatives and improved the overall quality of 

green products and services. However, the amount of 

innovation—or the extent of ecological modernization—

differs greatly across consumption domains. Winsemius’ 

(1986) policy life-cycle model provides an instructive 

approach for highlighting some of this variability, as well 

 

3 There is an interesting distinction between “dark” and “light” green 

financial products in the Netherlands. The first generation of dark green 

investment funds was initiated in the 1970s and many of the rules governing 

these vehicles actively prohibit investments in heavily polluting industries. 

The financial products dating from the early 1990s are based on more 

flexible policies.

as the unequal rate of innovation in the different 

consumption domains (see Figure 1). 

Figure 1 depicts the present position of several 

relevant consumption domains and illustrates their 

considerable differences in degree of ecological 

modernization to date. The availability of green products 

and services in tourism and leisure, for example, is still 

rather limited. The process of greening—as measured by 

the number of environmentally sound alternatives that are 

available, and the extent to which they have been 

incorporated into everyday routines—is substantially more 

advanced in housing and feeding.4

 

Figure 1. Stage of Ecological Modernization for 

Consumption Domains in the Netherlands 

Regarding tourism, recent research has noted that 

efforts to facilitate more sustainable consumer choices are 

still in the initial stage. Initiatives to enable 

environmentally-sound travel alternatives are confined to 

eco-accommodations in the Netherlands and abroad, 

programs to facilitate sustainable tourism in the Alps, and 

an airline-ticketing scheme called Trees for Travel that 

allows consumers to purchase tree-planting certificates to 

compensate for airplane-generated carbon dioxide 

emissions. The slow pace at which tourism has been 

subjected to ecological modernization suggests that this 

consumption domain may be resistant to sustainabilityenhancing changes (CEA, 1999). Holiday practices tend to 

be habitual, and are subject to change only as a result of 

new financial circumstances. Environmental considerations 

do not appear to play a significant role in consumers’ 

holiday-planning decisions. The evidence suggests that, for 

at least the near- to medium-term, there is likely to be very 

little (articulated) consumer demand in the Netherlands for 

sustainable holiday alternatives. 

If we now investigate a domain such as food that is 

purportedly more environmentally advanced, the initial 

impression is that, at least in the Netherlands, a rather 

modest level of ecological modernization has been 

achieved. This impression is premised on the relatively 

 

4 The relative positions of the consumption domains are predicated upon our 

own qualitative assessment, because well-defined sets of indicators and 

related quantitative analyses would require data that are not yet available. 

Most consumption figures in the Netherlands are expressed in terms of 

individual household expenditures on products and services in different 

domains. These data do not include, for example, the availability and 

accessibility of green alternatives or their overall quality in comparison to 

conventional substitutes. 
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small proportion—approximately 1% in 1998—of Dutch 

food consumption that consists of organic products (Van 

der Grijp and De Hond, 1999). However, in assessing the 

potential for change here, a number of other indicators are 

important. The variety of retail outlets selling organic food 

products has increased significantly in recent years.5

 The 

number of supermarkets displaying over fifteen organic 

items has expanded from 70 in 1995 to over 4,000 in 1999.6

Likewise, specialized organic groceries have become more 

prevalent, and their numbers throughout the country grew 

during this period from 280 to over 400. Moreover, a 

survey of Dutch consumers demonstrated that 

environmental concerns are an important motivation in the 

purchase of organic food products—51% of organic food 

consumers identified “the environment” as their most 

important reason (Platform Biologica, 2001). 

We can consider the choice of organic foods to be a 

“dark green” expression of sustainable food-consumption 

practices. There are also several “lighter green” 

possibilities, such as substituting meat with novel protein 

foods or purchasing seasonal products.7

 Major producers 

and retailers on the supply side of the food chain have 

become quite cognizant of these consumption changes. 

Growing consumer interest in organic produce is one of the 

key catalysts for a successful sustainability transition, 

because it prompts stakeholders to liberate more 

environmentally benign forms of food production from a 

countercultural typecast.8

The policy life-cycle model focuses attention on the 

undeniable fact that, over the past decade, producers and 

civil-society actors in the Netherlands have developed a 

significant number of innovations to facilitate sustainable 

consumption. However, not all of the alternatives have 

been unqualified market successes. For instance, the 

premature launch of the compact fluorescent light bulb led 

consumers to view energy-efficient lighting as inferior. 

Some researchers also draw attention to so-called rebound 

effects, especially with regard to energy use (Rood et al., 

2001; Hofkes et al., 1998). Nonetheless, citizen-consumers 

have adopted numerous green products, and these items 

have become common features of everyday life. On 

balance, then, the situation concerning the ecological 

modernization of consumption is one in which several 

frontrunner domains have reached a “take-off phase,” while 

others, because they are more resistant to environmental 

reform, are currently lagging behind. 

 

5 This transformation includes alternative channels, such as farmers markets 

and memberships in organic vegetable distribution networks, that make 

regular deliveries to individual subscribers’ homes. 

6

 One of the largest supermarket chains in the Netherlands—with more than 

700 stores—routinely displays 250 organic products depending on the 

season (www.albertheijn.nl). 

7

 By 2002, meat alternatives captured a growing share (1%) of Dutch 

consumers (Aurelia, 2002).

8 If we focus on the production (instead of the consumption) of food in the 

Netherlands, 1.7% of all farmland in the country was used for organic 

agriculture in 2002. Official Dutch policy seeks to shift 10% of all farmland 

to organic production by 2010. Present indications are that it will be quite 

difficult for the government—in collaboration with farmers and 

consumers—to achieve this goal (LNV, 2000b). 

Green Politics in the Netherlands: Negotiation 

and Consultation 

We focus in this section on Dutch environmental 

politics in general, and consumption politics in particular, 

as part of sketching the political background for the 

greening of consumer behavior. During the most recent 

elections in the Netherlands (May 2002 and January 2003), 

environmental concerns received only very modest 

attention, with little substantive discussion about the 

environment. The absence of timely and controversial 

issues may simply mean that the environment is not—at 

least for the time being—critical to the electoral fortunes of 

political parties. However, according to some analysts, the 

environment’s relatively low salience is attributable to the 

non-adversarial positions that the main political parties take 

on these issues (Koopmans, 1995; Duyvendak, 1997). With 

the exception of the unequivocally green parties, it is in 

actual practice very difficult to distinguish Dutch political 

parties as either proponents or opponents of overtly green 

policies. If the entire political spectrum conveys a mildly 

green image and speaks to some extent a language of 

ecological modernization, the environment becomes less 

attractive as an arena for electoral contestation and more 

difficult to invoke for political benefit. 

This political tendency to downplay environmental 

issues is further compounded by a strong systemic 

emphasis on communication and consensus. Many analysts 

attribute Dutch prosperity, social harmony, and political 

stability to the so-called “polder model,” where unions of 

employers and employees seek to reach common 

agreement. During the second half of the 1990s, some 

commentators began to invoke the notion of a “green 

polder model” to suggest that the country could only 

resolve conflicts over environmental policy if political 

parties, trade unions, environmental organizations, and 

other stakeholder groups cooperated (Duyvendak et al, 

1999). 

A commitment to communication and a consensual 

style of politics is not only emblematic of political debate 

in the Netherlands, but is particularly evident in the 

horizontal policy arrangements that characterize the 

environmental field. For example, “policy networks” are 

regularly used to address circumscribed problems at the 

regional or local level and, as discussed above, the targetgroup approach has been in ascendancy. The target-group 

approach is a strategy, normally used at the national level, 

to bring together civil society actors and government 

representatives to address specific environmental problems 

or policy areas. The relevant participants then enter into 

several rounds of negotiation on an ad hoc basis, with the 

aim of reaching voluntary accords for environmental 

performance standards and for instrument usage (Driessen 

& Glasbergen, 2000). 

Although many Dutch politicians and government 

officials, as well as some members of the country’s 

environmental movement, point to the benefits and 

accomplishments of the green polder model, less 

enthusiastic voices are also discernible. Critics maintain 

that the consensus model has the potential to create 

situations in which the negotiation table becomes the 

central stage, and political parties conveniently leave 
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delicate environmental issues to other entities without 

much democratic legitimacy.9

 For opponents of the green 

polder model, corporatism and the surgical removal of the 

environment from the political agenda is a notable 

shortcoming. 

Nevertheless, most analysts view the open and 

facilitative disposition that characterizes Dutch political 

parties as beneficial to environmental reform. Public debate 

does not typically frame environmental issues in 

oppositional, zero-sum terms, but rather as common 

problems for which everyone is responsible. However, this 

idea of collective obligation, especially concerning 

sustainable consumption, must be understood in its proper 

political context. Consumption demands delicate treatment 

because it is so closely intertwined with popular notions of 

individual freedom (Basset et al., 1994). Even in the 

Netherlands it is extremely difficult for policymakers to 

modify household consumption behavior, even in 

circumstances when it is generally considered propitious to 

do so. 

With time, it has become apparent that citizenconsumers are often beyond the reach of conventional 

environmental-policy interventions. There are several 

reasons for this inaccessibility. First, it is not feasible for 

the government to negotiate covenants with citizenconsumers, as it has with members of several prominent 

industrial sectors. Second, citizen-consumers comprise a 

heterogeneous target group that does not usually 

participate—collectively or through its individual 

members—in the neo-corporatist consultation circuits 

common in Dutch political life since the 1980s. Finally, 

consumers are not typically fluent in the highly specialized 

jargon that environmental professionals normally use to set 

objectives, to define approaches, and to formulate 

instruments for change. In other words, conventional 

environmental policy frameworks are not compatible with a 

consumption-oriented approach (Spaargaren, 2003). 

Modernizing Consumption-Oriented Policies: The 

Need for Political Innovation 

The policy problems regarding sustainable 

consumption generate several questions. If the initiatives of 

the early 1990s did little to improve the environmental 

dimensions of consumer behavior, how should the Dutch 

government approach consumers? What kinds of political 

innovations are prerequisites for a more effective 

consumption-oriented approach to environmental policy? 

What are the drawbacks associated with such an approach? 

We begin with a discussion of the possible 

weaknesses inherent in more consumption-oriented 

environmental policies, and consider the 

“individualization” of politics and political responsibilities 

as developed by Bauman (1993) and Princen et al. (2002). 

Many environmental problems are ultimately rooted in the 

conduct of institutional actors, such as companies and 

 

9 Because of concerns about cooptation, over-institutionalization, and loss 

of public legitimacy, participation in horizontal policy arrangements has 

caused considerable internal debate within the Dutch environmental 

movement. Some NGOs have refused to engage in the proceedings—for 

example in the contested case concerning the expansion of Schiphol Airport.

governments. Under these circumstances, there is little 

merit imposing obligations on citizen-consumers, who not 

only lack the power to influence the organization of 

production and consumption, but also cannot—and 

arguably should not—be held responsible for issues that 

arise out of the “treadmill of production and consumption” 

(Schnaiberg, 1980). It is likely to be unproductive, and 

above all illegitimate, to burden citizen-consumers with 

remedying such problems. If policy initiatives only advance 

individual solutions—and ignore institutional actors—

socially regressive and environmentally ineffectual 

outcomes will be the result. 

At the same time, it is equally important to avoid 

simply discharging citizen-consumers from responsibility 

for the impacts of their consumption practices. This is not 

intended as a moral statement; our point, rather, is that we 

cannot properly comprehend modern consumer societies by 

examining producers alone. As Rifkin (2002) terms it, we 

live in an “age of access,” and this implies—among many 

other things—that the secret to understanding the dynamics 

of production-consumption cycles resides in the practices 

of citizen-consumers, who participate as knowledgeable 

and capable agents in reproducing the basic institutions that 

facilitate their livelihoods. An appreciation of this feature 

of contemporary social life is essential for arriving at 

effective consumption-oriented policies that mediate 

between isolated individualism and one-sided structuralism 

(Giddens, 1991, 1998). 

The Netherlands seems to need a “new politics of 

consumption.” However, the Dutch experience thus far 

suggests that there are no easy solutions for such a project. 

The government has customarily addressed the 

environmental dimensions of consumer decisionmaking 

using social-psychological models that focus on individual 

attitudes. This approach has tended to exacerbate the risk of 

individualizing (or privatizing) environmental problems; it 

must be supplanted with perspectives sensitive to the 

contextual, structural characteristics of provisioning 

practices in modern societies. Table 3 tentatively compares 

the “old” and the “new” policy paradigms with respect to 

consumption. 

While consumption politics in the Netherlands have 

conventionally been situated outside the mainstream of 

environmental politics, we can anticipate that this situation 

will change. The increasing relevance of policy initiatives 

aimed at citizen-consumers is rooted in features of modern 

societies that include shifting attention within productionconsumption cycles to the “modes of access.” 

The following section moves beyond these general 

observations to describe several contemporary initiatives in 

sustainable consumption. Though some of these efforts are 

part of the pre-existing paradigm, others illustrate—at least 

on an experimental basis—the new mode of thinking about 

citizen-consumers. 

Policy Initiatives to Facilitate Sustainable 

Consumption 

This section provides an overview of the policy 

instruments that the Netherlands has developed to promote 

sustainable consumption. In addition to the Ministry of 

Housing, Spatial Planning, and the Environment, several 
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Table 3 Principles of Consumption-Oriented Environmental Policymaking Old (or Classical) and New Policy Perspectives. 

Principle Old (or Classical) Policy Perspective New Policy Perspective 

Characterization of CitizenConsumers Citizen-consumers viewed as atomized 

actors performing isolated sequences 

of activities. 

Citizen-consumers viewed as actors who 

participate in social practices that are shared 

with others and reproduced in time-space. 

Consumption involves the use of clusters of 

related goods and services. 

Degree of Citizen-Consumer 

Differentiation 

Citizen-consumers treated as a 

homogeneous group with subgroups 

differentiated only with respect to levels 

of environmental awareness. 

Citizen-consumers treated in terms of 

environmentally relevant social practices with 

focus on actual behaviors. 

Procedures to Promote 

Greening 

Greening of consumption analyzed in 

terms of individual attitudes that guide 

conscious individual choices. Social 

structures are exogenous variables. 

Greening of social practices analyzed in terms of 

the duality of structure in interaction. 

Rationalization of behavior investigated with 

respect to embedded social practices and 

connected to lifestyle choices in the context of 

life politics. 

Relationship between 

Citizen-Consumer and LifeWorld 

Strong separation between consumer 

and producer rationality. 

Emphasis on the interplay between consumer 

and producer rationality in different stages of the 

production-consumption cycle. 

Perceived Potential for 

Improving the Environmental 

Performance of Everyday 

Consumption Practices. 

Generally pessimistic. High technical and social potential. 

Conception of Sustainable 

Consumption 

Reduced consumption in both 

quantitative and qualitative terms. 

Potential to achieve comparable or even greater 

comfort, convenience, and safety. 

other arms of the Dutch government are highly involved in 

environmental policymaking and concern themselves, to 

varying degrees, with consumption’s side-effects. 

Moreover, a focus on citizen-consumers necessarily blurs 

the boundaries separating the various ministries, because 

the environmental consequences of provisioning transcend 

the limits of conventional policy domains.10 Before 

describing the strategies of the different ministries, we 

highlight the role of Dutch NGOs in sustainable 

consumption. 

Dutch NGOs: Taking on a Consumer Perspective?

Dutch environmentalism has developed and 

diversified over the past three decades. In particular, large 

segments of the country’s environmental movement have 

adopted ecological modernization as a central ideological 

tenet. As a result, the environmental agenda has shifted 

away from moral appeals of soberness and counter-cultural 

experimentation toward ecological rationality, emphasizing 

the search for strategies that improve the environmental 

performance of modern production and consumption 

(Spaargaren and Mol, 1992; Hajer, 1995). In general, Dutch 

environmentalism has come to perceive the establishment 

 

10 There have been appeals within Dutch political circles to create a new 

Ministry of Consumer Affairs. This debate is inspired, on one hand, by the 

success of such a ministry in Germany and, on the other hand, by uncertainty 

concerning the future of the current Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and 

Fisheries. The importance of fisheries and agriculture as policy fields is 

declining, and nature conservation could be readily handled by the Ministry 

of Housing, Spatial Planning, and the Environment. At the same time, the 

issue of food safety has become more important. Combined with other issues 

of public concern, it seems practicable to transform the current scheme for 

managing agricultural activities into a Ministry of Consumer Affairs.

of environmentally sound consumption practices as the 

joint-responsibility of multiple stakeholders—government, 

industry and citizen-consumers (Duyvendak, 1997; 

Alliantie voor Duurzame Ontwikkeling, 1992). 

Dutch NGOs—often as part of collaborative 

efforts—have achieved some notable successes, fostering 

more sustainable production and consumption. For 

instance, by appealing to public opinion and negotiating 

with the government and the business sector, they secured a 

ban on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in spray cans. Other 

successes include stricter regulations governing the use of 

pesticides and chemical additives in food production, and 

the use of eco-labels. It is clear that many achievements of 

NGOs in the Netherlands regarding sustainable 

consumption are attributable to government lobbying and 

activities directed at industries. By approaching supply-side 

actors, these organizations have campaigned for the 

greening of policy and production processes (Alliantie voor 

Duurzame Ontwikkeling, 1992). 

Initially, NGO activities were not aimed specifically 

towards greening consumption practices, or towards 

expanding the scope of sustainable consumption by 

actively involving citizen-consumers. However, for more 

sustainable consumption practices to become viable from a 

consumer standpoint, they will need to compete without 

sacrificing comfort, convenience, and overall product 

quality (Van Vliet, 2002; Shove, 2003). The environmental 

movement in the Netherlands is becoming increasingly 

cognizant of this fact as they search for novel ways to link 

up with the everyday lives of citizen-consumers, and to 

facilitate more environmentally sound forms of 

consumption that correspond to extant expectations. 
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With these aims in mind, several Dutch NGOs have 

developed strategies to provide sustainable and high-quality 

consumption alternatives. For example, a “green” 

automobile manual offers information on how to save 

energy—for instance, by regularly checking tire pressure—

without stigmatizing the actual ownership and use of an 

automobile. Another example is providing practical 

environmental advice for people moving to a new house 

through a CD-ROM that covers issues ranging from 

emptying the old premises and using a moving van to 

decorating a new home. NGOs in the Netherlands have also 

taken up the challenge of redefining and strengthening their 

relationship with citizen-consumers by forging new 

partnerships with public and private producers that 

facilitate more sustainable consumption. 

The Ministry of Economic Affairs: Consumption 

Politics within Free-Market Conditions 

The Ministry of Economic Affairs (Ministerie van 

Economische Zaken, or EZ) defines consumer policy as a 

separate policy domain, and is primarily concerned with 

developing initiatives that enable consumers to pursue their 

personal needs and norms without interference (subject to 

certain governmental prerogatives) (EZ, 2000). The EZ’s 

outlook is based on the notion that consumers are sovereign 

market participants and it is the role of government to 

support them in their demand-side position. Specific 

policies are geared toward improving market access, 

promoting transparency of product information, and 

strengthening the legal position of consumers in disputes 

with producers. More broadly defined social concerns 

regarding consumption—such as sustainability—appear 

only when reliable information about a product’s 

environmental dimensions is an issue. However, the degree 

to which the Ministry focuses on sustainability as a broader 

aspect of consumer policy is rather limited. 

Nonetheless, the environmental aspects of 

consumption are central elements of other policy fields 

within the EZ’s ambit, especially in terms of energy. Since 

the early 1970s, the Ministry has focused on citizenconsumers as users of domestic energy for home heating 

and hot water production. The approaches utilized in this 

context have been rather commonplace: establishing levies, 

imposing energy taxes, formulating subsidies for energy 

efficient products, and organizing information campaigns 

(often in cooperation with energy and installation 

companies). In its most recent campaigns, the EZ

encouraged citizen-consumers to monitor their actual 

energy consumption, to become knowledgeable about their 

personal use and its environmental impacts. Additionally, 

the Ministry actively promotes the purchase of “green 

energy” generated from renewable sources (Energie Ned, 

2000). 

The EZ, in collaboration with the Ministry of 

Spatial Planning, Housing, and the Environment, is also 

responsible for developing and implementing integrated 

product policies (IPP). The primary aim of these initiatives 

is to stimulate all market parties—producers, consumers, 

and retailers—to strive for reductions in the level of 

environmental pollution per product unit. Although IPPs 

are clearly connected to consumer practices, a goal of these 

programs has been to avoid direct regulation of 

consumption. This is because, as SER (1994) explains, 

“implementing policies to decrease the environmental 

pressure per product might prevent a situation in which the 

government is forced to influence the volume of 

consumption and/or the lifestyles of citizen-consumers.” 

The EZ’s overall policy style for handling issues at 

the interface between consumption and sustainability is 

best characterized as “environmental policy within strict 

market relations.” The Ministry is normally reluctant to 

abandon a market approach for addressing the 

environmental side effects of material consumption. A 

guiding philosophy that the market is the most efficient 

way to distribute goods has remained largely unchallenged, 

and the EZ confines its interventions to the occasional 

imposition of ecological taxes to limit pollution. As such, 

the Ministry seeks to coordinate its activities with 

European-level regulations. 

The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management, 

and Fisheries: A Citizen-Consumer Orientation in 

the Making 

The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management, 

and Fisheries (Ministerie van Landbouw, Natuurbeheer en 

Visserij, or LNV) is a very broad and multifunctional arm of 

the Dutch government. The areas of its operations that 

impinge most closely upon material consumption and the 

environment are agriculture and nature management. The 

Ministry’s responsibilities for agriculture are particularly 

interesting for current purposes, given recent developments 

regarding food production and safety. Citizen-consumers in 

the Netherlands have become highly critical of both 

conventional methods of producing food and of food 

quality. In recent years, considerable scrutiny has been 

devoted to the side effects of agro-industrial production—

for example, the acidification of the landscape, the poor 

living conditions of livestock, and the use of chemical 

pesticides and hormones. LNV acknowledges these issues 

and refers to them as a turning point in the public discourse 

on agriculture. Ministerial officials have emphasized the 

need to increase organic production and to become more 

responsive to demand-driven approaches that consider the 

concerns of citizen-consumers in production decisions 

(LNV, 2000a). Such sentiments would seem to provide 

fertile ground for the development of agricultural policies 

that combine a strong commitment to both consumers and 

sustainability. However, recent statements have not actively 

articulated a demand-side approach to sustainable 

consumption.11

Within the area of nature conservation, a new 

orientation on consumption seems to be emerging in the 

Netherlands. A focus on citizen-consumers as vital actors is 

evident, for instance, in two recent series of policy reports 

entitled “People for Nature, Nature for People” and “Nature 

as a Living Environment.” The latter series aims to map the 

possibilities for linking nature policies with the needs and 

 

11 The only concrete outcome that has emerged in this regard is a 

communication plan to attract and retain a new group of organic food 

consumers. According to official documentation, “by informing the citizen 

about sustainable production, animal welfare, and biodiversity, this same 

citizen will, in his or her capacity as a consumer, understand the real value 

of the organic product and therefore show more willingness to pay a higher 

price” (LNV, 2000c).
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demands of Dutch society (Langers en Spinnenwijn, 1999). 

The Ministry, in particular, continues to search for new 

approaches that will increase its capacity for involving 

citizen-consumers (Kuindersma & Selnes, 1999). In official 

formulations, then, nature conservation is experiencing a 

shift from top-down, centralized steering toward selfregulation by decentralized actors, most notably the local 

and provincial governments. At the same time, it is still 

unclear how the new discourse will influence actual 

decision-making, since the policy reports to date have 

served only exploratory purposes. 

Ministry of Transportation, Public Works, and 

Water Management: Limited Social and Political 

Margins for Policies Regarding Sustainable 

Mobility 

From a sustainable consumption perspective, the 

most interesting initiatives of the Ministry of 

Transportation, Public Works, and Water Management 

(Ministerie van Verkeer en Waterstaat, or V&W) are in 

terms of mobility. Because of the density of the Dutch 

transport system, the movement of goods and people has a 

large impact on the environment and the general quality of 

life. Dutch policymakers have begun, in recent years, to 

devote increasing attention to personal mobility, partly 

because the largest growth has occurred with respect to socalled “recreational” movements. 

The general stance of the Ministry is that mobility is 

a central feature of modern society and it is a government 

responsibility to accommodate it, while at the same time 

ameliorating its negative side effects. The Ministry’s 

National Traffic and Transportation Plan, 2001-2020, 

sketches its intended policy approach to achieve this 

combined goal: “[t]he needs of citizens are put centrally 

and will be respected, but as end-users they will have to 

pay for their choices” (V&W, 2000). Consistent with this 

approach, the Ministry imposes regulatory taxes on 

automotive fuel, as well as hefty parking fees. Moreover, 

V&W has experimented over the last few years with 

systems of differentiated, electronic road pricing, but for 

the time being has postponed more widespread 

implementation because of political resistance. 

Transforming private automobile use, from a system that 

has never been subject to scarcity pricing into one that 

requires users to pay for their claims on available capacity, 

has been difficult in the Netherlands. A recent campaign 

statement by Wouter Bos, the leader of the Social 

Democratic Party (PvdA), highlights the lack of political 

enthusiasm for taking on the sensitive issue of excessive 

automobile use. Bos stressed that the days in which the 

party’s policy in the field of mobility was premised on “car 

pestering” were definitely over. 

In addition to developing economic instruments, the 

Ministry aims to educate people about energy-efficient 

automobile use. Furthermore, automatic vehicle guidance 

(a generic term that refers to various technological means 

to support—and in some cases assume over the long 

term—the driver’s tasks) is seen as an innovation that could 

improve automotive energy efficiency, and the Ministry has 

supported some pilot studies in this area. However, these 

initiatives have become mired in political wrangling over 

the appropriate role of government intervention in the lives 

of citizen-consumers and whether cars are part of the 

private realm. 

The Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning, and 

the Environment: Exploring New Sustainable 

Consumption Policies 

The Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning, and the 

Environment (Ministerie van Volkshuisvesting, Ruimtelijke 

Ordening en Milieubeheer, or VROM) is the core authority 

with respect to sustainable consumption policies in the 

Netherlands. In comparison to the other arms of the Dutch 

government, VROM focuses a great deal of effort on 

sustainability and the environmental dimensions of 

consumption. Moreover, since the mid-1990s, the ministry 

has actively considered the roles and responsibilities of 

citizen-consumers in fostering sustainable practices and has 

sought to involve them in developing sustainable 

consumption policies. Accordingly, the Ministry has 

launched several initiatives to analyze, evaluate, and 

stimulate more sustainable consumption practices. VROM

has designed a number of pilot studies to catalyze internal 

discussions and to advance a consumption-oriented policy 

perspective that could become the basis for official 

guidance in a future iteration of the national environmental 

policy planning process. This section discusses some of 

these policy experiments and describes how VROM has 

begun to identify some building blocks for crafting a new 

policy style with which to address consumption as a central 

tenet of environmental policymaking.12

The Future Perspective Project: A Little Greener 

Every Day 

VROM launched the Future Perspective Project to 

explore the potential for facilitating more energy-efficient 

lifestyles in the Netherlands. The scheme sought to 

generate insights regarding the roles of citizen-consumers 

as meaningful participants in Dutch climate policy and in 

the ability of the Netherlands to meet its greenhouse gas 

emission targets. The project’s objective was to determine 

whether a small group of households could reduce their 

indirect energy consumption by 30% and sustain this new 

level on a long-term basis.13

During a two-year study period, the participating 

households were encouraged to alter their lifestyles in ways 

that enabled them to achieve appreciable improvements in 

energy consumption. Since household incomes in the 

Netherlands were expected to rise during this timeframe, 

participants received a 20% supplement to their household 

budgets to see if they could successfully delink their 

increasing income from their energy use. For the length of 

the project, a “sustainability coach” helped all of the 

households to monitor energy use and provided advice on 

energy-saving alternatives (CEA, 1999). 

By the end of the study, most of the households had 

managed to reduce their energy consumption—on average 

 

12 This section draws on Beckers, et al. (2000). 13 The focus was especially on households’ indirect use of energy. In the 

Netherlands, this amounts to about 60% of total domestic usage.
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by 31%. One of the most interesting conclusions of the 

project is that energy-efficiency gains were not equal in all 

consumption domains. An area that proved very resistant to 

improvement was long-distance transport, particularly in 

terms of summer-holiday travel. This sobering outcome is 

attributable to the limited number of energy-efficient travel 

modes, as well as to an unwillingness on the part of citizenconsumers to revise their vacation routines. 

This policy experiment also offers valuable lessons 

about the longer-term implications of more energy-efficient 

lifestyle choices. Eighteen months after the formal 

conclusion of this project, researchers again measured the 

energy use of the study households. In most cases, direct 

energy consumption had increased, while indirect energy 

use was quite stable (especially with respect to food and 

leisure). The critical factors that limited the households’ 

ability to sustain their improvements were the loss of the 

supplemental income and the lack of feedback that the 

sustainability coaches had previously provided. The high 

price and limited availability of energy-efficient products 

were related constraints. In contrast, some households 

managed over time to routinize their new energy-efficient 

practices by coming to view their new lifestyles as 

healthier, more relaxing, and more economical. 

The Future Perspective project, because of its focus 

on citizen-consumers’ actual daily behavior, provides a 

useful starting point for exploring the prospects of more 

sustainable consumption. The study’s insights regarding the 

practicability of energy improvements in different 

consumption domains, and the constraints imposed by the 

dearth of energy-efficient alternatives, are valuable. At the 

same time, the project did not consider the specific ways in 

which producers offer sustainable products and services. It 

also restricted consumption behavior to “green shopping,” 

without looking into the social relations that accompany the 

purchase and use of items deemed environmentally 

preferable (Spaargaren, 2003). 

The Domain Explorations Project: Pinpointing 

Environmental Hot Spots 

In 1995, VROM launched the Domain Explorations 

Project, which aimed to identify opportunities for reducing 

the environmental side effects of consumer behavior within 

five specific areas of everyday life relevant for 

consumption-oriented policymaking: feeding, clothing, 

housing, recreation, and personal care (Schuttelaar & 

Partners, 2000; CREM, 2000; TNO-STB, 1999). 

Within each of these domains, researchers assessed 

the environmental implications of various consumption 

practices, using life-cycle analysis (LCA) and other 

technical methods of evaluation. This quantitative mapping 

provided an overview of forms of consumption that 

required the most urgent attention, in other words, the areas 

of consumption that constitute environmental hotspots. The 

investigators then developed measures to address these 

major burdens, and to identify the best potential links in 

production-consumption chains. The project’s next step 

calls for organizing so-called “chain consultations” that 

will engage stakeholders from specific domains in 

discussions about strategies for achieving the proposed 

improvements. 

This scheme reflects the pragmatic attitude 

prevalent in the Netherlands with respect to sustainable 

consumption, and serves as an important step toward 

creating the foundation for more consumption-oriented 

environmental policies. Rather than starting from a set of 

prefigured objectives, the conceptualization of carefully 

defined consumption domains serves as the point of 

departure for subsequent analysis and intervention. By 

mapping the areas that hold the greatest potential for 

improvement, it becomes possible to compare the resultant 

changes within (and among) the various consumption 

domains. These evaluations bolster the legitimacy of 

consumption-oriented environmental policies—at least in 

their technical form. However, this particular emphasis can 

also prove problematic. Citizen-consumers’ experiences are 

tightly interwoven with their consumption choices, and 

these social aspects of provisioning do not lend themselves 

to the quantitative analysis inherent in LCA. Under such 

circumstances, it becomes difficult to assess the extent to 

which citizen-consumers have internalized the themes and 

terminology of specific policy interventions—for instance, 

reducing greenhouse gas emissions or protecting 

biodiversity. 

The Citizen and the Environment Project: A Green 

“Consultation Model” 

The VROM designed the Citizen and the 

Environment Project to foster meaningful relationships 

with citizen-consumers by abandoning the classical 

emphasis on technical system rationality. The scheme 

aimed to find potential linkages between government 

steering and the everyday life concerns of citizenconsumers. This initiative did not focus narrowly on 

provisioning practices, but also considered various 

relationships between citizen-consumers and the 

environment—for example, the ways in which 

environmental problems are defined and transportation 

choices are reconciled. The project was highly explorative 

and qualitative as it sought to provide input for a 

comprehensive reconsideration of environmental 

policymaking. 

The researchers organized a series of small, 

independent projects to examine the impacts that a stronger 

consumption orientation would have on agenda setting, 

policymaking, and the division of roles and responsibilities 

in environmental decision-making. The project employed a 

diverse array of methods and techniques, including 

workshops, expert sessions, panel meetings, interviews, and 

focus groups, to study the environmental motives and 

concerns of citizen-consumers in different everyday life 

settings. For example, some respondents were interviewed 

while visiting an entertainment area or a day-care center to 

identify how they encountered and experienced 

environmental issues in these places. They were also 

queried about their thoughts regarding how environmental 

policymakers should address these issues (B&A Groep,

1997, 2000). 

The researchers drew several conclusions regarding 

consumption-oriented environmental policymaking. This 

initiative suggested that VROM’s current approach does not 

enable citizen-consumers to make connections between 

environmental goals and everyday life and that the Ministry 
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39 

needed to “socialize” the environment (Spaargaren, 2003). 

In other words, to improve public uptake policymakers 

should develop—as part of a dialogue with citizen 

consumers—broader problem definitions that extend 

beyond the ecological context that is commonly used, and 

should formulate symbolic representations of 

environmental problems that accord more closely with 

lived experiences. This study also made clear that the 

division between citizen-consumers and the government 

requires clearer delineation. Some environmental problems 

are the responsibility of individual citizen-consumers, 

while others require explicit governmental leadership. 

The Warm Gulf Stream Project: A Communication 

Approach

The Warm Gulf Stream Project is a relatively new 

approach initiated under the aegis of VROM that starts from 

the idea that communication should be customized for 

different social groupings according to lifestyle 

characteristics and environmental perceptions. This strategy 

is predicated upon a categorization of Dutch citizens into 

eight ideal types: rational ecologists, passionate ecologists, 

conscious progressives, conservatives, techno-actives, 

contented citizens, materialists, and indifferent citizens 

(Motivaction, 1999). For each of these classifications, 

VROM and other relevant government ministries sought to 

employ a specific style of environmental communication. 

For instance, the Dutch government has utilized the Warm 

Gulf Stream approach to convey information about climate 

policy. Dutch citizen-consumers were asked to choose 

those measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that 

conformed with their individual lifestyles—joining an 

ecoteam, purchasing green electricity, opting for public 

transportation, or buying “trees for travel.” 

This particular strategy is a specialized form of 

target-group segmentation. The search for targeted, tailormade communications—instead of employing a universal 

approach—is a positive development that, to our minds, 

deserves encouragement. Nonetheless, we have concerns 

about the project’s theoretical and methodological 

foundations. The particular clusters that this project 

employed are based on general patterns currently visible in 

Dutch society, and these values do not necessarily reflect 

actual consumption behavior. We also have reservations 

about how suitable these categories are for predictive 

purposes, as lifestyle segmentations should be grounded in 

actual consumption practices (Ester, 1999). The Social 

Practices Model we have formulated separately provides a 

more sociologically informed approach for developing this 

strategy (Beckers et al., 2000; Spaargaren et al., 2002). 

Sustainable Dwelling: A Transitional Policy Field

The recently initiated Dutch policy field of 

“sustainable dwelling, or home maintenance” is, in many 

respects, the consumption-oriented offspring of sustainablebuilding policies created three decades ago. Until the mid1990s, sustainable building in the Netherlands was a 

technocratic endeavor that sought to close production 

loops, to promote the use of eco-efficient materials, and to 

increase energy efficiency. From 1995 onward, VROM has 

acknowledged the decidedly singular focus on the supply 

side of the housing market and sought to devote more 

attention to homebuilders and citizen-consumers. To 

achieve this objective, the policy focus was broadened from 

merely sustainable building to the more expansive concept 

of sustainable home maintenance (VROM, 1997). As a 

result, the Ministry developed several policy initiatives to 

encourage environmentally friendly occupation and 

maintenance of buildings (Martens & Spaargaren, 2002). 

One example of this approach is the Sustainable 

Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Project, jointly executed by four 

project partners: VROM, the Association of DIY Stores, the 

Consumer and Safety Foundation, and the Dutch Company 

for Energy and the Environment. Beginning in 1998 and 

lasting for two years, the aim of this scheme was to 

stimulate “greener” DIY practices. This project was unique 

because it simultaneously paid attention to both the demand 

and supply sides of sustainable DIY. A training program to 

increase the knowledge of store personnel about the 

environmental dimensions of different products is one 

example of a supply-side improvement. The primary 

strategy for greening the demand side was a mass media 

campaign to inform and educate consumers about 

possibilities for sustainable DIY. By employing an 

aggressive marketing approach—one that emphasized 

consumer rationality instead of a specific policy 

objective—this effort differed from traditional government 

information programs.14 

Policymaking in support of sustainable housing 

highlights the policy-style changes that VROM has made 

for addressing sustainable consumption. The Ministry has 

evolved away from its previously very limited emphasis on 

citizen-consumers toward a view that recognizes consumers 

as knowledgeable and capable actors. One of VROM’s 

current goals—though it sill remains to be seem how it will 

work out in practice—is to make citizen-consumers fullfledged policymaking partners in sustainable housing 

(VROM, 1999a, 1999b). 

Conclusion 

During the mid-1990s, Dutch NGOs and 

government ministries began to acknowledge the 

importance of citizen-consumers in fostering more 

sustainable consumption. During the past decade, the 

orientation of policymakers has broadened from a rather 

narrow focus on meeting challenging targets, based on 

technical definitions of environmental problems, to a 

stronger commitment on consumer rationality. This shift is, 

to some extent, evident among all NGOs and relevant 

ministries. However, a wide variability exists regarding the 

actual application of these new policy discourses. By 

 

14 The design of the information campaign involved drafting a profile of the 

prototypical Dutch DIY enthusiast based on personal characteristics, 

preferences, and “DIY logic.” A typical home renovator in the Netherlands 

is a male homeowner who is between 25 and 59 years of age. He is married 

(or is living with a domestic companion), is the salaried member of the 

household, and has more than average interest in interior design. When 

choosing products and services the archetypal Dutch DIY aficionado 

considers quality to be a foremost criterion; subsequent considerations are 

safety and health, followed by price, environmental characteristics, and 

convenience. Before undertaking a particular renovation task, he will solicit 

information from store personnel, as well as from brochures, product labels, 

and promotional materials.
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focusing on the different consumption domains (instead of 

on specific policy fields), this study makes it apparent that 

the process of change differs both qualitatively and 

quantitatively. Our analysis of the various participants 

involved in facilitating more sustainable consumption in 

the Netherlands prompts us to proffer a series of 

recommendations for improving the effectiveness of 

current interventions. 

First, consumption-oriented environmental 

policymaking should be directed at “policy units” that are 

both environmentally significant and connected to the 

everyday-life rationality of citizen-consumers. The domain 

explorations project provides an effective foundation for 

defining the targets of specific policy initiatives. It is now 

necessary to elaborate upon and prioritize these domains. 

To prevent this process from devolving into a technocratic 

exercise that hides the social context of consumption, it is 

essential to create an active dialogue with citizenconsumers, as the Citizen and the Environment Project did. 

Second, the selected policy-units –or consumption 

domains– need to be analysed for prospective 

environmental hot spots that pose major environmental 

burdens (and concomitantly hold the potential for largescale improvements). Government ministries should 

complete these investigations in cooperation with groups of 

citizen-consumers to develop appropriate environmental 

heuristics. Environmental heuristics are relatively simple 

and practicable principles that connect the predominantly 

technical rationale of environmentalism with the social 

rationale of the everyday life-world (Spaargaren et al., 

2002). These rules of thumb should enable citizenconsumers to identify environmentally preferable 

alternatives, within a certain social context, that lead to 

improvements in the overall performance of the specific 

domains. 

Third, an important issue related to developing 

environmental heuristics entails visualizing and framing 

environmental effects as objects of sustainable 

consumption policy. To date, policymakers in the 

Netherlands have not developed many schemes that allow 

citizen-consumers to assess the environmental impacts of 

their consumption practices, either at an individual level or 

as they are embedded within a specific social setting or 

consumption domain. Researchers are now working—

especially with respect to energy—to construct monitoring 

formats that are geared to consumer rationality and that 

employ the terminology and images of everyday life. 

Fourth, we argue that environmental innovation 

progresses unevenly across the different consumption 

domains. Policymakers need to consider the potential for 

reform in terms of creative public responses, as well as the 

available range of sustainable alternatives. In the past, 

policy objectives with respect to sustainable consumption 

were often overly ambitious, or did not mesh with 

improvements already achievable in everyday life. By first 

assessing capacity for additional ecological modernization 

in each consumption domain, policymakers can better tune 

their interventions to the actual phase of the transition 

process. 

Finally, consumption-oriented environmental 

policies suggest a need for the participation of citizenconsumers themselves. Active public involvement in 

shaping such initiatives demands novel approaches—focus 

groups, panel discussions, and discussion forums. In 

addition, the description and analysis of different lifestyle 

groups deserves attention. Motivaction’s (1999) 

differentiation of citizen-consumers into ideal types 

represents a good start, but this approach should be adapted 

in accordance with actual environmental dispositions and 

consumption practices. Lifestyle groups emerge from—and 

should be identified according to—the social practices that 

comprise everyday life. 

Some of the building blocks described above are 

already available, while others still need to be developed. 

Reflecting upon the current state of knowledge and policy 

practice, we conclude that the success of efforts to 

encourage more sustainable consumption hinges on the 

extent to which they accord with consumer rationality. The 

social practices model we have described elsewhere strives 

to integrate several of these building blocks (Spaargaren, 

2001; see also Giddens, 1984, 1991). This approach entails 

a primary focus on specific social practices within everyday 

life. Domains such as food, housing, leisure, and clothing 

can usefully serve as new units of analysis for 

environmental policymaking and thus supplant the earlier 

emphasis on environmental consciousness or individual 

environmental attitudes. The model combines an emphasis 

on the everyday life-world with a strong emphasis on the 

social context in which behavioral routines are situated. 

In recent years, we have tested the social practices 

model in several research and policy settings. On one hand, 

the model has been employed as an analytical tool to study 

the potential for sustainable transitions in certain segments 

of everyday life and to map the factors that could stimulate 

or impede progress. On the other hand, we have used it as a 

framework for reflecting upon and for evaluating existing 

policy initiatives with respect to sustainable consumption. 

As such, the social practices model has proven valuable in 

the search for more effective consumption-oriented 

environmental policies. 

Most analysts contend that, since the late 1980s, the 

development of new horizontal policy arrangements in the 

Netherlands, as well as the turn towards market-based 

strategies and civil society actors, represents a major 

political renewal. The question, though, remains whether 

we can expect another equally embracing modernization of 

the environmental policy field in the near future, one 

characterized and inspired by an even stronger focus on 

citizen-consumers. We believe that such an approach is 

essential to prevent a loss of influence and legitimacy. At 

present, VROM and other relevant policymaking 

institutions in the Netherlands are pursuing a number of 

initiatives that influence the everyday life-world of citizenconsumers, but the scale of these efforts remains too 

limited and their scope overly fragmented. A more 

vigorous political debate regarding sustainable 

consumption and the role of citizen-consumers in 

environmental policymaking is required. An important step 

in promoting this public discussion entails expanding the 

pilot projects that various governmental ministries, private 

companies, NGOs, and lifestyle groups have begun to 

pursue. 
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41 

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© 2005 Sanches Spring 2005 | Volume 1 | Issue 1 

43 

ARTICLE 

Sustainable consumption à la française? 

Conventional, innovative, and alternative 

approaches to sustainability and 

consumption in France

Samy Sanches 

Department of Geography, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS United Kingdom (e-mail: samysanches@yahoo.fr)

Consumption has again become the object of critical political attention in France over the last few years. 

Despite obvious links with the global project to promote “sustainable consumption,” this renewal of 

interest has had little connection with Agenda 21. Among the factors responsible for this situation, the 

poor integration of environmental issues in French political culture seems to be of primary importance. 

While the country has made some recent progress, historical analyses highlight the fragmented style of 

environmental management in France. These circumstances, in turn, have contributed to the slow uptake 

of “sustainable development” and have been a major impediment in the implementation of successful 

eco-consumption policies. However, if the ultimate goal of “sustainable consumption” is to transcend 

contemporary ways of acquiring goods and to move toward a reassessment of the values underlying 

them, then several developments in France become directly relevant. Indeed, if the country does not 

qualify as a leader in conventional eco-consumption policies, it has begun to evince self-reflexivity 

regarding some basic consumption practices. This article considers three especially notable 

developments: (1) the implementation of innovative employment policies such as the 35 hour work week; 

(2) the revival of the country’s anti-consumerism movement; and (3) the adoption of confrontational 

positions on culture and agriculture during international trade negotiations. Taken in the round, these 

trends suggest the emergence of a nationwide exercise in “discriminating consumerism” and a move 

away from an unquestioned materialism. 

KEYWORDS: sustainable consumption, politics, economic policy, environmental aspects, green revolution, cultural values, international 

agreements, socio-political aspects, environmental management 

Introduction 

Not since 1968 has France witnessed such fierce 

debate about the role of consumption as it has in recent 

years. As was the case nearly four decades ago, current 

concerns indicate a range of palpable anxieties regarding 

the rapid transformation of vast swaths of the cultural and 

socio-political map that shape environmental debates. 

However, in contrast to the 1960s, the themes have shifted 

from a traditional emphasis on right-versus-left politics to a 

focus on issues more readily associated with routine 

practices. It is this new, essentially cultural, problématique

that policymakers have tentatively articulated through the 

elusive notion of “quality of life.” In its broadest sense, this 

concept accommodates issues as diverse as health, physical 

environment, and economic status, as well as the 

ontological security conferred by one’s own cultural milieu. 

Nonetheless, this unease is most visible in the 

political arena. Recently in France, as in other affluent 

countries, a significant segment of the public has passively 

supported, or even actively adopted, anti-establishment 

positions and begun to use a range of discursive channels 

previously confined to the most radical elements of anticapitalism. For example, it is now common to see the 

mainstream media linking food-safety issues—such as 

those surrounding genetically-modified foods and mad-cow 
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44 

disease—with wider denunciations of the structure and 

ethics of the global free-market system that is itself 

portrayed as a playground for transnational corporations 

(e.g., Goodman & Watts, 1997). Unambiguously identified 

as the ultimate recipient of power, multinational firms 

frequently stand accused of using their dominance to 

safeguard their interests in complicity with the most 

powerful governments, and with scant regard to 

environmental threats (climate change), geo-political crises 

(debt crisis in developing countries), or social issues (loss 

of cultural identity). There is little doubt that this discursive 

assemblage constitutes a de facto questioning of some of 

the central features of contemporary production and 

consumption (Crace, 2000).

What distinguishes France is the manner in which 

this protest movement has been assimilated into the 

country’s political culture. In addition to the spectacular 

rise in the popularity of personalities such as José Bové, 

and the growing support for anti-globalization groups (at a 

time when more traditional forms of political activity are 

being increasingly discarded), the French have voiced their 

dissent en masse via opinion polls, demonstrations, and 

electoral processes.1

 The first round of the 2002 

presidential election crystallized some of these underlying 

trends by confirming record support for candidates opposed 

to global economic liberalism.2

 This radicalization is 

perhaps all the more significant in the French context 

where, by European standards, mainstream politicians of all 

stripes already tend to condemn the basic tenets of what 

they pejoratively refer to as “Anglo-Saxon ultraliberalism.”3

However, if the denunciation of the current 

economic order has found solid backing in contemporary 

French politics at both institutional and grassroots levels, 

the environment has surely not been the “ideological 

engine” of this renewed mobilization. International policy 

documents such as Agenda 21 have had seemingly few 

repercussions on the national political debate, despite their 

 

1 José Bové is the leader of an organization of small farmers, Confédération 

Paysanne. He has been at the forefront of international anti-globalization 

protests and has been a prominent figure in domestic French politics since 

1999.

2 The candidates proposing such a radical proposition received in total more 

than 30% of the votes. Far right parties had 19% and Trotskyite candidates 

received in excess of 10%. Part of this success is attributable to allegations 

that the Communist candidate—who received just over 3%—was perceived 

as too willing to compromise with economic liberalism. In addition, other 

small mainstream candidates claiming a hard line on globalization collected 

another 10% of the votes, a result that suggests misgivings about further 

integration into the global capitalist system on the part of virtually all French 

political parties. Moreover, this outcome accounted for almost half of the 

votes cast during a period of record economic prosperity and decreasing 

unemployment (Le Monde, 2002a). 3 Anchored in a strong tradition of state interventionism, the French 

aversion to ultra-liberalism is illustrated by the fact that only one minor 

political party (Démocratie Libérale that typically receives less than 2% of 

the vote) openly employs the rhetoric common to Conservatives in Britain 

and Republicans in the United States. Significantly, during the 1980s, when 

these parties were in power abroad, France chose the opposite direction and 

elected a socialist-communist coalition that implemented an active 

nationalization policy. To some extent, this antagonism may explain why 

particular political dispositions—as displayed, for example, during mass 

demonstrations in support of public services—are often associated with an 

only partially concealed anti-Anglo-Saxon rhetoric. 

obvious links with the issues at stake. Even the 

“sustainability themes” directly challenging the most 

blatantly harmful socio-economic mechanisms have not 

found significant resonance. The fourth chapter of Agenda 

21, which stresses the destructiveness of current Western 

consumption patterns, is a case in point. If, alongside 

subsequent international policy statements, this document 

has formally made “sustainable consumption” a legitimate 

and integrative policy domain (and triggered the creation of 

several notable research and policy programs), few French 

policymakers seem currently responsive to these 

developments. 

In itself, this apparent lack of interest in such 

radical ideas—somewhat paradoxical from a nation often 

considered to be the avant-garde of political protest and the 

champion of interventionism—calls for an analysis of the 

causes of this relative neglect, as well as the conditions 

required for this new set of policy tools to receive a more 

heartfelt endorsement at the national level. The objective 

here is to investigate these questions using a theoretical 

framework in line with current research on sustainable 

consumption and political culture. This discussion contends 

that, to assess the political culture’s readiness to 

accommodate the principles underpinning “sustainable 

consumption,” one has to look beyond the realm of national 

green policies and politics and to encompass the sociocultural determinants of consumption habits. In other 

words, the analytic context must include contributions from 

all potential actors interested in revising the values behind, 

and the level of, current consumption patterns (Westra & 

Werhane, 1998; Cohen & Murphy, 2001). As a result, this 

treatment employs a definition of “sustainable consumption 

policy” that includes, in addition to the four main 

conventional policy tools (green procurement, eco-taxation, 

eco-labelling and eco-campaigning), the whole array of 

social developments (i.e. national and local policies, ideas, 

research programs, discourses, and initiatives) that relate 

directly to the definition of new consumption practices. 

These routines may entail bone fide changes in the actual 

structure of consumption, as well as renewed selfreflexivity towards consumerist habits. 

The discussion that follows has a three-step 

format. After a preliminary overview of the key 

characteristics of the French polity in relation to the 

environment and sustainable development, the country’s 

most recent achievements in conventional “green 

consumerism” policies are reviewed and assessed. The next 

section investigates a sample of three socio-political 

phenomena that relate directly to the (re)shaping of presentday French consumerism. First, it examines the 

consequences of the new work-sharing policy (the 35 hour 

week) on national. Second, it describes the relationship of 

the recent revival of anti-consumerism in French politics to 

the project of sustainable consumption. Finally, this section 

explores the relevance of a quintessential expression of the 

national political culture with regard to consumption—

namely, the tendency of French policymakers to use a wellarticulated range of discursive resources about “culture” 

and “national identity” to challenge the hegemonic position 

of certain actors, mechanisms, or commodities that 

comprise the global market. The conclusion assesses the 
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45 

capacity of French political culture to accommodate the 

principles of sustainable consumption. 

French Political Culture and the Environment: 

An Overview 

Understanding the intricate combination of 

characteristics usually associated with French political 

culture is no simple matter. Coming to terms with how the 

“cultural filter” has shaped the environmental question in 

French society seems even more difficult, and the sheer 

size of the task limits one to broad generalizations and 

caricatured statements. With this in mind, this first section 

clarifies how, as Almond (1956) terms it, “the patterns of 

orientation to political action” have been fashioned and 

expressed in France with regard to environmental issues 

over the past thirty years or so. 

Environment and the “National Character” 

A first logical step in the search for a national 

disposition toward the environment is, perhaps, to 

determine what has been emblematic of the French 

environmental attitude. However, a cursory browse through 

the literature sweeps away any hope of identifying a 

consistent trend. As studies have repeatedly shown, no 

clear behavioral pattern emerges at a national level vis-àvis the environment, or rather, there seems to be nothing 

quite distinctive about the French disposition. If observers 

have noted a slow rise in concern over the past two 

decades, this growing support has varied widely according 

to economic circumstances or ecological incident, as it has 

for most similar nations (Alphandéry et al., 1991; Dobré, 

1995). The electoral fortunes of Les Verts and the other 

green parties have oscillated roughly between 3 to 15% 

over the last fifteen years, depending on the type and time 

of elections. Moreover, no clear pattern seems to invalidate 

the hypothesis that their recent participation in the 

government was merely the result of a change in political 

strategy (Villalba, 1996; Abélès, 1997). From a more 

analytical perspective, it is possible to identify two basic 

reasons for what Szarka (2002) calls the “lumpiness and 

diffusion” of the French public’s concern for the 

environment. The first is geographic. France is still a 

territory with a comparatively low population density, 

composed principally of small villages and towns dispersed 

over more than a 500,000 square kilometers of 

biodiversity-rich land.4

 In such a context, French 

sensibilities have scarcely been captured by the (essentially 

urban) conservationist rhetoric of an endangered nature to 

be preserved at all cost. Instead, it is the rising 

“desertification” of the countryside—and therefore the 

notions of ruralité and aménagement (rural life and 

planning)—that have caught the attention of a public 

renowned for its tenacious rural view of self.5

 

4 France still has more than 36,000 communes (municipalities), a number 

that is greater than all other European countries combined. In addition, while 

France represents about 12% of overall European territory, it sustains more 

than 40% of the continent’s flora species (IFEN, 1994).

5 The countryside is maintained in the French collective imagination as the 

fragile holder of many traditional values and savoir-faire. This construction 

is captured in French by the term terroir, a notion that encompasses both the 

The second major factor accounting for the 

aforementioned “lumpiness” is culture. Divided as it 

originally was between Saxon, Latin, and Celtic spheres of 

influence (to name only the main ones), France has often 

defied the categorizations commonly used in comparative 

studies of environmental attitudes and public policies based 

on national explanatory frameworks (e.g., Sbragia, 1996; 

Andersen & Liefferink, 1997). In the “leader-laggard” or 

“push-pull” types of explanations (where southern 

European countries are more often than not following their 

northern counterparts on the path towards ecological 

modernization), France has been consistently rated 

“neutral” or “average.” These evaluations make ambiguous 

the country’s politico-cultural membership on 

environmental issues (Sbragia, 1996; Szarka, 2002). 

Taken too literally, all this could indicate the 

absence of a distinguishable French national “orientation” 

towards the environment. Indeed, as Cohen (2000) explains 

in his study of attitudes toward ecological modernization in 

the Netherlands, “there are credible reasons to suspect that 

the concept of national character is more robust for small, 

relatively homogeneous countries.” In France, this is 

clearly not the case. However, if a French specificity seems 

difficult to establish from a sociological perspective, there 

is no doubt that the environment has infiltrated the 

country’s political history and administrative arrangements 

through explicit channels. The discussion now turns to an 

overview of the latter’s influence on the national 

responsiveness to environmental issues. 

Governance and the Environment 

In France, the government’s influence on public 

matters is all the more important if one considers the 

omnipotence of the state. Established under Louis XIV’s 

prime minister, Colbert, the notoriously strong forms of 

centralism and interventionism that emerged in France in 

the 17th century were subsequently toughened. This 

centralization was intensified during the revolutionary wars 

that secured the survival of a republic that had been 

threatened by an alliance of hostile monarchies from the 

very moment it was born. These seminal events, in turn, 

were exacerbated by the strong faith in science, the 

hubristic attitude toward nature, and the passionately 

secular outlook that was prevalent among the Revolution’s 

philosophers (Merchant, 1992).6

 The eventual result was a 

national political culture—namely French republicanism—

characterized by dependence on a powerful and centralized 

 

cultural and natural dimensions of a place, and this expression is used 

extensively to describe the production processes and products of particular 

rural localities. More generally, the tendency to amalgamate national values, 

countryside, and ruralité has been the basis for the strong public support 

traditionally extended to farmers and the favorable treatment that they have 

consistently received from successive governments. 6 This Enlightenment inheritance still exists today in a clear tendency 

among French thinkers to prioritize the “society-culture” perspective over 

the more Germanic “nature-community” tradition (e.g., Larrère, 1997; 

Blühdorn, 1997). Influenced by classical philosophers such as Descartes, 

Rousseau, Pascal, and Montesquieu, the French school of social science 

illustrates this inclination through the works of figures such as Durkheim, 

Comte, Bourdieu, Baudrillard, Sartre, De Beauvoir, Foucault, Derrida, 

Deleuze, and Tourraine. The nature-community perspective has, in turn, 

received less attention, and even the works of Illich, Gortz, Morin, Serres, 

and Guattari do not constitute a school of French environmental philosophy. 
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46 

state that controls a series of technical bodies reliant upon 

“scientific” methods for the administration of public affairs. 

In addition to influencing the role of science and 

the status of the environment throughout France’s history, 

these developments had a huge impact on the political 

landscape. Commenting on the influence of the 

revolutionary struggles, Prendiville (1994) writes that the 

defense of the republic “gave rise to the first national 

educational system designed to raise patriotic citizens ready 

to defend the Nation and its Universal Declaration of 

Human Rights...[which] had the most important effect in 

totally identifying the individual with the newly-born 

State.” Moreover, “this intimate, and at times ambiguous, 

relationship of the citizen to the State, is at the heart of 

French political culture and has shaped social and political 

action ever since.” 

Along similar lines, many analysts have shown 

that the profound amalgam in French polity between 

“nation” and “state”—and the exclusive power of the latter 

on anything public (l’intérêt general)—has strongly 

molded the structure of the civil society and the relational 

patterns of its members (e.g., Gaffney, 1991; Prendiville, 

1994; Szarka, 1999). Of all the consequences that have 

been suggested, two are of particular interest here. First, a 

particularly close state-citizen link emerged, and 

subsequently developed into a political mode in which 

citizens make direct—and often violent—demands on the 

state that circumvent intermediary bodies, such as trade 

unions or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 

(Prendiville 1994; Rucht 1989). Second, the state apparatus 

has used its status of “exclusive representative of the public 

interest” to multiply its influence, especially in terms of 

vigorous social interventionism. An outcome of this 

process is that a cumbersome and somewhat corporatist 

administration has developed horizontally, vertically, and 

territorially to maintain coherent and effective public 

services—for example, the array of nationalized companies 

that includes Électricité de France (EDF) (energy), Societe 

Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais (SNCF) (railways), 

or La Poste (post office). 

Such a setting established the environment as a 

new “public” issue shortly after 1968, and subsequently 

grafted it onto arguably the most complex administrative 

system in Europe. Although the new “environmentalism” 

articulated by the 1968 revolution called primarily for a 

holistic “political-ecology” approach (including a 

questioning of productionism and consumerism—Illich 

1971; Gorz 1978), the environment was administered 

throughout the 1970s and 1980s as an extremely segmented 

field of technical intervention. The different elements (ie., 

air, water, and soil) were the objects of distinct commandand-control policies implemented by numerous usually 

understaffed administrative agencies under the partial 

control of a remarkably weak environmental ministry.7

Furthermore, no environmental NGOs established a durable 

influence within the high spheres of French politics, a 

situation that has remained changed little. After losing the 

 

7 This weakness was exposed right from the beginning, when the first 

minister for the environment, Poujade, resigned after three years in office 

and crudely stated that his ministry was “the ministry of the impossible” 

(Poujade, 1975).

anti-nuclear battle, and failing to reunite around a common 

cause in a context where severe economic crises reduced 

environmental sympathy, most of these “associations” 

experienced stagnant membership and credibility, and the 

lobbying “ring” was left to other, more powerful interests.8

Apart from the occasional post-election reorganization, 

there were no major changes in policy style until the 1990s, 

when the rapid evolution of European legislation and the 

advent of sustainable development exposed the system’s 

obsolescence and prompted the first steps towards its 

renovation. 

Europe and Rio: The Beginning of an Integrated 

Approach? 

The first exogenous influence on French 

environmental governance, the development of European 

law, has been influential primarily in terms of policy style. 

Indeed, European directives have been instrumental in 

upgrading national standards, and this growing body of 

regulation has also meant more political credibility for the 

Environment Ministry and the overhaul of its 

communication style and procedures (eg., Larrue and 

Prud’homme, 1993). However, while this outside pressure 

facilitated the implementation of the first integrative 

environmental reforms in the beginning of the 1990s, the 

aftermath of the 1992 Earth Summit did not, curiously 

enough, boost by the emergence of sustainable 

development policy. 

For many years, the only tangible French 

response to this new global challenge was nothing more 

than the creation of yet another assemblage of interinstitutional consultative bodies, a situation Szarka (2002) 

refers to as the “not-invented here syndrome.” This 

phrasing essentially means that, while the concept was 

gaining momentum in other parts of the world, in France it 

was going through a lengthy process of semantic 

clarification and content explanation (see also CFDD,

1996).9

 Once this process had run its course, the first major 

laws concerning le développement durable were passed, 

first through the 1995 Loi Barnier (establishing the 

integrative/transversal principle of sustainable 

development) and later with Environment Minister 

Dominique Voynet’s “LOADDT” that applied these 

principles to regional planning policies in 1999. Despite 

these efforts, most analysts contend that the integration of 

sustainability in the main policy sectors remains very 

 

8 Membership figures in 1995 for the country’s major environmental NGOs 

are informative: Friends of the Earth counted 5,000 French members against 

220,000 in Germany, World Wildlife Federation (WWF)-France had 

170,500 members against 690,000 Dutch counterparts, and Greenpeace had 

only 35,000 French activists against more than 500,000 in Germany and the 

Netherlands (van der Heijden, 1997).

9 The national fate of Agenda 21 illustrates the poor ability of French 

political culture to accommodate the new integrative concept of 

sustainability. In addition to a patent lack of political and financial support, 

Agenda 21 has suffered from a competing national program (Chartes de 

l’Environnement) that has contributed to the relative backwardness of France 

in this field. Based on data from the International Council for Local 

Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), Szarka (2002) notes that by 1997 only 

fifteen French local authorities had drawn up (or were in the process of 

formulating) Agenda 21 plans, in comparison to 415 in Norway, 285 in 

Britain, and 30 in Germany. It was not until the beginning of the 2000s that 

the program (renamed Action 21) was integrated into a national sustainable 

development strategy.
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partial, a view confirmed by the extreme weakness of the 

CFDD, the main organization charged with devising 

proactive strategies in this domain (Larrue & Chabason, 

1998). 

Conventional Policies: the Greening of 

Consumption in France 

Given that the national political culture has not 

embraced sustainability’s integrative orientation, it should 

come as no surprise that the concept of sustainable 

consumption has not yet taken root in French 

environmental policy. Despite the tentative uptake of 

elements of sustainable development, at present no clearly 

identifiable approach is geared toward environmentally 

sound consumption. Worse still, this emergent policy 

domain has yet to be defined as such in France, either in 

official documents or by the main governmental agencies in 

charge of formulating strategies. Research initiatives in this 

field have been scattered among wider, or differently 

defined, bodies of research.10 Typically, too, national 

progress reports for the international audience have tended 

to use a “re-labeling” tactic based simply on renaming 

existing (production-oriented) policies to fit into the field 

defined by the fourth chapter of Agenda 21.11

However, if French endeavors do not compare 

favorably with the comprehensive approaches developed by 

the European Commission and the pioneering programs of 

forerunner nations such as Sweden and the Netherlands, 

the country has not been totally inactive in this area. The 

following section reviews the main “sustainable 

consumption” policy tools that have been developed in 

France. 

Showing the Way: Green Public Procurement 

The French government, which is directly 

responsible for 20%t of the country’s gross national 

product, was relatively quick to integrate environmental 

concerns into the administration’s daily routines. 

Nonetheless, the country’s first comprehensive greening 

scheme, launched in 1995, was barely implemented due to 

a lack of resources and political resolve (OECD, 2000). In 

1999, the greening of the administration (le verdissement 

des administrations) received new impetus from the redgreen government, and the top-down approach established 

in 1995 was supplemented with a series of measures 

allowing local authorities to include the environment as a 

(non-discriminatory) criterion for making local 

procurement decisions. This initiative received the support 

of the Eco-Maires, an association of more than 600 mayors 

that coordinates a number of voluntary initiatives to 

encourage environmentally responsible purchasing at the 

local level. 

More recently, the Environment Ministry 

specifically addressed the question of green procurement 

by central administrations (les achats verts des 

 

10 The Inter-Institutional Research Program in Environmental Economics 

(PIREE) is an example. 11 A case in point is the country profile that France submitted in 1998 to 

UNCED for information-sharing purposes—and only partially improved in 

2001 (see IFEN, 1998).

administrations) and announced the creation of a specially 

trained corps of civil servants that is to be exclusively 

responsible for this task using tools such as eco-labels and 

life-cycle analysis (MEDD, 2001). The administration 

should soon have a comprehensive tool for implementing 

the systematic greening of its procurement decisions. The 

extent to which this is actually the case will, of course, 

depend on the commitment of future governments and the 

powers granted to the new green purchasing officials. 

Internalizing Environmental Costs: Ecological 

Taxation 

The idea of reducing the consumption of 

polluting products through taxation is not new in France. 

As early as 1974, the Gruson Report made explicit 

reference to the possibility of using such mechanisms—in 

conjunction with other even more innovative measures—to 

reduce what the French call le gaspillage, a notion 

inelegantly translated as “wasteful” consumption.”12

Although few of the document’s recommendations were 

implemented, it was instrumental in triggering what 

became the national approach to “environmental 

consumption” during the 1970s and 1980s, namely an 

emphasis on waste and energy management policies driven 

by a set of producer-oriented fiscal incentives and 

disincentives (e.g., 1975 and 1992 Waste Acts). 

It was not until the late-1990s that the 

government seriously examined this approach and modified 

the taxation system toward an integrated method more 

consistent with conventional notions of eco-taxation. 

Carefully prepared by Environment Minister Voynet 

immediately after her appointment in 1997, the Taxe 

générale sur les activités polluantes (TGAP) was approved 

in 1999 after long and difficult negotiations.13 In brief, the 

main innovation in this plan was the creation of an 

integrated and easily extendable framework regrouping the 

previously ad hoc set of ecologically related taxes. In 

addition, this overarching structure—explicitly designed to 

accommodate a future EU-wide carbon tax—introduced the 

principle of proportionality between pollution and taxation 

and established a double-dividend system, in which the 

revenues of the tax are directly re-invested in anti-pollution 

programs. 

This new framework has not met all of its 

original objectives, and a series of political and technical 

problems have prevented the tax from applying to specific 

activities or products (e.g., electricity, water). Moreover, 

 

12 An Environment Ministry desperate to strengthen its legitimacy 

commissioned this report when a severe economic crisis was threatening its 

very existence. The document recommended dramatically reducing all sorts 

of consumption activities through innovative measures. Commenting on the 

report, Szarka (2002) notes that “[i]n stressing clean production and 

highlighting the problems of intensive agriculture, it anticipated some of the 

theses of ecological modernisation. Proposals such as increased flexi-time 

and distance working were ahead of their times, but recommendations for 

reduction in energy use (by improved building insulation and better public 

transport) were speedily implemented.”

13 The bill became a lightening rod for hostile protests by truck drivers who 

objected to a tax increase on diesel fuel. Additionally, after being ruled 

unconstitutional by the Conseil d’Etat, the proposed legislation was 

modified by thousands of amendments in Parliament and redrafted at the end 

of 2000.
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the TGAP seems to lack a consumer-oriented approach. 

Unlike the “eco-VAT” scheme in Belgium, or the so-called 

“pay-as-you-throw” (PAYT) programs used in the United 

States, few of the TGAP outcomes have directly raised 

awareness among consumers who, for political reasons, 

were not directly targeted by the proposal. As a result, 

despite the gradual implementation of a proportional 

ecological tax, it is still difficult to speak of a 

comprehensive eco-taxation system in France.14 More 

generally, the internalization of environmental costs in 

market prices still fits uneasily with the French 

interventionist and neo-corporatist tradition. In addition to 

the problems created by well-established lobbies—for 

example, the automobile industry—”brown” subsidies 

remain in agriculture and water management. Similarly, 

despite commendable achievements in public transport (eg., 

national railways and urban tramways), road tolls are still 

uncommon, as are such practices as car-sharing and 

recycling.15

Providing Information: Eco-labeling 

At first glance, the French situation regarding 

eco-labeling appears quite paradoxical. On one hand, while 

none of the independent eco-labels has managed to achieve 

the level of national recognition enjoyed by, for example, 

the German Blue Angel or the Nordic Swan, France is 

currently the European leader in the use of the EU’s flower 

eco-label.16 On the other hand, the country lags behind its 

European counterparts in terms of International Standards 

Organization (ISO) and Eco-Management and Audit 

Scheme (EMAS) certified producers (IFEN, 2001a). At the 

same time, France offers more established certification 

schemes than any other European country in terms of nonenvironment-related labels and seals. it can be argued that 

this apparent contradiction is mainly the result of two 

countervailing tendencies. First, it is a long-acknowledged 

tenet that the French have traditionally been unreceptive to 

green consumerism, and this disposition helps to explain 

the absence of a major independent eco-label, as well as the 

limited interest in EMAS and ISO certification.17 Second, 

the long tradition of food-labeling initiated by the famous 

Appelations d’Origine Controlée18 (AOC) has endowed the 

country with considerable certification expertise and 

 

14 In its study of eco-taxation, the OECD (2001) rated France fifteen out of 

twenty-eight countries for revenues per capita raised in this manner. More 

recently, France was ranked last in Europe for the proportion of 

environmentally related taxes as a proportion of total revenues (European 

Environment Agency, 2002). 

15 France’s solid waste-recycling rate is still comparatively low, since few 

people make regular use of separate containers (IFEN, 2001b).

16 At the end of 2001, France had twenty certified products, while, by 

comparison, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom had two and one 

respectively (Flower News, 2001).

17 The worldwide boycott of Shell, organized by Greenpeace at the end of 

the 1990s, is a case in point. While the campaign was successful in many 

northern European countries, it was a total failure in France. Reflecting on 

the difficulty of using green consumerism as an operational approach in 

France, Szarka (2002) notes “Whilst in the UK Friends of the Earth built its 

reputation on ‘green consumer’ issues...the French branch was unable to 

touch the public imagination in the same way.” 

18 AOCs legally protect the production processes of many wines, cheeses 

and olive oils.

greatly contributed to the creation of entrenched 

accreditation bodies such as the powerful Association 

Française de Normalisation (AFNOR). AFNOR sponsored 

the first national eco-label—the NF Environnement—in 

1992 and is charged with developing the EU environmental 

label in France. This helps to explain why the “flower” has 

been comparatively successful, especially in the absence of 

a major national competitor. 

If the above arguments offer some insight into the 

seemingly contradictory situation of eco-labeling in France, 

they do not account for the weakness of green consumerism 

and eco-labels in the first place. In this regard, the most 

plausible hypothesis is once again the existence of a vicious 

circle sustained by both the lack of intermediary bodies and 

the apparent apathy of the public regarding environmental 

issues. In the relative absence of active and powerful 

environmental NGOs (normally the key policy coordinators 

of green consumerism), it is difficult to imagine how 

French consumers could have developed a particular 

sensitivity in this regard. While official bodies, such as 

AFNOR, are pleased to provide eco-certification to 

companies applying for it, they do not see raising market 

awareness as their primary responsibility. As a result, their 

meager communication strategies have not filled the gap 

created by the lack of committed environmental NGOs. 

When producers have tried to enter this unmediated zone, 

they have more often than not ended up in pseudo-scientific 

battles, an outcome that leads to all parties being 

discredited and consumers being left increasingly skeptical. 

Major retailers have been discouraged from entering onto 

such slippery ground, with the result that few have 

developed a clear green strategy for their own brands. In 

addition, particular market conditions have hindered the 

development of eco-labels for specific products, with food 

again providing a case in point. Since the Agriculture 

Biologique AB (the French national organic label) was 

launched in the 1980s, it has had to compete with other 

well-established quality labels, such as the aforementioned 

85 year old AOCs and the 40 year old Label Rouge

designed for meat products. The reputations of the AOCs 

and Label Rouge among the French public—who readily 

associate them with attributes both material (small-scale, 

quality, savoir-faire) and imaginary (bon-vivant, traditional 

values)—has reduced the ability of the organic message to 

transcend its scientific (“no chemicals/pesticides”) content. 

Consequently, organic designations have suffered from a 

negative subtext—the absence of pollution—while more 

positive values have come to be associated with les 

produits du terroir (rural/regional products) that, by 

comparison, seem to belong to an epoch or milieu in which 

nature and culture have not been divorced. 

Of course, all these representations are changing 

rapidly, and the recent rise in popularity of organic 

products shows that symbolic associations are under 

constant collective re-evaluation, especially when they 

benefit from favorable structural factors such as 

government subsidies. However, this case underlines how 

the discourse touted by eco-labels (i.e., environmentally 

friendly) is confronted all along its development with a preexisting set of values and representations—for example, 

about the nature of sustainability, countryside, and health—

that strongly determines its relative significance, and thus 
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its final success, within a given cultural setting. In France, 

the prevalent rural perception of self has resulted in the 

failure of many ecologically focused messages to capture 

the Romantically inclinations of consumers who, especially 

when it comes to food, tend to relate sustainability 

primarily to its cultural dimension. Often, they interpret 

sustainability in a way that goes beyond (or sometimes, 

perhaps, nowhere near) the message normally contained by 

the eco-labels themselves.19 

More generally, the slow uptake of eco-labeling 

in France demonstrates how the absence of credible 

information from environmental NGOs has hindered the 

development of a “green consumerism reflex,” making it 

difficult for any significant eco-label to emerge. From this 

perspective, it seems likely that as long as prevalent public 

perceptions are not seriously challenged by new political 

developments—for example, environmental crises or 

powerful activist groups—eco-labels in France will remain 

scarce. In other words, French consumers will continue to 

view eco-labels rather suspiciously so that they will 

contribute little to sustainable consumption. 

Raising Awareness: Education Campaigns 

To some extent, environmental-information 

campaigns have suffered from many of the structural 

shortcomings observed in the case of eco-taxation and ecolabeling. Here, again, the weakness of NGOs, the 

segmented nature of environmental policies, and the 

widespread individualism (and sometimes cynicism) found 

among the population, have contributed to a general apathy 

toward the environment. The absence of a single national, 

multifaceted environmental campaign targeted directly at 

consumers (such as the British Going for Green initiative) 

illustrates the limited way that French authorities have used 

social-marketing techniques. In addition, those public 

programs that have been launched have generally been 

aimed at the least emblematic types of material 

provisioning, such as energy or water consumption. The 

Agence de l’Environment et de la Maîtrise de l’Energie 

(ADEME), for instance, has a long history of disseminating 

information on how to reduce domestic energy utilization.20

In a typically French neo-corporatist arrangement, ADEME

has linked up with EDF (the national electricity producer) 

to distribute countless tips to assess and to reduce 

electricity consumption through leaflets, brochures, and the 

Internet (ADEME, 2002; see also Szarka, 2000). Along 

these lines, in 2001, a national network of points-info 

energie (energy-information points) was launched for 

individual consumers and small- and medium-sized 

businesses, offering direct guidance about the various ways 

they could cut energy consumption. Yet, if these campaigns 

 

19 It could be argued that the same phenomenon is at work when one 

considers the relatively small number of vegetarians in France, as well as the 

generally weak support for animal rights—this in a country where the most 

revered dish, foie gras, is produced using the rather cruel, ancestral tradition 

of gavage des oies (goose cramming). Far from being seen as brutal by the 

majority, this practice has actually come to symbolize what the southwestern 

traditions and values stand for in the French imagination (e.g. frankness, 

courage, simplicity). Hunting—though to a much lesser extent—is protected 

by the same tendency to put les traditions rurales (the countryside 

traditions) beyond ecological and “sustainable” scrutiny.

20 Agence de l’Environment et de la Maîtrise de l’Energie is the official 

body in charge of supervising national energy consumption.

were useful for channeling information on the impact of 

daily energy consumption, their fragmented and practical 

content betrayed their origins in technical bodies and 

precluded the opening of an ethical debate about more 

symptomatic forms of consumption. 

In this regard, the “lifestyle” message contained 

in the operation En ville sans ma voiture (Car-Free Day in 

Town—to date the most prominent government program) is 

potentially significant. Adopted by more than seventy cities 

throughout the country, this campaign has prompted a 

noticeable renewal of interest in alternative local transport 

solutions, and more generally in the environmental aspects 

of urban life. In many cities, this new impetus has been 

followed by operations such as the nuits piétonnes

(pedestrian nights) or the soirée roller (roller-skating only 

evenings) now common throughout the country. In 

addition, it has also encouraged more adventurous local 

experiments, such as the vélo à la carte (bike-sharing) 

scheme in Rennes. While this project is not yet a roaring 

success, its existence testifies, nonetheless, to a recent 

change in attitude among many municipalities.21 In spite of 

these encouraging efforts, though, France’s backwardness 

in the information domain is clearly apparent when one 

considers, for instance, the dearth of comprehensive French 

websites on sustainable consumption.22

This brief overview of conventional policy tools 

highlights two essential points. On the one hand, 

encouraging trends have been recently observed (e.g., 

TGAP, EU-Flower), and other developments—including 

the emergence of eco-design techniques and “ethical” 

financial products—augur a better visibility for the 

environmental impacts of consumption. On the other hand, 

the relevant mechanisms are scattered and undeveloped, 

and the concept of sustainable consumption has not found a 

proper semantic space in French policymaking 

terminology.23 Moreover, major obstacles remain, given the 

way the debate is being framed and mediated nationally. In 

particular, the environment-consumption interface still is 

largely organized around an “ecological modernization of 

production” perspective that has conveniently allowed 

national policymakers to avoid reminding consumers of 

their unique responsibilities, and to subtly bypass the key 

issue of the limits to consumption. Along these lines, the 

notion of consomma(c)teur (citizen-consumer) proposed by 

some authors does not yet seem applicable in a country still 

lacking powerful actors capable of pushing such policies to 

the political forefront (Leroy, 2001; Mariaccia, 2002). 

 

21 Two hundred bicycles have been available free of charge at twenty-five 

stations in the city since 1998 (see Rennes, 2002).

22 With the exception of the burgeoning action-consommation network (see 

Action Consommation, 2003), almost all French-language Internet sources 

specifically dedicated to these issues have emanated from Canada, 

Switzerland, or Belgium. A good example is the Eco-conso network, a 

Belgian initiative that maintains a website exclusively focused on 

sustainable consumption and provides both practical and theoretical 

information on many aspects of green consumerism (see Eco-conso, 2002). 23 Although occasionally employed, the most logical translation 

(Consommation durable) is somewhat awkward since durable in a 

consumption context usually connotes “expensive”—as in the expression 

consommation de biens durables (consumption of durable goods). In turn, 

the two remaining solutions (eco-consommation—the favored choice of 

Belgians—or consommation soutenable—the preferred choice of Frenchspeaking Canadians—are either conceptually restrictive or disconnected 

from the term sustainable development (développement durable).
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However, if the lack of alternative proposals is 

evident from an environmental standpoint, the debates 

about social justice, the (re)distribution of resources, and 

the protection of cultural diversity are more conducive for 

questioning both current consumption practices and the 

socio-economic mechanisms that sustain them. The 

following section investigates some of these developments. 

Reshaping the Framework of Consumption: 

Social Changes, Sustainability, and 

Consumption in France 

If green consumerism and the ecological 

modernization of consumption have hardly challenged the 

paradigmatic commitment of French policymakers to 

economic growth, other critical forces have nevertheless 

actively influenced in the national debate about alternative 

lifestyles and/or societal (re)organization. This section 

discusses three different instances of this growing social 

self-reflexivity towards consumption and the quality of 

everyday life. The first part describes recent institutional 

efforts to encourage a better distribution of wealth and 

work within the population (the 35-hour week), paying 

particular attention to the consequences of this new set of 

policies in terms of consumption patterns, lifestyles, and 

values. The second part identifies the main actors, 

networks, and ideas that have expressed the recent revival 

of anti-consumerism in France, assessing in the process the 

extent to which this emerging discursive coalition has taken 

root within the national political landscape. The final part 

clarifies the circumstances in which the entire spectrum of 

French political forces (i.e., both official and noninstitutional spheres) have joined forces to trigger a sort of 

national “discriminating consumerism” during international 

negotiations on issues implicitly connected with 

environment and consumption. 

Sharing Work through Social Reform: The 35 Hour 

Week 

The latest manifestation of the French inclination 

for social interventionism, the 35 Hour Week Act 

(réduction du temps de travail, or RTT), was the 

cornerstone of the political program proposed by the 

socialist/communist/green coalition in power between 1997 

and 2002.24 In contrast with previous reforms, however, 

this scheme was not so much about “reducing” work as 

“communalizing” it. The main challenge was to tackle 

 

24 In terms of working time, three main historical phases are generally 

distinguished. The first phase (from 1848 to 1936) is a period when the first 

limitations appeared in legislation regarding maximum working time, 

minimum working age, and so forth. These measures are justified almost 

exclusively in terms of health and safety. The second phase extends from 

1936 (the year at which the 40 hour week, plus two weeks per year of paid 

holiday, was implemented) until the mid-1970s, when the reduction of 

working time was justified in terms of a balancing act between monetary 

income and living conditions. The abundance of work during this period 

created an “over-time” culture that prompted regulation. The third phase—

from the mid-1970s until the present—has been marked by rising 

unemployment and this situation has created a political rationale to shift 

toward the concept of “work-sharing.” If the 39 hour week (plus five weeks 

per year of paid holiday) enacted in 1981 is still essentially explainable as a 

political gesture from the left-wing government that came to power after 

more than thirty years in opposition, the 35 hour week created in 2003 is 

itself an authentic illustration of the “work-sharing” doctrine.

unemployment through a better repartition of work, a goal 

pursued under the double constraint of neither reducing 

salaries nor weakening national productivity. To make this 

possible, the scheme offered everyone something in 

exchange for his or her purported sacrifice. Employees 

gained an average of four additional hours of free time per 

week without salary reduction; in return, they were to 

moderate future salary demands and to renegotiate their 

work contracts to allow more flexibility over the year 

(annualisation).25 Employers had their national insurance 

contributions reduced for newly hired staff, in addition to 

enhanced flexibility (and therefore better productivity). 

Overtime work was discouraged by imposing heavy 

taxation, and the diminution in employers’ national 

insurance contributions was financed by the state with the 

money it saved by cutting the number of unemployment 

benefit claims. 

Although repeatedly ridiculed by neo-classical 

economists throughout the world (e.g., Graham, 1998; The 

Economist, 2000), as well as at home by right-wing parties 

and employer associations, the law was passed in June, 

1998. It took effect in 2000 for large businesses and in 

2002 for small- and medium-sized firms. Although it is still 

early to draw definitive conclusions, with perhaps the 

exception that unemployment figures have changed little, 

most analysts have thus far deemed the program to be a 

success (eg., Hutton, 2001).26

Impacts of the 35 Hour Week on Consumption 

Large-scale, scientifically monitored studies of 

the 35-hour week’s macro-economic effects on household 

consumption will not be available until the end of 2004 

(Viard, 2002). However, commentators have been surprised 

by preliminary data suggesting that many basic social 

behaviors have undergone a marked evolution in a 

relatively short period. 

First, it is instructive to start by considering how 

the RTT has been interpreted in terms of altered work 

patterns. Since negotiations concerning increased flexibility 

took place primarily at the level of each individual 

company, employees appear to be reallocating their four 

additional free hours per week in different ways. Table 1 

displays the main tendencies in 2001. The most striking 

feature is the remarkable diversity in the types of 

arrangements—in other words, the numerous ways in 

which the reduction in working hours has translated 

concretely into new daily routines. The most readily visible 

effect of the reform has been a considerable “smoothing” 

effect on the structure of social times, with traditional peak 

hours in transport, leisure, and shopping now increasingly 

spread over a broader span (Viard, 2002). 

 

25 This element of flexibility was instrumental in getting the (moderate) 

support of rural communities where the organization of annual work 

(annualisation) proved adaptable to the highly seasonal patterns of agrarian 

economies.

26 Although France experienced a sharp decline in unemployment during 

the period 1997-2002 (roughly from 13% to 8.6%), the portion attributable 

to the RTT appears to account for less than one point of this decrease 

(between 250,000 and 500,000 jobs directly created by RTT in 2002—the 

objectives were for about 700,000). However, productivity does not seem to 

have been adversely affected and, from a social standpoint, the reform has 

been a resounding success (e.g., The Guardian, 2002; Le Monde, 2001a; 

News Weekly 2001).
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Table 1 The Implementation of the 35-Hour Week: The 

Multiple Arrangements. 

Arrangement Percent 

Reduction from 7.75 to 7-hour working day 13 

Extra days off per month 21 

Extra half-day off per week 13 

Extra day off every other week 7 

Extra time “on account” 4 

7.5-hour working day plus extra weeks of holiday per year 7 

Other (including a mix of the above) 35 

Source: Adapted from Touriscopie (2001) and Viard (2002)

For instance, the trend toward longer weekends—

typically three to four days—has contributed to a shift of 

the congestion peaks from the traditional pattern of 

Mondays and Fridays to Tuesday mornings and Thursday 

afternoons. This “smoothing” effect also represents a time 

gain, because it limits the delays caused by concentration of 

activity. Most markedly, the RTT has reduced queuing time 

in shops, public transport, roads, and highways during the 

usual rush hours (7-9 am and 5-7 pm), as well as during 

national holidays and summer-travel periods. 

In more qualitative terms, the reform’s main 

impact on everyday life to date seems to be its clear effect 

on the status of non-commercially related activities. These 

trends were already apparent in surveys investigating what 

people intended to do with their additional free time before 

the implementation of the RTT (see, for instance, Mazzoli, 

1999; Ipsos-Bates, 1999). More recent studies of actual 

behavior have begun to confirm these initial findings (e.g., 

CFDT, 2001; Viard, 2002). For example, Table 2 shows the 

results of a survey carried out for ministerial services in 

2001. In terms of consumption, these results indicate that 

the main effects of the RTT are much more qualitative 

(consuming differently) than quantitative (consuming more 

or less). In addition to friend- and family-related 

activities—which appear to be the “big winners” of the 

reform—the main beneficiaries include a range of personal 

leisure and domestic-production activities, such as walking, 

reading, gardening, cooking, and watching television, that 

are drawn together under the survey’s first and second 

headings (Viard, 2002). Even the tourism sector (predicted 

to boom under the new arrangement) seems destined to 

remain approximately at its prior level, because most of the 

increasingly prevalent “short breaks” away from home are 

taken primarily within an enlarged “domestic” framework 

(i.e., a second home, at friends’ and families’ homes; see 

Touriscopie, 2001). 

Shopping habits have also undergone significant 

transformations, with most basic provisioning—for 

example, food shopping—spread over the week, as 

opposed to concentrated on Saturdays. This day of the 

week, traditionally France’s shopping day because of the 

very small number of shops open on Sundays, is now 

increasingly dedicated either to “personal leisure” as 

mentioned above, or to more indulgent acts of consumption 

that require meticulous selection (e.g., reading books or 

listening to audio recordings).27 Overall, these preliminary 

 

27 French regulations still consider Sundays to be jours de repos (resting 

days). The premium for hours worked on Sundays (typically about doubletime) is comparable to the rate that applies for work at night or on national 

holidays.

results clearly show that new consumption strategies are 

emerging, and that the time gained from work reduction 

saves extra time normally expended in such situations as 

constrained shopping or traffic jams. This displacement 

has, in turn, freed up blocks of time in which people favor 

essentially less commoditized activities—for example, 

personal development and family—or where previously 

tedious routine activities, such as supermarket shopping, 

transport, and cooking, have been turned back into 

pleasurable activities (e.g., shopping in town markets, 

cycling, creative cooking; see Le Monde, 2001a). 

Table 2 What Does the 35-Hour Week Allow You to Do? 

 Activity Percent 

Spend more time with children/family 52 

Rest more 35 

Participate in more sporting activities 34 

Go out for “cultural purposes” (e.g., museums, cinema, 

theatre, concert) 

18 

Get involved in associations and NGOs 11 

Participate in training and learning activities 6 

Travel more 3 

Consume/purchase more 2 

Does not change anything 6 

Source: Adapted from Ministère de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité (MES, 

2001)

In addition, the domestic-gender partition has 

changed, although it is not yet clear whether this trend will 

eventually translate into a less biased chore distribution 

(Viard, 2002). While cooking and shopping arrangements 

seem more equitable, it is not yet evident whether this 

represents a more general phenomenon or a simple 

widening of traditional divisions, as holds for “do-ityourself” home improvements or ironing, where each 

partner appears to shoulder more of their conventionally 

proscribed tasks. 

Lastly, the reform seems to have triggered 

potentially far-reaching changes in perceptions and beliefs. 

Some studies have identified a correlation between the 

RTT’s implementation and the respective emphasis given to 

various “life-defining values,” with a marked tendency to 

devote greater importance to non-materialist needs at the 

expense of materialist desires (see, for instance, MES, 

2001; CFDT, 2001; L’Express, 2002). Of course, such 

results need to be qualified in several respects. First, this 

trend has been consistently observed in France since the 

economic crisis of the 1980s (Volatier, 1995). Moreover, in 

a context of rapid socio-economic changes (at the time of 

the RTT surveys, 2000-2002, France was witnessing a 

steady decrease in unemployment figures) it is hard to 

distinguish reform-induced changes from other factors. 

Notwithstanding these difficulties, most 

commentators agree that the new work arrangements 

have—at least to a certain degree—accelerated a reevaluation of non-materialist aspirations (e.g., Viard, 2002; 

Le Monde, 2001b; L’Express, 2001). For example, in the 

post-implementation study discussed above, the RTT

questionnaire ended by asking: “What would you prefer in 

the future?” Interestingly, a majority of respondents (54%) 

chose “earning less money” over “earning more and having 

less free time” (41%) (MES, 2001). A more recent national 

poll, carried out for a reputable periodical, reported similar 

results: a record eight out of ten respondents asserted that 
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private life (ie., personal activities, family life) was their 

first source of “accomplishment” (L’Express, 2002). In the 

same survey, fewer than two out of three respondents 

deemed success in professional life “essential.” Moreover, 

among individuals who viewed their professional life in 

such terms, the measure of success was primarily defined 

as personal interest in the job. 

These findings tend to support the hypothesis 

that, in addition to changing the structural conditions of 

consumption (more time, same wages), the 35 hour reform 

actually supports, and perhaps even accelerates, a cultural 

shift away from a number of materialist values. Some 

observers have even described the reform’s socio-cultural 

impacts as “revolutionary” (e.g., Guardian, 2002). In any 

case, the RTT has undoubtedly stimulated a degree of selfreflexivity among French consumers and encouraged a 

collective reassessment of a range of needs, desires, and 

values directly related to questions concerning the 

appropriate form and level of consumption—for example, 

how much is enough? 

A More Sustainable Consumption? 

Notwithstanding the underlying cultural changes 

induced by the reform, it presently seems premature to say 

whether this new framework will entail a purely 

quantitative decrease in national consumption. A smaller 

proportion of unemployed consumers, after all, could quite 

conceivably lead to the opposite outcome. In this sense, it 

may be the case that the RTT’s net effect on aggregate 

material provisioning, at least in the short term, will 

actually be positive.28 Even so, the realignment of working 

hours in France could nevertheless be instrumental in 

ensuring a more equitable distribution of labor and free 

time that would contribute to social cohesion, arguably an 

essential feature of social sustainability. Similarly, it is 

possible to assume that many forms of conspicuous 

consumption could be, if not completely halted, at least 

significantly restrained by a program that creates de facto 

limits on personal income by, for example, imposing high 

taxes on overtime work. Such a measure would dampen 

consumers’ actual purchasing power, as well as their 

material aspirations. In this respect, the 35-hour reform can 

be envisioned as directly connected with sustainable 

consumption. 

Although France is not the first to implement this 

type of policy, the country’s size--58 million people—sets 

it apart. Moreover, the policy is being pursued in a 

relatively short timeframe and with the strong support of a 

population typically removed from the kind of “overtime 

culture” that is still common elsewhere (Carvel, 2002). 

As remarkable as these developments might be, 

one should be careful when interpreting them through the 

lens of sustainable consumption. Indeed, while the RTT

seems to be having a restraining effect on individual 

consumption and encourages lifestyle re-evaluation, we 

should keep in mind that only the rampant unemployment 

that has plagued France for more than two decades made it 

 

28 This occurs because at a similar level of income, an unemployed person 

spends one quarter of the sum expended by an employed person (Viard, 

2002).

politically acceptable.29 This makes it easy to understand 

why proponents’ arguments have remained focused on 

economic growth—and thus increased levels of 

consumption—and also why government officials have 

otherwise adopted a resolutely business-friendly attitude in 

other sectors, such as advertising. From this perspective, 

the RTT (and the structural changes it entails) should not be 

interpreted as a conscious, paradigmatic shift towards 

sustainable consumption. To find political support for such 

a change in France, one has to look instead at the rather 

nebulous wave of anti-consumerism that has been alive in 

the country since 1968, and which has recently seemed to 

take on a new momentum. 

Institutions Challenged: The Revival of French 

Anti-consumerism 

With broad ideological support from elite 

national publications, such as Le Monde Diplomatique and 

Le Canard Enchaîné, as well as from newer periodicals, 

such as Silence, the activist segment of the French anticonsumerist movement is roughly divided into two main 

groups. First, a number of organizations have gathered 

around the denunciation of broadly defined 

“consumerism,” with a clear tendency to choose the world 

of advertising (and especially “hegemonic” brands) as their 

primary target. Examples include RAP (Résistance à 

l’Aggression Publicitaire), an association that has been 

active since 1992 and that seeks 

[T]o identify the advertising 

processes aiming at conditioning the consumer 

and the citizen; to promote (possibly through 

individual or collective resistance acts) the vote 

of laws protecting the liberties threatened by 

these processes; to lobby elected politicians...and 

to encourage the creation of non-alienating forms 

of communication (RAP, 2002). 

Many of the association’s campaigns have used a 

discursive mix of anti-consumerism and environmentalism 

and, quite significantly, its activism has encroached on 

various cultural issues. For example, RAP organizes 

“action-cinéma,” consisting of demonstrations at movie 

theaters to protest the replacement of traditional art forms 

(pre-screening short films) with commercial 

advertisements. Of course, RAP is only one example among 

a global network of similarly attuned organizations that 

disseminate alternative ideas at a national level and that 

encourage acts of resistance, such as “Buy Nothing Day” 

(La journée sans achat) and “No Television Week” (La 

semaine sans télé). Other forms of protest against 

commercial exploitation of events, such as Christmas or the 

recently imported celebration of Halloween, have taken 

place. This network of anti-consumerists includes, for 

instance, the Lyons-based Casseur de pub (inspired by its 

Canadian counterpart the Adbusters Media Foundation), Le 

 

29 It should be noted that the RTT does not encompass many affluent, 

independent professionals such as attorneys, physicians, or senior 

executives. Moreover, the current right-wing government (in place since 

May 2002) has introduced measures to limit the reform’s impact, notably by 

reducing the taxes that apply to overtime work (The Guardian, 2002).
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Publiphobe, the association Chiche (the youth branch of the 

Green Party) or Resistance Verte (a Geneva-based 

association specifically focusing on the environmentconsumption interface). In addition, this network has 

developed close links with a number of influential authors 

and journalists who, like Naomi Klein (1999) in the 

English-speaking world, have exposed what they call the 

“totalitarianism of advertisement.”30

Notwithstanding the growing influence of these 

radical groups, the second set of dissident voices has 

attracted the largest amount of support so far. By means of 

highly structured positions on international issues such as 

Third World debt and international trade disputes, this 

faction has been led by the association Action for a Tobin 

Tax to Assist the Citizen (ATTAC), a rapidly expanding 

NGO with more than 30,000 active members in France 

(80,000 members worldwide) in 2002, which had achieved 

international recognition in less than five years. Originally 

set up to lobby for the Tobin Tax, this association has 

embraced a wider agenda, including a well-articulated anticonsumerist stance (ATTAC, 2002a, 2002b). While it is still 

too early to assess its national impact, many observers 

claim (and many signs show) that—in conjunction with a 

number of other closely aligned organizations— ATTAC

has garnered notice at the highest levels of French politics. 

The organization has contributed to spectacular changes in 

policymakers’ attitudes on issues such as the role of the 

World Trade Organization, the use of tax havens, the 

application of the precautionary principle, and the status of 

genetically modified foods.31

In addition to ATTAC’s watchdog role, in which 

it publicly denounces proponents of “destructive and 

unsustainable desires,” the association has supported 

proactive policies, most notably the use of boycotts and the 

endorsement of fair-trade products (Pouradier, 2001). Some 

observers claim that it has also contributed to the 

renovation of French activism as a whole, notably by 

clearly dissociating itself from all political parties and 

focusing primary attention on social issues. By recruiting 

from all sections of society (including academia), ATTAC

has also developed an ability to engage both in technical 

debates and direct action. Moreover, it has been a highly 

visible component of the anti-globalization movement that 

formed during the battles of Seattle, Genoa, and Nice, 

where activists established strategic links with the “antiadvertising alliance.” It is this burgeoning coalition—

promptly joined by other movements, such as the smallfarmers union (Confédération Paysanne) of José Bové—

that gradually came to form the French “delegation” at 

numerous international demonstrations during the late 

1990s. 

Among its many distinctive features, this national 

assemblage of anti-consumerist organizations has 

perpetuated a French tradition of stiff cultural resistance 

 

30 In France, these authors include Koechlin de Bizemont and Grapas 

(1975), or more recently Frédéric Beigbeder (the author of the 2000 best 

seller 99FF that sold more than 300,000 copies), and Florence Amadou (a 

Le Monde journalist and author of the acclaimed Le livre noir de la pub) 

(Amadou, 2001).

31 In 2000, ATTAC’s influence on the French political scene was 

demonstrated by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin’s decision to support the 

Tobin Tax—a first for a G7 leader.

against a number of emblematic commodities and 

prompted several international trade disputes between 

France and its allies. It is to this essential element of the 

relationship between French political culture and 

consumption that the discussion now turns. 

From Political Culture to Cultural Politics: French 

“Discriminating Consumerism” and the Defense of 

National “Values” in the WTO Battles 

On the few occasions where the old French 

republican-unity reflex—the alliance of institutional forces 

and civil society for a particular cause—has been triggered 

of late, cultural themes have been at the core of the 

argument. In other words, “culture” has provided the main 

discursive channel for the nation’s capacity to reflect on 

consumption and new forms of interventionism. This 

particular response was prominent during a couple of recent 

trade negotiations that successively dealt with two of the 

most revered elements of French culture: cinema and food. 

The first of these disputes took place in 1993 

during the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on 

Tariffs and Trade (GATT). France rejected an American 

demand to further liberalize the market for cultural goods, a 

measure that would have meant an end to the domestic 

quotas and subsidies that sustain the creation and 

distribution of French films, books, television programs, 

and music. Supported strongly by the Canadians, this 

refusal came to be known as l’exception culturelle (the 

cultural exception), a notion that has since been erected as a 

principle in French politics and is now widely regarded as 

non-negotiable across the national political spectrum 

(Trautmann, 1999). If economic arguments were obviously 

influential in shaping this position—France, the birthplace 

of cinema, is the world’s third largest film producer behind 

the United States and India—the lively domestic debate 

that took place during the negotiations showed that, above 

all else, the nation’s cultural identity and lifestyle were 

perceived to be at stake (Burin des Roziers, 1998). 

The argument was that certain goods were 

“special,” in that they embodied the “fields of collective 

reflexivity” and mediated the symbolic expressions of the 

community’s character. Films—as well as music, books, 

and theatrical performances—were thus seen as structuring 

the community’s ethics. In other words, these cultural 

creations represented a series of nodal points in the 

transmission of language and values within—and beyond—

the national culture. A consensus then emerged regarding 

the fact that such products should not to be relegated to the 

global free-market, where their relative vulnerability could 

have meant their disappearance (Warnier, 1999). 

While this debate clearly triggered nationwide 

self-reflexivity about the role of cultural consumption, it 

was soon followed by another famous episode which put 

analogous constructions to similar ends. The United StatesEuropean Union dispute over hormone-treated beef once 

again exposed the key function of consumption in 

constructing national identity. Disregarding the 

precautionary principle, the World Trade Organization 

(WTO) ruled in 1998 that in the absence of scientific 

evidence, the European ban over American hormonetreated beef was not justified. As a result, the WTO 

permitted the United States to retaliate, and taxes on a 
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number of European goods were increased by 100%. The 

American response, in particular, targeted traditional 

French products such as Dijon mustard, Roquefort cheese, 

and Foie Gras.

32 The decision caused an upheaval in 

Europe, and French farmers—headed by sheep-breeder 

José Bové and backed by thousands of anti-globalization 

activists—attacked symbols of what they considered to be 

American corporate imperialism, calling for an “agricultural” exception (exception agriculturelle) while 

dismantling a McDonald’s outlet under construction in the 

small town of Millau.33 As a result, Bové became a hero of 

the cultural resistance and later a national martyr when 

imprisoned for three months. 

Although quite trivial by themselves, these events 

actually had an extremely significant effect on French 

public opinion. Once again, emblematic objects of 

consumption—hormone-treated beef, Roquefort cheese, 

McDonald’s hamburgers—occupied center stage in the 

clash between two sets of values (themselves symbolizing 

different forms of social development), and immediately 

reinforced the binary moot associations that had surfaced 

during the battle over l’exception culturelle. On the one 

hand, a link was made between entities such as small-scale 

farming, the precautionary principle, “independent” 

cinema, and active resistance against big corporations. On 

the other hand, a connection was established between the 

United States, Hollywood, hormone-treated beef, the WTO, 

and global food distribution chains such as McDonald’s. It 

is clear, of course, which of these assemblages came to be 

associated with “sustainability” in the French mind. This 

dichotomous vision has obviously been strongly reinforced 

by more recent international developments, including the 

war in Iraq.34

 

32 Britain, for instance, was not subject to the sanctions, since the Blair 

government had made it clear that it wanted to end the EU-import ban.

33 Lynas (1999) captured the tone of the dispute when he wrote, “With a 

characteristic French flair for symbolism, the mayor of a small village, StPierre-de-Trivisy, retaliated by doubling the price of Coca-Cola sold at the 

town’s amenity centres.” The choice of McDonald’s as a target for 

protesters’ anger is also revealing because it illustrates the historical 

difficulty that France has had coming to terms with this particular form of 

consumption. Indeed, the country’s fast-food outlets stand accused of all 

sorts of evil and, in the public’s mind, epitomize the industrial grip on the 

food chain. It is not uncommon to see violent attacks being perpetrated 

against them, despite the company’s efforts to redesign their menu to please 

the “difficult” French market. For instance, fast-food chains in France—

McDonald’s included—offer a large selection of salads, mineral waters, and 

so forth. Some restaurants have even started, at considerable cost, to 

incorporate local products (such as AOC cheeses) into their offerings. 34 The controversy surrounding the American-British led war in Iraq has 

clearly reinforced this antagonism. It is interesting to note that, once again in 

this case, “consumption” has been one of the main channels that have 

animated the dispute. On one hand, there has been a well-publicized 

backlash on French products in the United States following the refusal of 

France to back military intervention (including the infamous “freedom fries” 

episode). On the other hand, the American decision to go to war has 

reinforced and broadened the latent anti-Americanism found in some parts 

of French society. Two anecdotes help to illustrate these sentiments. In the 

months leading up to the conflict (November 2002), a French firm headed by 

a Tunisian-born entrepreneur decided to launch a rival to Coke called 

Mecca-Cola and to give 10% of the profits to a Palestinian children’s 

charity. The initiative has been a tremendous success, and more than 2 

million bottles were sold in France in the product’s first two months (The 

Guardian, 2003). Also, at the end of the formal conflict in Iraq, the leading 

comedy show in France (Les Guignols de l’Info) depicted American troops 

landing in the country with bottles of Coke, McDonald’s hamburgers, and 

Disney souvenirs with the subtitle, “Finally, weapons of mass destruction 

are to be found in Iraq.”

Two aspects concerning these events seem 

particularly significant. First, in both cases the discursive 

channel of “culture” (coupled in the second case with 

“nature”) has come to repudiate certain forms of 

consumption (i.e., Hollywood films, hormone-treated beef) 

that many in France perceive as detrimental to the 

collective best interest. In brief, the global, culturally 

insensitive qualities of these products render them illadapted to the community’s value system, especially in the 

face of their seemingly hegemonic predisposition. In other 

words, the propensity of these goods to obliterate 

competition through large economies of scale is often 

accompanied by an ostensible lowering of quality. Thus, 

French government officials support this resistance to 

protect cultural diversity and to keep the stock of social 

development options as open and varied as possible. 

Second, in both cases, the products at stake were 

felt to transcend their status as mere commodities, to 

actually become value-laden, symbolic forms of 

consumption. In other words, art and food were true 

metaphorical expressions of the community’s savoir-vivre. 

Unlike automobiles or refrigerators, the transformation of 

the creation-production processes by culturally blind and 

exclusively profit-driven interests would not only imply a 

modification in the products’ style, but would be an 

extensive mutation of the meaning attached to their 

consumption. The entire value system on which they are 

based would be compromised. This explanation highlights 

why the discursive mix that justified the restrictions was 

very much inspired by the precautionary principle that is 

found, for instance, in the controversy over geneticallymodified food. In this instance, however, the critique was 

harnessed to a cultural problématique. 

How, then, is the French “discriminating 

consumerism” relevant from the perspective of sustainable 

consumption? Of course, the point here is neither to assert 

the intrinsically sustainable quality of French commodities 

nor to praise the virtues of protectionism per se.35 However, 

the French response witnessed in the course of these events 

casts a light on two key political aspects of sustainable 

consumption. 

First, it illustrates the significance of national 

culture in the transformation of consumption patterns. As 

the primary force determining, a priori, the relative 

desirability among various forms of consumption, culture 

indeed proves to be—for better or worse—the most 

powerful agent of change (or resistance to change) in 

consumption habits. From there, it is not difficult to see 

why the project of sustainable consumption may eventually 

have to go beyond the technical and economicallymediated assessment of ecological or socio-economic 

impacts—for example, eco- or fair-trade labels—to 

acknowledge the entire dialectics at issue and, in particular, 

the tight relationship linking consumption with various 

 

35 Of course, many French artists and cultural goods provide an explicit 

space for self-reflexivity about (and challenge of) materialistic values—for 

instance, the works of a film-maker such as Godard, the 1997 blockbuster Le 

Bonheur est dans le près, or contemporary artists such as Souchon, Noir 

Désir or Manu Chao. However, this quality is not generally applicable, and 

is not restricted to, French or European cultural products. The same 

reasoning applies, of course, to agricultural practices and food products.
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modes of cultural valuation. This point is well encapsulated 

by the Brundtland Report, when its authors insist that 

“[s]ustainable development requires the promotion of 

values that encourage consumption standards that are 

within the bounds of the ecologically possible” (WCED, 

1987, my emphasis). From a major source of resistance, 

culture could indeed be turned into a vital partner in the 

implementation of more socially sensitive sustainable 

consumption policies, that is to say policies informed by an 

understanding of the whole architecture of societal 

consumption, including its relational properties. Moreover, 

as in the case of France, such initiatives would have to 

assess the desirability of various consumptions, not only on 

the basis of an ethical label attached a posteriori to the 

products, but rather on the basis of the values a priori 

engaged in their production and (non-) consumption, if they 

are to successfully transmit sustainable habits.36

The second consideration inspired by these 

episodes is that the French government has demonstrated 

that it is possible to go beyond the traditional framework of 

legitimacy to impose restrictions on certain forms of 

consumption. While public policies governing consumption 

are usually based on objective-material qualities—for 

example, those of drugs and weapons—the framing in this 

case encompasses the subjective-cultural qualities of 

certain forms of provisioning if they are ostensibly 

threatened by a dogmatic interpretation of laissez-faire. In 

this case, the French supported new forms of 

interventionism to counterbalance the pyramidal, 

capitalistic, and often manipulative way in which consumer 

desires are manufactured. 

In other words, two issues are paramount. First, 

these disputes facilitated the opening of a national debate 

about the relative desirability of certain forms of 

consumption in the name of cultural diversity. Second, it 

allowed the development of new regulations to ensure that, 

despite a commitment to free-market principles, different 

value-laden products—and thus different value systems—

can co-exist without imposing a “cultural diktat” on the 

other(s). 

Of course, as with the RTT, one should be careful 

about interpreting these developments in the light of 

sustainable consumption. However, just as the worksharing program could eventually alter the configuration of 

material desires, this form of discriminating consumerism 

could be a major step toward alternative provisioning 

patterns. More than merely illustrating the rather egocentric 

way that a particular culture intuitively constructs a notion 

such as sustainability to accommodate its own needs, this 

approach may actually set a precedent for more universal 

values underlying the relationship between consumption 

and quality of life. Indeed, if Cohen (2001) is right that 

sustainable consumption calls for a “[transformation of] the 

physical and mental architecture of (post)modernity,” and if 

cultural diversity is ultimately the think tank that produces 

 

36 In the opposite case, sustainable consumption could indeed face the same 

limitations of, say, sustainable production through a culturally blind 

certification process. One can envision a film or a book that conveys an 

utterly destructive message of ecological nihilism being granted an eco-label 

for the exemplarily clean processes through which it is produced. For the 

same reason, a brilliant and influential piece of art extolling material 

simplicity could stand accused of being printed on non-recycled paper.

innovative “plans”, then the extension of economic or legal 

protection to the “cultural spaces of self-reflexivity,” as 

pioneered by the French, could well be the substance from 

which future “architects” will build “sustainable 

consumption.” This is especially likely if they aim at 

challenging not only the conspicuous forms of modern 

consumption, but also the very ideas and perceptions that 

promote it. 

Conclusion 

The concepts of environment and sustainable 

development in France have not formed a basis for the 

reassessment of consumption practices. If, following some 

of its European counterparts, the French government has 

indeed developed a range of tools to integrate ecological 

dimensions into market mechanisms, the country’s system 

of governance and political culture have, nevertheless, 

largely hindered a truly proactive response to the new 

agenda of sustainable development, particularly of 

sustainable consumption. However, a number of other 

discursive channels have successfully built contingent 

coalitions that directly address some of the most critical 

issues regarding sustainable consumption. Through a 

distributive framework, France has implemented the first 

national work-sharing program, and the cultural and 

environmental implications of this initiative are now 

becoming apparent. At the grassroots level, a diffuse but 

influential anti-consumerist network has managed—

through journals, associations, unions, and opinion 

leaders—to rejuvenate a culture of resistance against some 

of the most blatant expressions of materialism in the 

country, thereby influencing the national debate on 

sustainable consumption. Concurrently, this “culture of 

resistance” was transformed into a “resistance on culture” 

when international trade negotiations prompted nationwide 

support for the idea that consumer issues may, in some 

instances, impinge on the very concept of national identity 

and the right to cultural diversity. As such, this 

mobilization epitomizes what could develop into the most 

significant contribution of French political culture to the 

long-term, global project of sustainable consumption—

namely, the identification and the protection of cultural 

“nodal points” where consumption itself becomes 

synonymous with the expression of social identity, the 

(de)construction of needs and desires, and the manifestation 

of le droit à la difference. 

Finally, from a more operational perspective, the 

French case highlights the need for better synergy between 

the institutional world of green policymaking and the more 

holistic approach defended by radical groups. If these two 

camps are often pursuing similar goals, in practice they 

tend to ignore each other and scarcely join forces to win 

political battles. The sustainable-consumption debate is a 

case in point. Here, as elsewhere in the environmental 

debate, progressive institutional forces (ecological 

modernizers) would gain from supplementing their 

typically “cold” technical style (eg., eco-labeling standards) 

with a more direct confrontation of the core ecological 

contradictions of the capitalist system. This, in turn, would 

undoubtedly appeal to the many radicals who are not 

content with a mere procrastinating rejection of modernity 
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and the market. Through a focus on their common ground, 

the two camps could indeed constitute a powerful political 

force that is able to push realistic, but sweeping, policy 

proposals embracing the different time and space scales of 

the environmental crisis. Through such a holistic approach, 

one could finally see much-needed links made between 

diverse categories of environmental problems, such as 

“human ecology” issues (food consumption, pollution, 

nutrition), “environmental economics” issues (advertising 

and packaging regulation, taxation regimes), social and 

regional issues (employment conditions, local and regional 

urbanism schemes), and global environmental threats 

(climate change, transboundary pollution, world poverty). 

Without a doubt, such a “quality of life” outlook would 

also help this discursive coalition to reconcile a large 

portion of the public with the cause of sustainable 

consumption. 

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58 

ARTICLE 

The new politics of consumption: promoting 

sustainability in the American marketplace 

Maurie J. Cohen,* Aaron Comrov, & Brian Hoffner 

Graduate Program in Environmental Policy Studies, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights 

Newark, NJ 07102 USA (email: mcohen@adm.njit.edu)

While mainstream policymakers in the United States have to date evinced little interest in sustainable 

consumption, this does not mean that a political agenda designed to highlight the adverse impacts of 

consumerism has failed to take root in the country. In fact, a considerable number of activities are 

occurring that are broadly consistent with the aims of sustainable consumption. Inchoate though these 

efforts may be, there are indications that some proponents are beginning to link up and to forge a more 

readily definable social movement. The following discussion considers these multifarious expressions in 

accordance with a tripartite typology: social and political protest campaigns, lifestyle reinventions, and 

public policy initiatives. Of notable interest is that efforts to problematize consumerism do not stem from 

environmental concerns, but instead evolve out of public unease regarding such issues as working hours, 

leisure time, and family life. This situation raises questions about whether the common range of concepts 

associated with sustainable consumption accurately captures political initiatives in the United States to 

forge a link between declining well-being and mass consumption. 

KEYWORDS: sustainable consumption, politics, economic policy, environmental impacts, public policy, social values, market research, 

policy making, social attitudes, public awareness 

Introduction 

 

More than a decade has passed since the Río 

Earth Summit put sustainable development on the 

international policy agenda. Individuals and organizations 

with an interest in the concept have used this milestone to 

measure the progress that has been achieved formulating 

and implementing plans broadly consistent with the aims of 

sustainability (see, for example, Lafferty & Meadowcroft, 

2000; OECD, 2002). Viewing the situation solely from the 

vantage point of the affluent countries, it is apparent that 

several nations have embraced the challenges of 

sustainable development—foremost among them the 

Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—while others have 

evinced much greater caution. 

By virtually all accounts, the United States is an 

anomaly in terms of how its national government has 

sought to reconcile conventional policy objectives with the 

goals of sustainable development. The Clinton 

administration launched the President’s Council on 

Sustainable Development (PCSD) in 1993 and its staff 

prepared a handful of laudable reports (see, for example, 

PCSD, 1999). However, these initiatives achieved little 

public visibility and, in terms of their political influence, 

have had no enduring effect. When George W. Bush 

assumed office in 2001, his decision to disband the PCSD 

occurred with hardly any notice. In a recent comprehensive 

review of the uptake of sustainable development as a policy 

concept in the United States, Gary Bryner (2000) explains 

that: 

[F]ew political leaders have been willing to take 

on the broader questions of American values of 

economic growth, consumption, technology, land 

use, transportation, and individual freedom. Most 

Americans seem determined to view economic 

growth as limitless, constrained only by unwise 

policy or business choices. They resist strongly 

the idea that limits should be placed on material 

consumption, and exhibit tremendous faith in 

technological solutions to whatever problems 

confront them. Their strong commitment to 

private property rights places major limits on 

political decisions which seek to promote 

environmental ends but which involve limitations 

on established patterns of property usage. 
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59 

 In their comparative assessment of sustainable 

development in several affluent countries, Lafferty and 

Meadowcroft (2000) caustically conclude that, “sustainable 

development had had virtually no significant impact on the 

operations of the US federal government. It is not just that 

the term itself has failed to catch on, but also that core 

values associated with the idea—particularly the global 

equity dimension—have failed to gain even formal political 

acceptance” (italics in original). 

 There is no reason to dispute these claims and, if 

anything, the status of sustainable development in the 

United States has eroded further since these authors 

prepared their evaluations. The Bush administration has 

embraced a domestic agenda that seeks to systematically 

dismantle many of the country’s cornerstone pieces of 

environmental legislation (Cohen, 2004; see also Pope and 

Rauber, 2004; Alterman and Green, 2004). On the 

international front, hard-edged diplomacy and military 

intervention have supplanted humanitarian assistance and 

political empowerment as the preferred policy options. 

 Yet there are indications that the status of 

sustainable development in the United States is not as dire 

as this appraisal suggests. While it is true the concept 

currently is all but nonexistent at the level of the national 

government, there are signs that individual states are 

moving, albeit with noticeable hesitation and little unison, 

toward fragile acceptance of some of the core tenets of 

sustainability. Several states, for instance, have launched 

their own climate change mitigation programs and others 

are beginning to grapple with the difficulties of 

discouraging suburban sprawl (Pew Center on Global 

Climate Change, 2002). Consistent with these efforts, a 

consortium of ten northeastern states has begun to 

negotiate the guidelines for a regional market to trade 

greenhouse gas emissions credits (Johnson, 2003a). For 

students of American environmental policymaking, this 

pattern of state progressiveness in the face of federal 

intransigence is not surprising. The historical record shows 

that, from air pollution regulation to managing toxic 

chemicals, the states have trailblazed virtually every new 

environmental policy idea implemented in the United 

States. It has only been after the states have demonstrated 

effectiveness, and an unwieldy system of differing statebased standards has come into view, that the federal 

government has taken action (see, for example, Andrews, 

1999). With this experience in mind, the lack of enthusiasm 

for sustainable development at the national level becomes 

more understandable. 

 The intent here is not to contend that the system 

of American federalism is stealthily powering a 

sustainability revolution. Rather the claim is that policy 

innovation in large, diverse nations such as the United 

States is often not as readily discernible as it might be in 

smaller, more homogenous countries. Moreover, the 

constitutionally designed weakness of the national 

government in the United States heavily constrains 

opportunities for dynamic transformation. As a result, 

protest and local organization have been the engines of 

political change throughout American history. For these 

reasons, the study of sustainable development in spheres 

some distance removed from Washington, DC may yield 

more encouraging results. 

 Lafferty and Meadowcroft (2000) usefully 

disaggregate the admittedly vague and elusive notion of 

sustainable development into five themes: the integration 

of economy and environment, the development of strategic 

plans and monitoring programs, the design of opportunities 

for participation and stakeholder involvement, the 

internationalization of environmental policy, and the 

movement toward sustainable production and consumption. 

Because of the challenge the reformulation of production 

and consumption practices poses to the core values of 

liberal democracy, these scholars characterize it as the 

most ambitious component of the sustainable development 

agenda. This distinction helps to frame further the bold 

aims of the following discussion, namely that there exists 

in the United States not only underappreciated resolve for 

sustainable development, but that some of the most notable 

activities are occurring within the most demanding 

thematic sphere.1

To give credence to this contention that a new 

politics of consumption is currently taking hold in the 

United States, this study casts a wide net. The following 

discussion organizes a diverse array of developments into 

three broad categories: social and political protest 

campaigns, lifestyle reinventions, and public policy 

initiatives. 

First, it is axiomatic to observe that the United 

States has been at the forefront of the recent wave of 

globalization (see, for example, Green and Griffith, 2002; 

Bhagwati, 2002). Some commentators, such as Fabbrini 

(2002), contend that political resistance to globalization is 

most voluble in Europe and elsewhere, and is often 

tantamount to anti-Americanism. Lost in these discussions 

of international campaigns to confront American economic 

and cultural dominance is the fact that similar 

configurations have coalesced in the United States itself—

indeed the first major anti-globalization confrontation 

occurred in Seattle. While American activists, like their 

counterparts in other countries, have focused their attacks 

on international financial institutions, it is noteworthy that 

salient symbols of consumer culture (eg. The Gap, Nike, 

and Starbucks) have also been prominent targets. This 

particular facet of the anti-globalization movement in the 

United States promotes sustainable consumption through 

three separate (though interdependent) forms of social and 

political protest: anti-consumerist, anti-television, and antiadvertising. 

Second, other elements of this new politics of 

consumption embody a less impassioned approach and do 

not display the same kind of zealous and animated fervor. 

Predicated more on the reinvention of individual lifestyles 

than on overt social and political agitation, this set of 

 

1

 It is also important not to underestimate the monumental obstacles to 

sustainable development in the United States. For instance, income among 

Americans is more unevenly distributed than it has been in half a century 

and the country has the greatest income inequality among economically 

advanced nations. Moreover, while European nations have made 

considerable strides modernizing their environmental policymaking 

institutions during the past decade, the United States remains strongly 

committed to an increasingly ineffectual administrative model. 
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initiatives to encourage sustainable consumption comprises 

several different strands. The following discussion focuses 

specifically on voluntary simplicity, ethical consumption, 

and slow food. 

Finally, sub-national units of government in the 

United States have begun to implement a number of policy 

initiatives that have the implicit aim of promoting 

sustainable consumption. To be certain, government 

officials have not aggressively employed a language of 

sustainability to advance these programs. However, the 

correspondence between efforts to develop local 

greenhouse gas reduction schemes, to rebuild local 

economies, and to discourage the accumulation of 

consumer debt dovetail very closely with the aims of 

sustainable consumption. 

Protest Politics and Sustainable Consumption 

 

Consumption has been a pervasive element of 

social organization in the United States and, over the 

course of the last two centuries, this lifestyle form has 

inspired numerous political responses, ranging from the 

home economics movement of the nineteenth century to 

recent campaigns to foster consumer rights (Mayer, 1989; 

Furlough & Strikwerda, 1999). In some respects, the social 

agitation of the 1960s was fueled by a rebellion against 

mainstream consumer ideology. More recent protest 

politics have had a similar edge, as adherents have sought 

to expose what they construe as the falseness and the lack 

of authenticity inherent in mass consumerism. The 

following section focuses on three expressions of this 

anxiety: anti-consumerist protests, anti-television activism, 

and anti-advertising campaigns. 

 

Anti-Consumerism 

Among some youthful and vocal adherents, the 

disparagement of mass consumerism as a set of social 

practices, as well as attacks against some of its most 

emblematic symbols, has become a visible form of protest 

politics in the United States during the past decade. 

Activists have yet to construct many of the institutional 

features of a social movement, and instead rely on 

boisterous pranks designed to malign dominant expressions 

of contemporary consumer culture. Proponents are often 

disillusioned not only with material icons, but also evince a 

more general disenchantment with contemporary society 

(Zavestoski, 2002). While this disaffection derives from 

numerous sources, for analytic purposes it is instructive to 

group them into three broad categories—social, economic, 

and environmental. 

 First, anti-consumerism activists in the United 

States contend that consumption, or more specifically overconsumption, is harmful to both the individual and the 

wider society (DeGraaf et al., 2002; Schor, 1998). This cast 

of mind asserts that personal attachment to inanimate 

objects is psychologically stultifying and that consumers 

should more appropriately invest in education and other 

projects to foster societal improvement. Moreover, they 

maintain that rampant egoistic acquisition diminishes 

community solidarity and encourages artificial competition 

to accumulate. Proponents of this view fundamentally 

disagree with neo-classical economic principles, and assert 

in contrast that an undue emphasis on material acquisition 

constrains socioeconomic mobility and lowers the societal 

standard of living. In addition to these ills, activists stress 

that consumption drains away valuable time and money, 

ruins physical and mental health, threatens religious faith, 

and undermines civic institutions. The largest beneficiaries 

of consumption, this critique asserts, are its ubiquitous 

advocates. Anti-consumerism is also highly critical of the 

mainstream media for their defenselessness before 

powerful advertisers. 

 Second, American anti-consumerism activists 

assert that lifestyles founded on mass consumption oblige 

people to assemble a large arsenal of inexpensive products, 

many of which are produced under exploitive conditions 

(Bender & Greenwald, 2003; Broad, 2002). The relentless 

drive for cheaper goods leads to the loss of local 

employment and to the migration of production to offshore 

locations. Moreover, this form of uncritical consumerism 

erodes spiritual and cultural diversity. A retreat from a 

goods-oriented lifestyle will obstruct the march toward 

international homogenization and reduce the economic 

pressure on developing countries to abandon venerable 

traditions. 

 Finally, contemporary American anticonsumerism alleges that to create a sustainable and 

healthy world for future generations it is necessary to strive 

for the diffusion of more modest consumption practices 

(Myers & Kent, 2004; Princen et al., 2002).2

 One of the 

major drivers of this sensibility is a concern that the export 

of prevalent American lifestyles contributes to numerous 

ecological problems. Activists are especially mindful about 

dematerializing their consumption practices as a means of 

reducing their reliance on natural resources, disposable 

commodities, chlorine-based products, agricultural 

chemicals, virgin wood, meat, dairy products, processed 

foods, non-durable appliances, and consumables 

attributable to exploitive labor practices. A key precept of 

this philosophy is the encouragement of relatively modest 

lifestyles on a global level, as this will lead to a more 

environmentally sustainable economy and will resolve 

social ills stemming from an inequitable distribution of 

wealth. 

 These three currents of anti-consumerism 

presently flow like meandering rivulets of a stream. 

Despite their different emphases, activists view their goals 

as entirely practicable, because unchecked materialism is, 

by this view, a constructed social phenomenon rather than 

an indomitable feature of the human condition. By 

disabling the powerful engines driving prevailing 

consumption desires, people can assert themselves and 

steer away from the destructive and manipulative forces. 

 The tenor of anti-consumerism in the United 

States is at once low-key and loud. It is quiet in the sense 

that it does not have an organized mass following to 

communicate its message on a consistent basis. Activists 

are also relatively unobtrusive because they do not 

 

2 Anti-consumerism activists are actually reticent about employing the term 

“sustainable consumption” because of suspicions about the international 

organizations that are responsible for its popularization.
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customarily advocate audacious acts of vigilantism and 

violent confrontation. Part of the reason for its current 

status is that anti-consumerism, aside from its sometimes 

creative tactics, has yet to articulate an incremental 

program for achieving its political objectives. Anticonsumerism is also simultaneously loud in the sense that 

its recommendations and social commentary are markedly 

radical. Some adherents have also begun to promote 

strategies that are more aggressive and, in some cases, have 

used violence against property as a means of political 

expression.3

Anti-consumerism in the United States is not 

presently endowed with many of the organizational 

features commonplace among more established social 

movements. Few national organizations have taken up the 

mantle of this campaign as their primary mission, and 

existing environmental, social justice, and consumer 

organizations have been, at best, reluctant partners. 

Nonetheless, one prominent group working on this front is 

the Adbusters Media Foundation (AMF), a small, plucky 

group that has made strides to problematize consumerism 

and to give concrete form to an emergent social movement 

(Rumbo, 2002; Bordwell, 2002). 

Based in Vancouver, AMF was founded by 

Danish-born activist Kalle Lasn in 1989. The organization 

currently publishes a quarterly magazine, entitled 

Adbusters, that reaches approximately 85,000 readers and 

has the appearance of an elite design magazine.4

 The 

publication’s content is highly premised on irony and 

parody and is savagely critical of mainstream advertising, 

consumer products, and consumerism as a lifestyle. In 

place of paid advertisements, Adbusters publishes its own 

satirical versions of real print promotions, with the intent of 

using humor to expose the negative social, psychological, 

and environmental impacts of the products they depict. The 

magazine’s funding comes from subscriptions, 

philanthropic contributions, and revenue derived producing 

promotional segments for Greenpeace. 

Adbusters refers to its specific style of political 

expression as “culture jamming,” a term coined in 1985 by 

a San Francisco-based music group called Negativland 

(Lasn, 1999). More specifically, the approach involves a 

kind of cultural jujitsu that seeks to turn the language of 

advertising and promotion against itself. Culture jammers 

also use civil disobedience and other provocative means to 

reclaim certain “strategic spaces” that have been 

appropriated for commercial purposes.5

 The specific spaces 

to which culture-jamming techniques are applied can be 

physical places, such as parks, promenades, and highways, 

as well as more subtlety psychological and cultural 

 

3 For instance, individuals associated with the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) 

have destroyed new suburban homes under construction and, perhaps most 

famously, burned down a $12 million ski lodge in Colorado (Brown, 2003). 4 Although Adbusters is based in Canada, American consumers constitute 

the its primary focal point and most of the magazine’s subscribers are based 

in the United States (Lindsay, 2002).

5 The group Project Billboard employs similar strategies to communicate 

anti-war and other messages of political protest. The organization was 

recently involved in a dispute with Clear Channel Communications over a 

provocative billboard that would be visible to participants at the Republican 

National Convention in New York City (Preston, 2004).

spheres. The so-called “un-commercials” that appear in 

Adbusters are creative caricatures of familiar 

advertisements and, as such, are paradigmatic examples of 

culture jamming. This mode of resistance has begun to 

transcend the clever lampooning of cultural symbols to 

include vandalizing billboards and defacing other 

promotional media.6

 

 In addition to publication of its magazine, AMF 

occasionally organizes boycotts, store sit-ins, mass singins, and local demonstrations to challenge mainstream 

lifestyles and to raise public consciousness. AMF’s largest 

event, and the activity through which the organization is 

most widely known, is its annual Buy Nothing Day (BND). 

BND is held in November of each year and is scheduled for 

the Friday following the American holiday of 

Thanksgiving, generally regarded as one of the most 

vigorous shopping days on the calendar. Promoted as “a 

third millennium holiday–a celebration of simplicity and 

frugality,” BND has become an international event, and the 

number of countries participating in it grows each year. An 

emphasis on leading more modest lifestyles is central to 

AMF’s mission, and the group maintains that less 

commercialism is essential for peace and global 

sustainability. 

 AMF exemplifies the contradictory temperament 

of anti-consumerism. The organization is, on one hand, 

quiet and cerebral and, on the other hand, loud and 

confrontational. Supporters advocate non-violence, yet 

endorse the goal of undermining existing centers of power 

and forging new ways to think about prevailing norms. 

AMF’s protest methods may be generally peaceful, but its 

stated objective is irrefutably radical. 

Anti-Television Activism 

After a slow start caused by the onset of World 

War II, television in the United States diffused at a rapid 

rate (von Schilling, 2003; Barnouw, 1990). By 1950, 3.1 

million households were watching, and just five years later 

this number had grown to 32 million. Today, 99% of 

American households have at least one television, and 

more than 50% of children in the United States have a set 

in their bedroom. The viewing equipment has been subject 

to a regular stream of technological improvements—color, 

cable, video compatible, DVD compatible, pay-to-view, 

high definition, and so forth. Television watchers can now 

even subscribe to services that allow one to delete 

commercials and to record one program while viewing 

another. An enthusiastic audience has eagerly embraced 

these upgrades and made substantial investments to acquire 

them. 

Advertising has been a continual presence on 

American television since the earliest days of the medium, 

and the magnitude of commercial promotionalism that 

occurs today is remarkable by any measure. Thirty percent 

of network news programming is devoted to commercials, 

and the average American views 20,000 broadcast 

advertisements each year. Despite consistent corporate 

 

6 At this point, culture jamming begins to meld with other more familiar 

forms of political protest associated with certain radical environmental 

organizations in the United States.
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claims that these images do not increase consumption, 

marketing managers spent $40 billion in 1999 to develop 

and air their product inducements (Samuel, 2001). 

A common social critique in recent decades has 

been to disparage television for its stultifying effects on 

viewers who spend long hours in front of the screen (see, 

for example, Mander, 1978). However, more recent 

appraisals adopt the opposite perspective. In fact, 

contemporary American critics of the technology insist that 

rather than contributing to passivity, television is notable 

for its motivational potential. It is an indisputable 

marketing precept that the comely images featured on 

television stimulate previously non-existent consumption 

urges. The role of advertising experts is not to promote this 

obvious fact, but to formulate the most appealing images 

and to convince viewers that material goods can satisfy 

their ethereal needs. 

According to anti-television activists in the 

United States, this continual ramping up of consumption is 

not trivial. Excessive television viewing exacerbates 

environmental dilemmas by drawing ever-larger volumes 

of raw materials into production. The medium is also 

alleged to be responsible for an assortment of social 

problems. For example, even a family that watches an 

ordinary amount of television exposes itself to a heavy 

dose of advertising. Parents often find themselves having to 

work long hours to generate the income necessary to 

purchase the kaleidoscopic menu of goods that their 

children demand. These circumstances detract from 

parents’ ability to foster meaningful social relationships 

and, to assuage the situation, the family watches more 

television and consumes more goods (Molnar, 1996; Fox, 

1996; Boyles, 1998). 

It was in the context of this emerging appraisal 

that a group of activists established TV-Free America 

(TVFA) in 1994. Prior to the launch of this organization, 

misgivings about television tended to find expression as 

part of larger initiatives focused, for example, on banning 

advertisements for alcohol, on ensuring programming with 

adequate educational value, or on prohibiting violent and 

sexually explicit broadcast content. TVFA endorsed a more 

basic agenda, namely one that encouraged viewers to 

disconnect the set. 

Over the past decade, TVFA has evolved into the 

TV Turnoff Network (TVTON), and has continued to 

advance the perspective that excessive television viewing is 

highly problematic. With financial support from donations 

and the sale of products, TVTON serves as the educational 

arm for a more diffuse array of anti-television activism. For 

instance, the organization distributes fact sheets and 

coordinates special events to encourage alternative familyand community-based activities to replace long hours of 

television viewing. TVTON, as stated on the organization’s 

website (http://www.tvfa.org), seeks to “shift the debate 

from concerns about television’s content toward an 

understanding that breaking free of TV is a fun, liberating, 

and enriching experience.” In other words, TVTON is not 

concerned with censorship battles or changing the content 

of specific programming. Instead, the organization is 

engaging with what it sees as the core of the problem—the 

need to reduce the number of hours people spend in front 

of their televisions. Consistent with this objective, TVTON 

coordinates two annual public projects—a long-standing 

initiative known as TV Turnoff Week and a newer scheme 

called More Reading, Less TV. 

 TV Turnoff Week (TVTW) challenges adults, 

teenagers, and children to forsake television for one week 

each year. It is important to recognize that the guiding 

purpose of TVTW is not to create incentives for 

participants to demonstrate their ability to achieve this 

objective in the narrow sense, but rather to create space in 

which they can learn first-hand how satisfying life can be 

without (or at least with less) television. Volunteer 

coordinators distribute TVTW facilitation kits to 

community groups, schools, and religious organizations 

that include “screen free” activities, pledge cards, and 

instructional materials for arranging alternative activities. 

TVTW has expanded its reach every year since its 

establishment in 1995. According to its sponsors, 90% of 

the respondents to its annual survey report that they now 

watch less TV than they did prior to participating in 

TVTW, and two-thirds of the sample say that the changes 

they have made in their viewing habits may be permanent. 

Anti-television activists contend that excessive 

television viewing is one of the leading reasons for poor 

school performance among young children. In response, 

TVTON has developed its More Reading, Less TV 

(MRLTV) campaign to confront head-on the link between 

television and literacy. MRLTV is a four-week campaign 

sponsored by the Educational Foundation of America that 

is relayed directly to students in their classrooms. 

Youngsters are encouraged figuratively and literally to 

“Bury the Television with Books.” In practice this means 

that for every book a student reads he or she receives a 

colorful strip of paper to affix to the classroom television. 

The intent is that, by the end of the month-long initiative, 

the class will have accumulated enough strips to obscure 

the television in its entirety. According to its promoters, 

MRLTV serves as an especially good incentive for children 

who rarely pick up books, and TVTON reports that “poor 

readers” are more than twice as likely to seek out a book 

after participating in the program. 

In addition to these two initiatives, TVTON 

actively campaigns for the elimination of Channel One, the 

in-school television network that is mandatory viewing in 

most classrooms across the country. The organization 

disapproves of Channel One because advertisements are 

spliced into the regular programming and students have a 

difficult time distinguishing the educational content from 

the promotional inducements. TVTON also contends that 

Channel One is entirely inappropriate in an educational 

setting. Schools, for the most part, are the only relatively 

advertisement-free places in the United States, and 

administrators and teachers who allow this medium into the 

classrooms compromise the integrity of their profession. 

 The advocacy agenda promoted by TVTON 

includes several professional medical associations and is 

grounded in a large body of social scientific research 

documenting the personal and social problems associated 

with excessive television viewing. The following 

discussion organizes this array of adverse impacts into four 

categories: youth problems, societal effects, negative 
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outcomes for families and communities, and individual 

consequences. 

 First, children in the United States between two 

and seventeen years of age watch, on average, twenty 

hours of television each week—the majority of which is 

spent without a parent or adult present. Research suggests 

the existence of a causal link between the number of hours 

school-age children view television and academic 

performance (see, for example, Clarke & Kurtz-Costes, 

1997). Based on this evidence, the American Academy of 

Pediatrics has called for reductions in the amount of 

television that children watch (Lowry et al., 2002, Hu et 

al., 2003). Aside from attentiveness in school, it is apparent 

that children who spend a great deal time in front of the 

television do not develop active lifestyles, and this has 

ramifications later in life (Crespo et al., 2001). 

Second, anti-television activists are not blind to 

the positive social contributions that television in certain 

circumstances can make. For instance, the technology can 

break down the isolation of distance, deliver news and 

entertainment, and unify a large and diverse nation. 

However, they assert that television is responsible for 

bringing in its wake a host of intractable social problems. 

The situation is exacerbated in the United States because 

political culture discourages the kinds of public 

intervention—often in the form of restrictive regulation—

that has been used in other countries. For instance, aside 

from broadcasters fears about transgressing viewers’ 

sensibilities, there are few constraints on violence on 

television. By the time the average American adolescent 

reaches the age of eighteen, he or she will have seen in 

excess of 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on 

television. This phenomenon is not limited to programming 

ostensibly designed for entertainment. Between 1993 and 

1996, there was a 20% downturn in the nation’s homicide 

rate, but a seven-fold increase in homicide coverage on 

network news. The American Medical Association (AMA) 

reports that many youngsters cannot clearly distinguish 

between real life and fantasy because they are conditioned 

by television violence from a very early age. In response, 

the AMA has begun to assert that public policymakers 

should treat violence on television in the same way as they 

promote seatbelts and bicycle helmets.7

 Third, anti-television activists contend that 

evidence links excessive viewing with a variety of negative 

outcomes for families and communities. They argue that 

the ubiquity of television has undermined interpersonal 

relationships because the technology offers the opportunity 

for virtual relationships with fictional characters, and these 

interactions then become substitutes for displaced family 

and communal contacts (Schor, 1998). Though it is hard to 

determine the extent to which the observation might be 

tainted by nostalgic yearnings, proponents of reduced 

television viewing point out that in earlier eras dinnertime 

was an opportunity for busy families to catch up with one 

another. What is somewhat more reliable is social survey 

 

7 See the letter endorsed by the American Medical Association and other 

allied organizations in support of TV-Turnoff Week, available at 

http://www.tvturnoff.org/healthgroups%20pr% 2002.htm.

data indicating that today 40% of families watch television 

while eating their evening meal. 

Fourth, heavy television viewing appears to be 

taking a heavy toll on viewers’ physical health, and 

medical studies have correlated certain ailments with 

precursor conditions, especially obesity. Anti-television 

activists highlight one recent study finding that, as 

television viewing increases, exercise drops off and 

consumption of snack foods grows. These circumstances 

contribute to weight gain and an affinity for passive 

recreation. Individuals who watch television for more than 

three hours per day are twice as likely to be obese as those 

who viewed it for less than one hour per day (Coon et al., 

1998). 

Finally, anti-television activists have begun to 

problematize television in much wider social and political 

terms. Some groups assert that the technology has a 

perverse effect because the major networks receive de facto 

subsidies in excess of $70 billion from political candidates 

who use public funds and contributions to purchase 

campaign commercials. This arrangement creates a system 

in which only electoral contestants who can afford to pay 

for television airtime have any chance of success. As such, 

television has become one of the driving forces sustaining 

the political status quo.8

Anti-Advertising Campaigns 

 As noted above, advertising is an omnipresent 

and unavoidable fact in the United States, especially as 

communicated by television. However, television is surely 

not the only medium for marketing goods and services, and 

producers seek to reach consumers through a multitude of 

other channels, including radio, billboard, telephone, postal 

mail, electronic mail, and so forth. To penetrate the thicket 

of competing messages, advertisers have developed 

increasingly invasive approaches. Ironically, many 

consumers have come to accept advertising as a valuenatural—and in some cases wholly agreeable—feature of 

contemporary life. In some communication forms, it is 

virtually impossible to distinguish the actual content from 

the sales promotions. Nevertheless, a growing number of 

anti-advertising campaigns has begun to make some novel 

(and seemingly conservative) assertions, namely that 

advertising infringes upon personal freedom, contributes to 

mental and physical harm, and impairs economic growth. 

The emergence of this discourse has generated some 

raucous forms of resistance and given birth to a loose 

alliance of organizations variously dedicated to stricter 

regulation (and in some cases outright abolition) of 

advertising. 

 Although it is unlikely that this confederation of 

anti-advertising organizations constitutes a social 

movement in the strict sociological sense, what is more 

interesting for current purposes is the high degree of issue 

differentiation that exists within this sphere. For instance, 

 

8 In a related vein, critics denounce television for reducing political 

awareness because the medium encourages viewers to focus their attention 

on fictional characters rather than real events. TVFA contends that 59% of 

Americans can name all of the Three Stooges, while only 17% can identify 

three justices on the Supreme Court. 
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advocates have launched initiatives to oppose the 

commercialization of public education, to resist the use of 

paid promotions to sell tobacco, to work against the 

erection and continued use of billboards, and to stop the 

communication of advertisements by telephone, postal 

mail, and electronic mail. 

 Commercial Alert (CA), an advocacy 

organization founded by Ralph Nader in 1998, is the 

undisputed leader of the American anti-advertising 

movement. CA’s stated mission is, “to keep the 

commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent 

it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values 

of family, community, environmental integrity and 

democracy” (http://www.commercialalert.org). The 

organization’s activities focus on lobbying for legislation to 

regulate advertising and on preventing the proliferation of 

commercial content in public venues. For example, CA 

urged the top fifty advertising agencies in the country to 

boycott CNN’s Student News after the program dropped its 

commitment to be commercial-free. Other initiatives have 

sought to encourage the prohibition of advertising on 

public transport vehicles, to persuade publishers from 

printing sales pitches for junk food in children’s books, to 

pressure major-league baseball teams to remove badges 

with product insignias from players’ uniforms, and to 

discourage companies from patronizing Channel One, the 

controversial in-school television network (DeVaney,

1994). 

 A specific point of criticism against advertising 

that appears to have struck a chord in the American public 

mind over the past decade concerns the effects of 

commercial promotion on children. While it was not 

framed specifically as an anti-advertising campaign, efforts 

to discourage the tobacco company R.J. Reynolds’ from 

running its so-called Joe Camel advertisements dampened 

the effectiveness of a marketing tool deliberately aimed at 

children (DiFranza, 1991). 

 Aside from CA, there is a diverse network of 

smaller and less visible organizations working along 

similar lines.9

 Three groups are emblematic of the activity 

in this sphere. First, Stop Commercial Exploitation of 

Children (www.commercialexploitation.com) is 

specifically concerned with the harmful effects of 

advertising on youngsters. Second, Dads and Daughters 

(www.dadsanddaughters.org) is an incipient group 

committed to fostering meaningful relationships between 

fathers and their female children, an agenda that seeks to 

dampen the deleterious effects of advertising on young 

women. Finally, the Center for Commercial-Free Public 

Education (CCFPE) works to resist the encroachment of 

advertising in schools. Established in Oakland in 1993 to 

 

9 An especially prominent focus for activists seeking to limit advertising to 

children has been to block the penetration of promotional inducements in 

schools. In recent years, as school districts have struggled with the rising 

costs of education, a growing number of them have turned to advertising as 

a supplemental source of revenue. At many schools, it is customary for 

corporate marketing messages to appear on book covers, hallways, athletic 

facilities, and buses. Especially prominent are soda manufacturers that have 

negotiated exclusive “pouring” contracts to sell their products in vending 

machines and at school events. Sponsored educational materials are also 

regularly mailed free of charge to teachers and principles for use in the 

classroom.

campaign against Channel One, the organization is one of 

many grassroots groups that have coalesced to oppose the 

news service.10 Because CCFPE is larger and more 

established than most of its counterparts, it supports other 

local activists with information and training. The group 

coordinates initiatives to raise student consciousness about 

advertising in contemporary life, to encourage schools to 

become commercial-free, and to support parents who 

challenge the invasion of corporate promotions in 

schools.11

 Tobacco companies have been a specific target of 

anti-advertising campaigners in the United States. The 

battle over tobacco advertising has been raging for as long 

as public health advocates have recognized that cigarettes 

were hazardous. The Badvertising Institute (BI) is one 

organization that has been at the forefront of the effort to 

ban the advertising of tobacco products, and it played a 

major role in the demise of the aforementioned Joe Camel. 

BI models itself as an educational group, but it also pursues 

an active advocacy agenda. One of its notable activities is 

the production of mock renditions of actual tobacco 

advertisements. BI also prepares educational materials for 

schools, organizes exhibits, and presents slideshows and 

workshops to advance the case against tobacco 

advertising.12

 Other anti-advertising campaigns have sought to 

expose the tendency of some companies to make 

unsubstantiated claims. As consumers have expressed a 

preference for corporations with reputable social and 

environmental records, it has become common for 

advertisers to appropriate these themes for promotional 

purposes. Perhaps not surprisingly, the firms responsible 

for many familiar brands have sought to embellish their 

accomplishments, practices that activists have termed 

“bluewashing” and “greenwashing.” The former refers to a 

company’s tendency to exaggerate its commitment to 

social responsibility, and the latter denotes unjustified 

amplification of its environmental performance. One 

organization that has taken up the challenge of exposing 

instances of bluewashing and greenwashing is the ethical 

watchdog CorpWatch. 

 Anti-advertising activists in the United States 

have also taken their efforts to the nation’s highways. Since 

the 1950s, efforts to impose prohibitions on outdoor 

advertising have been part of wider efforts to encourage 

 

10 While CCFPE and many of the groups that are part of its alliance 

promote secular values, evangelical Christian organizations have also 

targeted Channel One. Obligation and the Eagle Forum are two groups that 

oppose the advertising, as well as the programming, on Channel One on 

religious grounds. These organizations coordinate boycotts of Channel 

One’s parent company and offer parents a “tool kit” for removing the news 

service from their children’s schools. As a mark of its political 

sophistication, this activist network has reached beyond its traditional base 

to recruit into their fold many national education associations. 11 A measure of the high level of concern that exists regarding the effects 

of advertising on children is that this campaign is not confined to groups of 

intrepid grassroots activists. For instance, the American Academy of 

Pediatrics took a stand on the issue in 1995 that called for more vigorous 

regulation of advertising aimed at children.

12 Many other anti-smoking groups, such as the American Lung 

Association and the Coalition for Women Against Smoking, oppose tobacco 

advertisements, but they do not make it the main focus of their campaigns.
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highway beautification. Early federal legislation banning 

the erection of billboards in specific areas took effect in 

1965, and several states—notably Vermont, Hawaii, 

Maine, and Alaska—adopted more exacting measures. 

Proponents of these laws, including Lady Bird Johnson, the 

wife of the former president, generally framed their 

concerns not in antagonistic terms denouncing advertising, 

but as appeals to an aesthetic sensibility. The organization 

Scenic America has been at the forefront on this issue since 

its inception and continues to provide resources to 

numerous state and local groups, such as Citizens for a 

Scenic Florida, Citizens for a Scenic Spokane, and Citizens 

for a Scenic North Nevada, that work to ban outdoor 

advertising in specific jurisdictions. More recently, these 

groups have spearheaded campaigns against 

telecommunications towers and other facilities deemed to 

disfigure the landscape. 

 Most encounters with advertising are situational 

experiences into which consumers insert themselves. 

Exposure to billboards, television commercials, and 

magazine inserts arguably occurs when individuals take 

purposeful action that brings them within reach of these 

commercial appeals. Consumers who are interested in 

practicing an especially vigilant form of avoidance 

behavior can actively avoid (or at least lessen) their 

encounters with these promotional inducements. For this 

reason, various forms of unprompted advertising, some of 

them quite ingenious, have come to be widely despised. 

Telemarketing calls, junk mail, and so-called unsolicited 

commercial e-mails (UCM) circumvent conventional 

defenses and become major sources of irritation. Public 

intolerance of these unduly intrusive modes of advertising 

is growing and, according to some observers, is prompting 

the biggest consumer backlash in decades. This response 

has assumed many different expressions and led to the 

formation of a host of organizations. 

 First, telemarketing involves the use of targeted 

voice- and fax-based telephone calls. These promotional 

practices have always had a dark side and over the years 

have attracted no shortage of unscrupulous operators. 

Nevertheless, during the past decade, more efficient dialing 

and messaging technologies have reduced the cost of 

reaching large numbers of households and the field has 

grown severalfold. Telemarketing firms are even setting up 

large-scale operations in India and other English-speaking 

countries, where they take advantage of low international 

calling rates to the United States to canvass on behalf of 

American companies. To defend themselves, would-be 

recipients of telemarketing solicitations can purchase and 

install an impressive number of gadgets that offer the 

promise of deterring telephone solicitors. Most of the 

numerous organizations working to thwart telemarketing 

adopt a similar approach that consists of offering 

consumers information on how to insulate themselves and 

enforce their legal rights. The groups also issue blanket 

advice discouraging the purchase of goods and services 

from telemarketers. 

 Anti-telemarketing organizations are also 

typically equipped to offer information regarding the 

Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA). 

TCPA prohibits unsolicited faxes and pre-recorded 

telephone sales calls, as well as providing states with the 

authority to create “do-not-call” lists.13 Once an individual 

places herself on such a list, it becomes illegal to direct 

most telemarketing calls to her. Virtually all the antitelemarketing groups support TCPA, but advocate for more 

restrictive legislation to impede the heavy flow of activity 

that continues to occur. 

 Second, unsolicited mailings, or junk mail, are a 

ubiquitous feature of life in the United States. Public 

tolerance for the seemingly relentless flow of postal 

promotions is higher than it is for telemarketing, perhaps 

because it is easier to discard an unopened envelope than it 

is to hang up on a polite telephone caller. While there are a 

few organizations that address this problem, none does so 

as vigorously as the Center for a New American Dream 

(CNAD), a new, somewhat anomalous upstart group. 

CNAD has created an entire campaign around the issue of 

eliminating junk mail. This organization does not view 

these mailings in terms of customary anti-advertising 

themes, but as a particularly egregious and offensive form 

of environmental disregard. 

Finally, so-called unsolicited commercial e-mail, 

more commonly known as “spam,” has become a common 

feature of mass computer use in recent years. Spam is not 

only a nuisance to most recipients, but it creates congestion 

on the Internet and overtaxes computing resources. The 

only thing that has grown faster than the volume of spam is 

the public reaction against it. While computer experts 

endorse the use of specially designed anti-spam software, it 

appears that the purveyors of these solicitations are able to 

stay a step ahead on the technological curve. In the absence 

of a credible technological fix, anti-spam activists have 

launched numerous organizations and websites to stem the 

rising tide of these electronic promotions. One group, the 

Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail 

(CAUCE), is an example of organized resistance to spam. 

Aside from maintaining a website to which spam victims 

can turn for guidance, CAUCE lobbies for stringent 

legislation barring the distribution of unsolicited e-mail. 

Lifestyle Reinventions and Sustainable 

Consumption 

Vocal protest represents only one facet of the 

contemporary effort to forge a new politics of consumption 

in the United States. While culture jammers, anticonsumerism activists, and anti-advertising campaigners 

have formulated strident modes with which to express their 

anxieties about contemporary consumption-laden lifestyles, 

other sympathizers have chosen a more inward-looking 

approach focused on transforming personal values and 

practices. Termed lifestyle reinventions, this branch of the 

nascent sustainable consumption movement comprises 

voluntary simplifiers, ethical consumers, and slow food 

aficionados. 

 

13 There now exists a federal do-not-call list designed to limit intrusive 

telemarketing appeals (Richtel, 2003).
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Voluntary Simplicity 

 Voluntary simplicity has been a preoccupation of 

both ancient prophets and modern social critics (Shi, 1985). 

Although contemporary adherents are likely to be familiar 

with popular proponents, such as Henry David Thoreau and 

Mahatmas Gandhi, it is Duane Elgin’s (1981) book that 

serves today as the inspirational bible. It is therefore 

appropriate to turn to this treatise for an operational 

definition. 

To live more voluntarily is to live more 

deliberately, intentionally, and purposefully—in 

short, it is to live more consciously. We cannot 

be deliberate when we are distracted from life. 

We cannot be intentional when we are not 

paying attention. We cannot be purposeful when 

we are not being present. Therefore, to act in a 

voluntary manner is to be aware of ourselves as 

we move through life. This requires that we not 

only pay attention to the actions we take in the 

outer world, but also that we pay attention to 

ourselves acting—our inner world. To the 

extent that we do not notice both inner and outer 

aspects of our passage through life, then our 

capacity for voluntary, deliberate, and 

purposeful action is commensurably 

diminished. 

In other words, the decision to adopt a life of 

voluntary simplicity is a personal matter. Everyone is 

capable of determining where life is fraught with 

unnecessary complication. All have the capacity to 

recognize the clutter and pretense that weigh upon them 

and make the passage through this world more 

cumbersome and awkward. To live more simply is to 

become unburdened—to live more lightly, cleanly, and 

aerodynamically. It is to establish a more direct, humble, 

and unencumbered relationship with all aspects of life: the 

things that are consumed, the work that is done, the 

relationships that are maintained, and the connections that 

are created with nature and the cosmos. Simplicity of living 

means meeting life face-to-face. Voluntary simplicity, by 

extension, is about confronting life without unnecessary 

disruption and turmoil. It is about taking life as it is—

straight and unadulterated. 

 Voluntary simplicity is not a lifestyle of 

deprivation, and this is often a critical point of 

misinterpretation by individuals who are unfamiliar with its 

aims. It is about discovering what is sufficient in life—

based upon thoughtful analysis of one’s values. Apropos 

for Elgin is Simone de Beauvoir’s contention, “If all life 

does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.” If 

people look to non-material satisfactions, thus simplifying 

their lives, then they can establish a more meaningful 

existence and truly experience life. Voluntary simplicity is, 

then, about forging modest material needs to allow 

opportunities for people to surpass themselves and to find 

more satisfying, meaningful existences. 

 Early research on the extent to which people 

were actively pursuing voluntary simplicity in the United 

States suggested this mode of living had considerable 

appeal across a range of geographic regions (see, for 

example, Elgin & Mitchell, 1977; Leonard-Barton, 1981). 

There were indications that voluntary simplicity was 

distinct from other forms of lifestyle politics, popular 

during the 1970s, that stressed agrarian values and selfsufficiency. These studies also pointed to the fact that the 

vast majority of voluntary simplifiers were well educated 

and had grown up under relatively affluent circumstances. 

In keeping with Ronald Inglehart’s (1990) notion of postmaterialism, they had conditioned cravings for material 

goods. 

 More recently Amitai Etzioni (1998) has 

conceptualized three forms of voluntary simplicity—

downshifters, strong simplifiers, and holistic simplifiers. 

First, downshifters, according to this typology, are the most 

moderate, least intense simplifiers. These individuals tend 

to be financially secure, but for one reason or another 

choose to forego certain consumer items. Etzioni describes 

this group as being comprised of people who “dress down” 

to work, or drive unfashionable cars. There is no doubt a 

certain renegade status associated with this lifestyle, and 

the irony is that while it may appear superficially simple, it 

is actually costly and engenders its own sort of 

commodification 

Second, strong simplifiers are people who have 

actively rejected high paying jobs and lavish living in favor 

of less remunerative compensation and much more modest 

lifestyles. A widely read and cited New York Times report 

from the mid-1990s described this group as comprised of 

individuals who choose to buy and earn less, in exchange 

for more free time and less stress. This form of lifestyle 

politics involves a “quiet personal revolt against the 

dominant culture of getting and spending” (Goldberg, 

1995). 

 Finally, Etzioni distinguishes a separate group of 

strong simplifiers that is comprised of individuals who 

embrace an ardent conception of “simple living,” one that 

entails active abandonment of affluent lifestyles. However, 

this class of voluntary simplicity lacks the back-to-the-land 

ethos of the earlier era. With the explicit goal of leading 

simpler, less cosmopolitan lifestyles, strong simplifiers 

reside in various geographic locales, including older 

suburbs, gentrifying urban neighborhoods, smaller rural 

towns, and farmsteads. According to Etzioni, this group has 

a coherently articulated philosophy grounded in 

transcendentalism and is explicitly anti-consumerist.

 Several recent studies have sought to expound 

upon Etzioni’s analytic framework and to shed further light 

on the motivations behind a purported shift toward 

voluntary simplicity. A particularly notable investigation, 

by Margaret Craig-Lees & Constance Hill (2002), suggests 

that efforts to conceptualize voluntary simplicity solely in 

terms of behaviors deemed antagonistic to material 

possessions might be overly narrow. These authors contend 

that, although all three of the themes associated with 

materialists concern physical possessions, only one of the 

themes characterizing simplifiers has to do with material 

goods. Voluntary simplifiers may reduce their material 

consumption, but a life of poverty is not required and it is 

not necessary to sever all emotional ties to goods. CraigLees & Hill take issue with how we conventionally 
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understand materialism. We typically think of materialists 

as people who derive their happiness and satisfaction from 

physical possessions. However, this study questions 

whether it is indeed the case that materialists use 

possessions to create significance, while non-materialists 

generate significance out of experiences. Craig-Lees & Hill 

found that voluntary simplifiers demonstrated greater 

attachment to their homes than non-voluntary simplifiers 

did. In a finding that departs from the conventional view, 

non-voluntary simplifiers were found to be more likely to 

view their homes in non-emotive terms as smart 

investments and good buys. In this sense, the voluntary 

simplifiers, because of the seemingly deep connection they 

developed with their possessions, appeared more 

materialistic than their non-simplifying counterparts. 

In a more recent essay, Elgin (2003) contributes 

to this discussion on how to typologize voluntary 

simplicity, and generates a still more variegated schema 

that distinguishes among choiceful simplicity, commercial 

simplicity, compassionate simplicity, ecological simplicity, 

elegant simplicity, frugal simplicity, natural simplicity, 

political simplicity, soulful simplicity, and uncluttered 

simplicity, by no means meant to be mutually exclusive. 

Elgin emphasizes the artful tapestry in which individuals 

blend and combine elements of each expression of simple 

living. Attached to each of these ten modes of voluntary 

simplicity is a specific description, but for current purposes 

they can be aggregated into three main expressions: 

ecological awareness, frugal consumption, and personal 

growth. 

 First, voluntary simplicity, at least in its 

contemporary form, has strong intellectual roots in the 

environmental movement. In fact, Elgin issued his 

landmark book soon after publication of the infamous 

Limits to Growth, prepared under the aegis of the Club of 

Rome. However, the patchy evidence that does exist on the 

motivations behind the adoption of voluntary simplicity 

suggests that the connection between ecological awareness 

and voluntary simplicity is actually quite weak (see, for 

example, Maniates, 2002). For instance, in Craig-Lees & 

Hill’s sample, only 10% of self-designated voluntary 

simplifiers were members of environmental organizations, 

and only 25% identified the environment as a primary 

reason for their lifestyle choice. 

Second, some voluntary simplifiers are motivated 

by a personal commitment to frugality (Dacyczyn, 1998). 

This form of simple living seeks to resurrect the skills of 

thriftiness and to give them a new, more artful connotation. 

Mass consumerism and the quest for continual economic 

growth has denigrated the knowledge required to live 

without much regard for the value of money. Joe 

Dominguez & Vicki Robin’s bestselling book Your Money 

or Your Life has been a particularly popular approach for 

reinvigorating enthusiasm for frugality. This volume 

provides readers with a nine-step program for achieving 

financial independence and establishing a sound 

relationship with money. 

Finally, voluntary simplicity appears to be 

attracting attention because of a subtler and intangible 

promise for personal growth. In this sense, adherents seek 

to take on board certain lifestyle practices because they 

seem “right” and are suffused with greater authenticity. 

This quest for self-improvement also contains an element 

of spiritual enlightenment. 

 These three facets of voluntary simplicity have, 

over the past decade, generated a vast array of mass-market 

magazines, narrow-niche publications, product catalogues, 

websites, and other resources—a veritable industry of its 

own. These circumstances suggest that it is reasonable to 

raise the question whether this mode of sustainable 

consumption has, in the United States, passed the threshold 

of a social movement.14 The very nature of voluntary 

simplicity makes it difficult to formulate a concise answer, 

mainly because there is a contradiction between the 

downscaling of lifestyles and the formation of a large-scale 

social movement with specific political intent (Maniates, 

2002). Voluntary simplifiers embrace specific lifestyle 

choices, but the emphasis is on introspection and personal 

change rather than on creating a more ambitious political 

program. Another notable feature of voluntary simplicity in 

its current forms is the absence of vilification. In other 

words, social movements normally manifest a need to draw 

boundaries around their campaigns, and simplifiers are not 

seeking, at least presently, to articulate a social critique that 

assigns responsibility for the purported problems of 

consumerism. 

 

Ethical Consumption 

Adherents of ethical consumption maintain that 

consumers, by exercising care when making ordinary 

purchases, can recast the current system of social and 

political relations. More specifically, by steering clear of 

products manufactured under conditions that exploit 

vulnerable laborers or unduly degrade the environment, 

material consumption can become an engine for human and 

ecological betterment. The United Nations Platform for 

Action Committee (UNPAC) has developed a 

comprehensive guide to ethical consumption that includes 

recommendations to support local businesses, to assess the 

environmental costs of consumer purchases, to purchase 

second-hand goods, and to consider the transportation of 

products. 

Although ethical consumption tends to enjoy 

greater public visibility in Europe, the Council on 

Economic Priorities (CEP) has spearheaded the movement 

in the United States (CEP, 1994). The CEP is a public 

interest research group funded by memberships, 

philanthropic grants, and donations. The organization edits 

a keystone publication in the field of ethical consumption, 

entitled Shopping for a Better World, and encourages 

consumers to use their purchasing power as a vote—in 

 

14 Consistent with the approach taken by this analysis is the tendency 

among self-described voluntary simplifiers to reject the contention that they 

are carriers of a broader political agenda. Adherents of simpler lifestyles are 

likely to equate social movements with superficial changes in “style of life” 

(as opposed to more penetrating changes in “way of life”). The extended 

comments of one of Elgin’s respondents are illuminating: “This is a country 

of media hype, and [simple living] is good copy. The media is likely to pick 

up on it...and create a movement. I hope they won’t. The changes we’re 

talking about are fundamental and take a lot of time...If it is made into a 

movement, it could burn itself out. I hope it spreads slowly. This way the 

changes will be more pervasive. Voluntary Simplicity is the kind of thing 

that people need to discover for themselves.”
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other words as a way of conveying their preferences to 

otherwise inaccessible corporations. The group advocates 

that 

Your choice of what car, washing machine, 

computer, or even breakfast cereal to buy may 

make more difference than you think, especially 

if you let companies know that social and 

environmental records affect your choices. 

Companies wield tremendous power, but 

individuals can influence corporate practices and 

can actually help change the world. It’s the 

simple, positive activism of casting your 

economic vote conscientiously” (CEP, 1994). 

CEP’s consumer guide rates several hundred 

companies on the basis of environment performance, 

charitable donations, community outreach programs, 

women’s and minority advancement, support for family 

oriented employment policies, workplace issues, and 

information disclosure policies. The CEP Honor Roll 

recognizes firms that score especially well on these criteria, 

while the so-called X-rated list is reserved for the poorest 

performers. Consumers can use these assessments to guide 

their purchase decisions on virtually any product. 

 Social Accountability International (SIA), an 

affiliate of CEP, serves as the accreditation agency for 

these evaluations. Launched during the early 1990s in 

response to the weak and incompatible guidelines that 

individual firms were developing, SAI’s mission is to 

create standards for workplace codes of conduct and labor 

conditions worldwide. The group’s first standard was 

Social Accountability 8000 (SA 8000), which provides a 

uniform measure for assessing workplace conditions and 

for independently gauging the compliance of specific 

industrial facilities. SA 8000 seeks to define objectively the 

relative quality of the workplace, and then to translate this 

information to consumers so that they can respond 

accordingly. 

 Co-op America, an NGO established in 1982 

with a current membership of 50,000 individuals and 2,000 

businesses, seeks to educate and empower people and 

organizations to use the economic system to promote 

positive change. Within the constellation of American 

advocacy organizations, Co-op America is unique in that it 

does not campaign for equity and justice using 

conventional political or legal strategies; rather staff 

members strive to reorient economic relationships by 

promoting more conscientious consumer expenditures. The 

approach consists of two interlocking elements: Co-Op 

America, on one hand, helps consumers identify companies 

that are committed to socially and environmentally 

acceptable practices and, on the other hand, assists 

companies to operate under these stricter standards. The 

organization coordinates several initiatives, including a 

green business program, a consumer education program, a 

corporate responsibility program, and a sustainable living 

program. 

 Global Exchange is a California-based human 

rights organization committed to environmental, political, 

and social justice. The group’s campaigns promote 

democratic ideals and political empowerment both in the 

United States and abroad, and seek to highlight the 

connections between corrupt political systems and human 

rights abuses. In recent years, countries in which Global 

Exchange has been active include Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, 

and Mexico. Though its operational strategies vary across 

countries, the organization does not aim simply to press 

employers to pay better wages. Rather, Global Exchange 

seeks to improve human rights by educating people about 

oppressive political and social organizations. 

 Closely connected to the campaign for ethical 

consumption is the effort to support so-called fair trade as 

an alternative means of exchange (Rice, 2001; Browne et 

al., 2000). This strategy seeks to sidestep complex issues 

embedded in the political economy of globalization by 

directly linking ethical consumers with socially and 

environmentally conscientious growers and manufactures. 

The intent is to simplify distribution to ensure that a larger 

portion of the sales price accrues to indigenous farmers and 

small-scale producers. By selling fair trade products at 

premium prices, sponsors offset higher transaction costs. 

TransFair USA, the leading fair trade organization in the 

country, works closely with the Fair Trade Federation 

(FTF). FTF a network of retailers, wholesalers, and 

producers that have agreed to comply with a code of 

conduct calling for schemes that offer employees 

opportunities for advancement, provide equal employment 

opportunities, and engage in environmentally sustainable 

practices. 

 For the past decade, coffee has had an especially 

prominent position on the fair trade agenda. Coffee is the 

second largest commodity import in the United States 

(after oil) and Americans annually consume 20 percent of 

the world’s total production. At the same time, the 

tendency for coffee plantations to promote unsafe and 

unhealthy working conditions has been a long-standing 

point of discussion (Tucker, 2000). To ameliorate some of 

the problems associated with coffee production, fair trade 

proponents have sought to educate consumers about the 

benefits of purchasing their beans from cooperatives, of 

avoiding higher yield varieties that require greater sun 

intensity (to discourage deforestation and biodiversity 

loss), and of supporting growers that pay workers equitable 

wages. 

Increasingly, consumers are demanding fair trade 

coffee, and major purveyors such as Starbucks have been 

encountering pressure from their customers to offer a fair 

trade alternative. At present, fair trade coffee comprises 

only 1% of the global market, with the majority of sales 

taking place through specialized fair trade retailers—many 

of them operating via the Internet. However, after 

considerable pressure from stakeholders, food industry 

giants such as Kraft and Proctor and Gamble have recently 

announced plans to launch fair trade coffee brands. 

A related area of activism has sought to highlight 

the migration of garment manufacturing to low-wage 

havens in the developing world. Laborers working under 

substandard conditions throughout Asia and Latin America 

sew most of the clothing worn today by relatively affluent 

people in economically advanced countries. Developing 

countries often find themselves in the unfortunate position 
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of bidding against one another to convince large 

corporations and their subcontractors to set up these 

facilities (Ross, 1997; see also Gonzalez, 2003). 

In 1997, municipal officials in North Olmstead 

(Ohio) realized that nearly all of the garments their city 

purchased—from athletic equipment to police uniforms—

came from overseas sweatshops. This recognition 

encouraged the city to pass the first law in the United 

States banning a government from purchasing products 

manufactured under sweatshop conditions. This initiative 

led to the notion of “sweat-free cities” and induced a 

number of major municipalities (including San Francisco, 

Cleveland, Philadelphia, and New York) to pass similar 

legislation. 

 The movement to protest the globalization of 

clothing manufacturing has moved from the chambers of 

municipal governments to college and university campuses. 

Indeed, the opposition to sweatshop labor has spurred one 

of the largest and most vocal forms of student activism in 

recent years. Directed by the group United Students 

Against Sweatshops, this wave of protest politics started 

when students began to examine their institutions’ ties to 

companies such as Nike and Reebok. The organization 

currently campaigns against “campus sweat” and has 

assembled a network of over 200 colleges and universities. 

 Action on many campuses has involved the 

elimination of sweatshop clothing adorned with the 

insignias of some of the most esteemed colleges and 

universities in the United States. To counter these protests, 

the Collegiate Licensing Company, a consortium of major 

educational institutions that negotiates with the distributors 

of these products, published a code of conduct and 

encouraged participating firms to endorse it. Because 

student activists viewed this assurance as insufficient—it 

did not contain a clause requiring full public disclosure, a 

provision demanding a living wage, or a statement 

concerning women’s rights—this defensive action only 

intensified campus demonstrations.

 The effort to resist the importation of apparel 

manufactured under substandard conditions has also given 

rise to a more general campaign. Leading this struggle has 

been the group Sweatshop Watch, an eclectic coalition of 

trade unions, civil rights groups, and immigrant rights 

organizations committed to eliminating sweatshop 

production. Sweatshop Watch focuses on both the domestic 

(especially California) and international dimensions of this 

form of exploitation. 

The Slow Food Movement 

 Originally launched in 1989 by Carlo Petrini in 

response to the establishment of the first McDonald’s 

restaurant in Rome, the slow food movement has assumed 

international significance and now maintains offices in 

Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and the United States 

(Kummer, 2002; Petrini, 2001). The major aims of the 

movement are to celebrate the joy of wholesome and 

nutritious food and to protect the gastronomic traditions of 

the world’s cultures in the face of the interlocking forces of 

modernization, standardization, and globalization. 

International membership in the slow food movement’s 

600 chapters, or convivia, has reached 70,000 food 

aficionados in 45 countries. 

 Slow food adherents argue for the importance of 

preserving the pleasures and qualities of everyday life from 

the relentless pursuit of speed and purported convenience 

by slowing down, and by celebrating traditional lifestyles. 

Though the movement does adopt some of the rhetoric of 

anti-globalization activists, particularly in terms of the 

threats posed by industrially produced food, the slow food 

movement does not embrace the rancorous political edge 

common among supporters of the wider campaign (Miele 

& Murdoch, 2002; Jones et al., 2003). In addition to 

apprehension about globalization, foodies (in slow food 

parlance) express concern over what they interpret to be a 

ceaseless barrage of food regulations from national and 

multinational authorities. Instituted to promote food safety, 

many of these provisions have jeopardized the traditional 

food preparation methods favored by specialty businesses 

and local food artisans.15 The slow food movement has not 

been passive in the face of these regulatory directives, and 

the European wing of the international organization 

recently opened an office in Brussels to lobby against these 

measures. The effectiveness of slow food adherents has 

proved formidable, and foodies delivered a petition to the 

European Commission with half-a-million signatures 

demanding exemptions to many of the hygiene rules. In 

response to these efforts, Italy received special 

dispensations for thousands of its small food producers 

(Stille, 2001). 

 In addition to its commitment to the preservation 

of local culture, slow food also embraces a certain 

environmental sensibility. Adherents support 

“sustainability and biodiversity of the earth’s bounty,” as 

well as the consumption of seasonal and local foods 

(Nabhan, 2002). This particular brand of ecological 

consciousness shares many similarities with the sentiments 

expressed by hunting and birding enthusiasts. Just as 

wildlife proponents are motivated to protect valued 

habitats, the slow food’s ecological commitments are tied 

to the production of healthy and wholesome food. 16

While much of the slow food movement’s 

organizational resources remain in Europe, it has had some 

notable success developing a base in the United States. At 

present, more than 7,000 members subscribe to 70 

American convivia and produce a national publication 

aptly named The Snail. The guiding values of Slow Food 

USA are sustainability, cultural diversity, pleasure and 

quality in everyday life, inclusiveness, and authenticity and 

integrity. One of the major programs sponsored by the 

American arm of the movement is “Ark USA” (part of the 

worldwide “Ark of Taste”). Ark USA seeks to identify, 

protect, and promote indigenous foods deemed to be in 

 

15 For example, the European Union’s food and sanitary regulations 

stipulate that the traditional curing of Tuscan pig lard be done in stainless 

steel containers, instead of marble vats. Advocates of the traditional process 

argue that the marble vats are essential to creating the right flavor and 

texture for the lard. Another rule prohibits baking pizzas in traditional 

wood-burning ovens that contain carcinogenic ash (Smith, 2000). 16 One commentator has called Slow Food the “gastronomic version of 

Greenpeace: a defiant determination to preserve unprocessed, time-intensive 

food from being wiped off the culinary map” (Osborne, 2001).
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danger of “extinction.” Slow Food USA has established a 

committee that maintains a data bank to collect information 

on cultivars, breeds, products, and producers, as well as 

restaurants and shops that sell Ark products. In the eyes of 

some observers, this project provides the slow food 

movement with a greater semblance of legitimacy than it 

would otherwise have if it were simply dedicated to the 

pleasures of indulging in traditional foods.17

The worldwide success of slow food, and its call 

for simpler lifestyles, has inspired more ambitious 

activities in recent years and led to the establishment of a 

new organizational infrastructure. Towns and cities around 

the world are pledging to promote urban planning agendas 

geared toward improving the quality of life by reducing the 

frenetic pace of social activity. Launched in Italy in 2000, 

“Slow Cities” is an international organization that seeks to 

build upon the successes of the slow food movement. If the 

intent of slow food is to preserve the integrity and 

traditions of deliberate culinary pleasures, then the slow 

cities offshoot is its geographic equivalent. 

Designation as a slow city entails permitting 

more neighborhood restaurants, combating traffic and noise 

pollution, facilitating bicycling, planting trees, and 

maintaining parks and urban squares. These requirements 

translate into more practical measures: banning car alarms, 

television antennas, and neon signs. Slow cities are also 

encouraged to enlarge pedestrian areas and to move 

automobile parking lots to the edges of city centers. While 

these initiatives are only likely to be practicable for smaller 

cities, this does not mean that larger municipalities are 

discouraged from pursuing slow city status. To date, only 

four Italian cities (Orvieto, Greve, Bra, and Positano) have 

secured formal recognition as slow cities and a further forty 

jurisdictions in Italy are being considered for 

certification.18 There are no American municipalities 

presently up for nomination to become slow cities, though 

given the similar commitments of slow cities and new 

urbanism it is likely only a matter of time before a worthy 

candidate steps forward. 

Public Policy and Sustainable Consumption 

 As noted earlier, sustainable development has not 

been a central issue for governmental planning in the 

United States, and the adverse impacts of consumption 

have been even further removed from mainstream public 

policy agendas. Despite his loose endorsement of 

sustainability, President Clinton did little to advance the 

issue, and the current Bush administration has pursued an 

avowedly anti-environmental political program. 

Nonetheless, if one adopts a broad-minded view of 

sustainable consumption, there are indeed a number of 

 

17 The number of endangered foods listed in the Ark of Taste program 

numbers ninety worldwide, with nine of them indigenous to the United 

States: Dry Monterey Jack Cheese, Green Mountain Potatoes, Blenheim 

Apricots, Creole Cream Cheese, Heritage Turkeys, New Mexican Native 

Chiles, Delaware Bay Oysters, Heritage Clone Zinfandel, and naturally 

grown wild rice.

18 Full accreditation is currently pending for forty cities, including Canale, 

Loreto, Penne, Todi, and Trevi (Kennedy, 2001).

officially sanctioned initiatives taking place in the United 

States that are fully consistent with the aims of this policy 

program. 

Local Greenhouse Gas Reduction Schemes 

While anthropogenic climate change has become, 

over the past two decades, a central international 

environmental policy issue, the American federal 

government continues to postpone substantive actions to 

reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. The lack of 

national action in this area has left a void that a handful of 

environmentally progressive states are now stepping 

forward to fill. Several states have created their own 

greenhouse gas reduction schemes and, among the 

northeastern states, a promising effort is afoot to create a 

regional market for trading emission credits (Johnson, 

2003a).19 The following section reviews the individual 

climate change policies of three of these states—New 

Jersey, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.20

 First, the New Jersey Department of 

Environmental Protection (NJDEP) issued in 1998 an 

administrative order calling for a statewide greenhouse gas 

reduction of 3.5% by 2005.21 To support this objective, 

two years later NJDEP released the New Jersey 

Sustainability Green House Gas (GHG) Action Plan that 

advances strategies to achieve reductions in several specific 

areas, including energy conservation, transportation, 

innovative technologies, pollution prevention, waste 

management and recycling, and open space and natural 

resources protection. To measure progress, the plan 

establishes indicators predicated upon the total volume of 

GHG emissions (based on data developed by the Energy 

Information Agency), commuting by public transport, and 

annual mean surface air temperature. 

Second, New Hampshire governor Jeanne 

Shaheen signed the Clean Power Act (CPA) into law in 

2002. This legislation represented a milestone for statelevel climate change policymaking, as it was the first 

instance in which a state required power plants to 

implement a four-pollutant emission reduction program. 

The CPA calls upon electric utilities operating in New 

Hampshire to cut their releases of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen 

oxides, mercury, and carbon dioxide by implementing new 

pollution control technologies or by participating in 

emission trading schemes. Because of the state’s 

susceptibility to transboundary air pollution from other 

states, the CPA makes it more expensive for electric 

 

19 The Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian 

Premiers in 2000 also adopted a coordinated climate change plan that 

includes regional targets, state and provincial commitments to implement 

their own greenhouse gas reduction schemes, and statements of intent to 

develop specially tailored educational outreach programs. 20 In addition to the northeastern states, California has also been a leader in 

the development of a state-level greenhouse gas reduction program. 21 The target is calculated in CO2 equivalent units and requires the state to 

reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 20 million CO2

equivalent tons (NJDEP, 1999). Current projections indicate that the state 

will likely not achieve its reduction target, largely because of increases in 

emissions from transport vehicles.
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utilities to purchase emission credits from facilities outside 

of the region.22

Finally, Massachusetts, through implementation 

of its voluntary environmental stewardship program, 

represents a different state-based approach to sustainability 

and greenhouse gas reduction. This program requires 

participating businesses to commit to improve, over a 

three-year period, at least four aspects of their 

environmental performance. Intended, for companies that 

already have environmental management systems in place 

and are in full compliance with all environmental 

regulations, this initiative seeks to secure improvements in 

energy conservation, water use, toxics, air emissions, 

discharges to water, solid and hazardous waste 

management, and product performance. 

On a complementary front, the International 

Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) assists 

municipal and county governments in the United States and 

elsewhere in organizing their own proactive anti-climate 

change policies. ICLEI, a new institutional entity that 

operates under United Nations auspices, serves, in its own 

words, as the “international environmental agency for local 

governments” (International Council). Through the 

provision of policy guidance, training, and technical 

assistance, the organization presently serves more than 350 

sub-national governmental units that are committed to 

building a global movement of localities committed to 

sustainable development. 

 ICLEI has developed its Cities for Climate 

Protection Campaign (CCP) to support local governments 

in formulating and implementing policies to achieve 

measurable local greenhouse gas reductions, to improve air 

quality, and to enhance urban livability and sustainability. 

Two cities in the United States that exemplify the ICLEI’s 

mission are Burlington, Vermont and Austin, Texas. 

 Both residents and visitors frequently 

characterize Burlington as a politically liberal community 

with a palpable new-age ethos, though this description 

captures only a portion of what invariably is a much more 

complex political economy. Throughout the 1980s and 

1990s, the municipal government championed 

environmental and social projects that established a nascent 

culture of sustainability.23 In partnership with ICLEI, 

Burlington has begun to formulate an alternative 

community model, one rooted in the ideals of sustainability 

and good urban governance. Much of the city’s 

sustainability planning has occurred within the context of 

its so-called Legacy Project, a multi-stakeholder initiative 

that aims to embrace residents from all communities and 

economic sectors and to initiate a dialogue for giving 

direction to local development over the next thirty years. 

The program calls upon people to articulate this vision of 

the future in accordance with five major themes: economy, 

neighborhoods, governance, youth and life skills, and 

environment. The challenge for municipal leaders has been 

 

22 The CPA calls for annual emission reductions of 75% for sulfur dioxide 

and 70% for nitrogen oxides by the end of 2006 and a reduction of carbon 

dioxide to 1990 levels by 2010.

23 See the website at 

http://www3.iclei.org/localstrategies/summary/burlington2.html.

to reconcile Burlington’s seemingly inevitable growth with 

its commitment to sustainability. The city’s pioneering 

experience with sustainability planning has brought forth 

two especially notable outcomes. The Burlington Eco-Info 

Project provides residents with easy access to data on local 

air, water, land, and energy trends, and the Education for 

Sustainability Program trains schoolteachers to incorporate 

sustainability issues into their curricula. 

Many observers admire Austin, the capital of 

Texas and home to the state university’s main campus, for 

its relatively progressive municipal politics.24 The city’s 

CCP campaign seeks to shift 5% of local electricity 

production to renewable sources. To meet this objective, 

Austin’s municipally owned utility has implemented a 

variable pricing scheme to induce residents to favor nonpolluting forms of electricity. In this manner, Austin 

expects renewable energy to account for approximately one 

half of its expected increase in electricity demand. By 

generating 340 million kw/year from renewable sources—

primarily wind—this Texas city will reduce its annual 

carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 255,000 tons. 

Relocalization Schemes 

In the United States over the past decade, there 

has been an outpouring of public policy initiatives to 

bolster local economic autonomy. Campaigns to encourage 

consumers to buy indigenously produced goods, to support 

community-based agriculture, and to legitimize local 

currency programs have proliferated.25 This wave of 

relocalization is, to a large extent, a defensive reaction to 

the forces of globalization that are disembedding economic 

activities from their situated contexts. Efforts to promote 

relocalization can be quite diverse, but they all share the 

objective of enhancing the sustainability of community 

enterprises and rekindling direct relationships between 

producers and consumers. This section reviews three broad 

categories of this phenomenon: local promotion schemes, 

novel modes of agricultural production and consumption, 

and local currency programs. 

 First, the mantra to “buy American,” especially 

during periods of nationalist fervor or economic 

retrenchment, is familiar to consumers across the United 

States. Over the past two decades, states and cities have 

refashioned this strategy to promote the relocalization of 

economic activity by encouraging consumers to favor 

locally produced goods and services. Examples of these socalled “buy local” campaigns can be found in virtually all 

parts of the country and take a variety of different forms. 

For instance, the Savannah, Georgia Chamber of 

Commerce organizes a drive to support local businesses 

through public education and the distribution of “buy 

 

24 See the website at http://www3.iclei.org/iclei/casedetail.cfm?pid=40.

25 During the aftermath of the attacks against the World Trade Center and 

the Pentagon, these appeals have assumed a certain nationalistic 

significance. Promotional inducements now regularly beseech consumers to 

purchase domestic (and indeed local) goods and services as a patriotic 

gesture (Shenon, 2001; Rather, 2001). A similar phenomenon occurred 

immediately following the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq (Morgan, 

2003).
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local” emblems.26 A business promotion group in western 

North Carolina utilizes a logo to promote local commerce 

with the slogan, “Buy Local–Western North Carolina is 

Worth It.”27 An organization in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 

encourages consumers to purchase compact discs from 

local musicians.28

Agricultural commodities—especially fruits and 

vegetables—have been especially popular targets for policy 

initiatives to relocalize consumption. The sophistication of 

buy local schemes has improved markedly over the years, 

and appeals to geographic familiarity today are likely to 

rely on integrated promotional strategies developed by 

professional marketing specialists.29 While all states use 

this approach to varying degrees, New Jersey, New York, 

California, and Massachusetts have demonstrated the most 

consistent commitment. 

 First, New Jersey claims to be the first state in 

the country to launch a local campaign to promote its 

homegrown agricultural products. State agricultural 

officials began marketing local produce under the slogan 

“Jersey Fresh” in 1983. The campaign has utilized radio, 

television, and billboards, as well as colorful signage in 

supermarkets, to encourage consumers to purchase local 

agriculture. The state’s department of agriculture also 

provides grants to marketing associations that would like to 

sell their products in more distant locales. For instance, 

organizations designed to promote specific crops use the 

Jersey Fresh moniker to advertise to consumers in Virginia 

and Montreal.30 In this way, the campaign has evolved into 

a regional marketing tool to increase state exports, 

undermining claims that this program is ultimately about 

fostering local sustainability. 

Second, New York has devised a similar 

approach to market its agricultural products. The state’s 

department of agriculture uses the slogan “Pride of New 

York” to persuade consumers to buy locally grown 

produce. The New York campaign relies largely on 

conventional advertising and in-store displays to showcase 

the state’s agricultural products. In addition to this 

statewide program, New York’s distinct regions have 

initiated their own promotional efforts to relocalize 

consumption at an even more proximate level of 

geographic scale (Hilchey, 2000; see also Moskin, 2004). 

Third, agriculture officials in California have 

developed a coordinated program for marketing the state’s 

prodigious output of fruits and vegetables to local 

consumers. This promotional effort is part of the state’s 

familiar and long-standing export-oriented campaigns to 

encourage the consumption of locally grown raisins and 

peaches. More recent initiatives to relocalize consumption 

 

26 See the website http://www.buylocalsavannah.com.

27 See the website 

http://www.mtnmicro.org/pages/about_us/subsidiaries.html. 28 See the website 

http://www.mtnmicro.org/pages/about_us/subsidiaries.html.

29 A cursory review of these initiatives suggests that geographically defined 

regions within particular states have developed more proficient programs 

for promoting their agricultural products.

30 See the website 

http://www.state.nj.us/agriculture/markets/jerseyfresh.htm.

at the sub-state level in Placer and Sonoma Counties are 

typical of programs launched elsewhere in California. 

Placer County utilizes the conventional portfolio of 

marketing strategies, including print and radio advertising, 

public education, and supermarket displays, to enhance 

public awareness of local agriculture. Sonoma County, in 

part because of its reliance on wine production, has begun 

to formulate appeals that stress not only that local products 

are “Sonoma Grown,” but that they are “Sonoma Made” as 

well.31

Finally, Massachusetts appears to have the most 

sophisticated campaign to promote the relocalization of 

agricultural production and consumption. The state’s 

success is largely attributable to the creation of an array of 

public-private partnerships, and to savvy marketing. 

Agriculture officials in Massachusetts have set up a 

separate division, called “Massgrown,” that provides 

financial and logistical resources to support state 

agricultural products, and that licenses its slogan: “MASS 

grown...and fresher!” The state also actively supports 

farmers’ markets, “agritourism,” and pick-your-own 

farms.32 Despite its relatively small size, Massachusetts has 

also promoted the development of several sub-state level 

promotional initiatives. Especially notable is Community 

Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), an organization 

dedicated to encouraging the consumption of agricultural 

produce from the western part of the state. CISA actively 

draws attention to how the programs it facilitates can offset 

the damaging affects of globalization, and its campaign 

slogan, “Be a Local Hero–Buy Locally Grown,” has 

attracted national attention. 

While the proliferation of buy local campaigns 

has been widespread, policymakers in the United States 

have actually been employing a much broader portfolio of 

strategies to promote the relocalization of food production 

and consumption. Three notable innovations include 

community-supported agriculture (CSA), direct marketing 

of agricultural produce, and community gardening. 

 CSAs are a latent outgrowth of profound 

demographic shifts in the United States. The process of 

rural-urban migration that has reshaped the national 

landscape over more than 100 years was accompanied (and 

in many instances motivated by) sweeping technological 

advances in agricultural efficiency and automated product 

processing (Hinrichs, 2000). As the size of farmholdings 

increased and people were displaced from local agricultural 

economies, they sought new opportunities in the expanding 

cities. At present, less than 2% of the American population 

is directly engaged in farming. The disappearance of the 

American family farm has become a popular focal point for 

critiques highlighting the dark side of capitalism and 

globalization. 

 It is from this nexus that CSAs have grown, and 

there are today an estimated 1,000 of these agricultural 

 

31 See the websites 

http://www.sonoma-county.org/agcomm/pdf/2001_Crop_Report.pdf and 

http://www.placergrown.com.

32 See the website http://www.state.ma.us/dfa/massgrown/index.htm.
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enterprises operating across the country.33 A CSA consists 

of a community of consumers, who enter into a seasonal 

“subscription” agreement with a local farm. In return for a 

preseason payment (normally a few hundred dollars), the 

farm owner supplies his subscribers with fresh agricultural 

products on a weekly basis. Farmers and subscribers satisfy 

one another’s respective needs. On one hand, farmers 

obtain access to a flexible form of financing and a direct 

distribution channel for their produce. On the other hand, 

subscribers receive a personal connection to the food they 

are consuming and the knowledge that it comes from a 

local source. The relationship is also founded on the fact 

that most CSAs are committed to sustainable farming 

practices, and that subscribers often contribute their own 

labor during the growing season. Hence, a system has 

evolved in which both farmers and subscribers can insulate 

themselves from industrialized modes of agriculture and 

get a foothold for relocalizing themselves against the forces 

of mass consumerism and globalization.34

 Another form of alternative production and 

consumption of agricultural produce is the concept of 

“direct marketing,” which entails the distribution of fruits 

and vegetables without reliance on corporate mechanisms. 

While CSAs fall within this rubric, another common 

example is the growing popularity of farmers’ markets 

(Grey, 2000). Farmers’ markets are as old as agriculture 

itself, but their numbers began to wane in the United States 

following World War II with the advent of the modern 

supermarket. By 1960, there were fewer than 100 farmers’ 

markets nationwide. During the past two decades, there has 

been renewed interest in this mode of engaging producers 

and consumers and today there are an estimated 2400 

farmers’ markets operating around the country. The 

resurgence of this mode of direct marketing is in part 

attributable to a backlash against mainstream agriculture. 

The success of farmers’ markets resides in their ability to 

exploit the anonymity of the industrial food system with its 

tendency to produce goods that must conform to 

standardized guidelines regarding size, color, taste, and so 

forth. 

 A final, if understated, example of the innovative 

production and consumption of agricultural produce is 

provided by community gardening (see, for example, von 

Hassell, 2002). There are more than 10,000 community 

gardens in the United States, many of them located in the 

country’s most economically depressed neighborhoods. 

The transitory and uncertain disposition of the land parcels 

used to operate community gardening schemes often means 

that it is difficult for devotees to gain secure title to their 

plots. However, policymakers in some cities—New York 

City has one of the largest and most successful community 

garden programs in the country—have devised strategies to 

ensure long-term tenancy. 

Proponents of community gardening often frame 

the practice as an opportunity for low-income urban 

 

33 As described by Cone & Myhre (2000), the CSA concept actually 

developed in Japan and Europe prior to coming to the United States. The 

first CSA in the country was established in western Massachusetts in 1985. 34 so-called buying clubs, which are gaining in popularity in some cities, 

represent a variation of the essential CSA concept (Johnson, 2003b).

residents to reconnect to the local environment and to gain 

a degree of political empowerment—while at the same 

time growing their own wholesome food. Viewed from a 

slightly different perspective, it becomes apparent that 

community gardening is also an instance of the 

relocalization of agriculture and the promotion of 

sustainable consumption. 

 While local promotion schemes and innovations 

in agriculture both clearly demonstrate a trend in the 

United States toward new consumption practices, the most 

conscious and dedicated efforts to create systems of 

proximate exchange are local currency initiatives. Long 

before national governments began issuing their own legal 

tender, and before monetary policy became a central 

function of centralized authorities, local currency was the 

norm. The modernization of national economies, however, 

has meant the demise of community-based scrip (Helleiner,

2002). More recently, a number of cities in the United 

States have seen the emergence of local currency schemes 

(or local exchange trading systems) designed to strengthen 

the local economy by stemming the outflow of money to 

distant locations and facilitating meaningful relationships 

between buyers and sellers. 

 The precise organizational characteristics of 

different systems vary, but the essential features are that 

the scheme is self-regulating and allows users to manage 

the money supply within a set of specified boundaries 

(normally a single municipality). Specially designated 

script serves as the means of exchange and participants 

negotiate the value they will attach to particular exchange 

transactions (organizers generally peg the value of a 

currency unit, and its exchange rate with conventional 

currency, according to the average hourly wage in the 

community). 

Local currency systems began to develop a 

following in the early 1980s with the introduction of the 

first modern scheme on Vancouver Island, British 

Columbia. At present, there are an estimated sixty 

communities in the United States with some form of local 

currency, with especially vibrant systems operating in 

Ithaca, New York and Madison, Wisconsin (Shuman, 

1998). What many of these cities share is a recognition that 

globalization is a doubled-edged sword and that local 

currency systems can ameliorate some of the dislocation 

and instability that frequently comes in its wake. 

Consumer Credit 

 The use of consumer credit to drive the cycle of 

production and consumption in the United States is a 

relatively new phenomenon. The country’s move away 

from a cash economy to a credit economy has enabled 

consumers to embrace the instantaneous gratification that 

comes from being able purchase goods without the need to 

save first for extended periods. An outcome of the 

widespread availability of credit cards, coupled with the 

endless enticements of mass consumerism, has contributed 

to an array of social problems associated with the 

accumulation of large personal debt loads and financial 

insolvency (Warren & Warren-Tyagi, 2003; Calder, 1999). 

The easy availability of consumer credit, often carrying 

exorbitant interest rates, contributed to a wave of consumer 
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74 

activism during the late 1960s, and this political agitation 

gave rise to the first generation of modern consumer 

protection legislation. The most notable public policy 

initiative to curb unscrupulous purveyors of credit was the 

Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA) of 1968. In 

particular, the CCPA’s so-called truth-in-lending 

provisions require lenders to state in clear language the 

terms and conditions of their offers. 

Despite this groundbreaking legislation, the past 

thirty years have seen a massive accumulation of consumer 

debt in the United States. By 1999, per capita consumer 

debt had exceeded $30,000, nearly 50% more than it had 

been ten years earlier. Overall, American consumers are 

now in debt to the tune of $2 trillion, with approximately 

one-third of this amount payable on high-interest credit 

cards. The typical American household carried forward 

each month $7,500 in unpaid credit card debt, a two-fold 

increase in just ten years. 13% of families in the United 

States have outstanding balances that exceed 40% of their 

household income, a situation that means 90% of each 

monthly payment is solely dedicated to paying interest. 

The inevitable outcome of this situation is an evermounting number of personal bankruptcies—more than 1.3 

million in 1999 alone. 

As vendors have saturated the credit card market, 

they have aggressively sought to cultivate new markets, 

especially among university students. These companies 

regularly organize carnival-type promotional events, 

complete with loud music, games, and gifts. Accordingly, 

32% of undergraduate students had four or more credit 

cards in 2000, and the average overall credit card balance 

was more than $2,700. Nearly 10% of these students owed 

more than $7,000 on their credit cards.35

 In response to this dilemma, many universities 

now offer bankruptcy counseling to their students, and at 

all levels of education new courses in financial literacy 

have become part of the curriculum. There has even been 

new legislation to restrict campus access for credit card 

vendors and to tighten lending terms (USGAO, 2001). For 

instance, the College Student Credit Card Protection Act 

(CSCCPA) of 1999 imposes a number of new standards, 

including a restriction on issuing large-limit accounts to 

students, a prohibition on increasing credit limits without a 

parental co-signer, and a disallowance of open-ended 

consumer credit plans for full-time students with no annual 

income. 

Conclusion 

 Though it is possible to point to various efforts to 

catalyze a new public dialogue about consumerism in 

American society, the question remains whether this 

inchoate activity has the potential to coalesce into a 

coherent social movement. It is probably too early to offer 

any firm assessments, but the mélange of initiatives 

described above does seem to denote a certain level of 

public discomfort in the United States—at least among 

 

35 Nellie Mae, a quasi-government agency that issues education loans, 

conducts an annual survey of credit card usage among students. See the 

website http://www.nelliemae.com/library/research_8. html.

some social segments—with contemporary mass 

consumption. Of noteworthy interest is that this unease 

does not stem primarily from concern about accumulating 

ecological harm, and environmental themes are at best 

peripheral considerations for Americans skeptical of 

consumerist lifestyles. In this sense, the oppositional 

political agenda developing around consumption in the 

United States is—at least for the moment—less about 

“sustainable” consumption than it is about “critical” 

consumption. 

 Public opinion polling has regularly 

demonstrated the prevalence of environmental values in the 

United States, but these sensibilities tend to be relatively 

shallow and superficial. For instance, environmental 

politics rarely plays a major role in determining the 

outcome of American elections, and few voters in the 

country cast their ballots according to candidates’ 

environmental records.36 For this reason, there is a certain 

futility in propounding a political program to address the 

growing social problematization of consumption in the 

United States with appeals to how environmental gains will 

derive from more purposive lifestyles. While the 

clumsiness that accompanies environmentalists’ efforts to 

talk about consumption is evidence of some profound 

difficulties, scrappy organizations such as the Center for 

the New American Dream appear to have learned this 

lesson. To the extent that critical consumption matures as a 

domestic political discourse, it will almost invariably be 

driven by relatively prosaic concerns about, for instance, 

working hours, leisure time, and family life. An array of 

less tangible misgivings about the insidious affects of 

commercialism and the lack of authenticity engendered by 

consumerist lifestyles may also prove important. 

 All of this suggests that efforts to reconfigure 

consumption practices in the affluent countries will 

proceed along different trajectories, and will be 

conditioned in specific places by political culture and 

institutional constraints. It is difficult to imagine an 

American political administration, regardless of party 

affiliation, embracing a meaningful program to move the 

country toward alternative modes of consumption. The 

economic risks are simply too high and the political 

payoffs too elusive. Progress in the United States to realign 

consumption practices will come from a combination of 

social activism and targeted resistance, but first it will be 

necessary for the various strands of the nascent critical 

consumption movement to forge a common identity and to 

launch a new politics of consumption. 

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Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy 

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© 2005 Reitan Spring 2005 | Volume 1 | Issue 1 

77 

COMMUNITY ESSAY 

Sustainability science – and what’s needed 

beyond science 

 

Paul H. Reitan 

Department of Geology, University at Buffalo, P.O. Box 603050, Buffalo, NY 14260-3050 USA (email: preitan@msn.com) 

Author’s Personal Statement: 

Why would anyone write outside of their field of certified expertise? Why would an author venture beyond 

known and “safe” disciplinary boundaries? I do, of course, think beyond “safe” boundaries and I have ideas 

that I want to discuss with others. For many years I “stretched” my environmental science students to 

consider the necessarily uncertain long-term implications of the science and some of the associated moral 

issues. I have also begun to try to stretch – just a little – the traditional boundaries of the sessions at 

meetings of the Geological Society of America (GSA), and for several years have shared my concerns 

about the potential of successfully sustainable future with a stimulating group of colleagues in the Critical 

Issues Caucus of GSA. Today, I write this essay for Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy to stretch 

my thinking yet further to new readers in hopes of pushing them to think hard about the value of looking for 

solutions to environmental problems in links among seemingly disparate fields. And also, in truth, as a 

grandfather, I worry about the world my grandson will have to live in, and that motivates me to take the risk 

in the hope that what I write might constructively contribute – just a little – to a future I’ll not see. 

“Sustainability Science” is becoming a 

commonly used term, but what does it mean? Clearly it 

refers at least to science that is used to sustain, but sustain 

what? 

If we begin with an anthropocentric focus, that is, 

on human concerns, we could answer, “To sustain human 

societies.” But surely no one would want simply to sustain 

the maximum number of humans organized into societies, 

knowing that that would mean existence at the barest, 

meanest survival level of all individuals and societies far 

into the distant future. 

Our anthropocentric focus must then be 

modified: “To sustain successful human societies,” and that 

would surely include comfortable and healthy levels of 

nutrition, shelter, intellectual stimulation, self-realization, 

equity, peace – and probably more. For this to be the case 

worldwide and over a long time, societies could not 

systematically undermine the geoecological systems that 

support them. Natural geoecosystems 1) provide food, 

fiber, fodder, shelter, medicines, and energy; 2) process 

and store carbon and nutrients; 3) assimilate wastes; 4) 

purify water, regulate runoff, and moderate flooding; 5) 

build soils (necessary for food) and reduce soil 

degradation; and 6) house Earth’s reservoir of genetic 

material and species diversity (Watson et. al., 1998). Thus, 

even an anthropocentric focus leads us to require 

ecocentric sensitivity at all levels, local to global – a 

human commitment to real global stewardship. 

Successfully sustainable human societies must, 

therefore, be as attuned as possible to their local and 

regional environments, their geoecological support 

systems; lifestyles must be adapted to the ecosystems in 

which societies live and which support them with cultures, 

practices, economic systems, and governing policies each 

adjusted to fit their area, not a single dominant culture or 

way of living spread across the globe. This would be a 

world of multiple, diverse societies with their numbers also 

adjusted to what regional geoecological support systems 

can sustain. 

This is a view of the future that is quite different 

from our present situation. 

However, if something like this indicates the kind 

of successful societies that we desire, then the term we 

started with – “Sustainability Science” – refers to the 

cultivation, integration, and application of knowledge 

about Earth systems gained especially from the holistic and 

historical sciences (such as geology, ecology, climatology, 

oceanography) coordinated with knowledge about human 

interrelationships gained from the social sciences and 

humanities, in order to evaluate, mitigate, and minimize the 

consequences, regionally and worldwide, of human 

impacts on planetary systems and on societies across the 
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78 

globe and into the future – that is, in order that humans can 

be knowledgeable Earth stewards (Kieffer et. al., 2003). 

Understanding Earth systems and applying the 

best possible technologies, based on local and global 

policies attuned to geoecological limitations, will require 

unprecedented success in educating students at all levels, 

continuous effective communication with the public aided 

by informed media, and uncommon wisdom among 

policymakers. This, at best, will be a formidable task, but 

will be impossible without a change in the dominant 

worldview that has led to our addiction to growing 

consumption (i.e., “In Growth We Trust!). This suggests a 

heretical path, a path that leads to questioning the dominant 

paradigm, our controlling myth (Rees, 2004), to asking 

whether “In Growth We Trust” really should be our motto. 

We all know that growth cannot continue forever. But who 

asks, “Have we already grown too much”? Too much in 

terms of numbers, too much in rates of consumption of 

essential and luxury resources, too much in excluding and 

confining other species, too much in degradation of 

ecosystems, too much in desensitizing ourselves and 

alienating ourselves from the non-human part of our 

world? 

Can we learn from the past? Ossification of the 

governing approach societies used in dealing with their 

world, that is, fixation of the controlling myth, has led 

repeatedly to collapse of societies throughout human 

history (Wright, 2004; Diamond, 2004). A rigid 

commitment to our present dominant worldview, unwilling 

to see how it fails to respect the limitations of supporting 

natural systems, will likely bring about the collapse of our 

present globalized society. 

Most people, including policymakers, don’t 

realize the breadth and magnitude of the threats: for 

example, the growing scarcities of water, especially 

underground water, on all continents (Postel, 1999; Gleick, 

2000); that the soils necessary for food are being lost much 

faster than they are able to renew (Pimentel et. al., 1995); 

the ecosystem disruptions that global climate change will 

trigger (IPCC, 2001; Kling et. al., 2003); the decline of 

grain production (Brown, 2004). Or, as put by Ayres 

(1999), most people are not actively conscious of the 

significance of “four spikes”: the carbon dioxide spike, the 

species extinction spike, the consumption spike, and the 

population spike. Education to remove that ignorance – a 

kind of blindness – must assume a high priority. 

It is wonderfully eye-opening and worldviewbroadening to see the planet through geological eyes. 

Through this perspective we can better understand the 

implications of the human presence in the context of deep 

time, and the significance of a fossil record that 

demonstrates the changing communities of organisms and 

our recent emergence as a part of the latest community. We 

can see the archeological record that, across the planet, the 

earliest hunter-gatherer humans (with the exception of 

some wanton hunting) were integrated components of the 

ecological system living in dynamic balance with the rest 

of the system (Palmer, 2004). We can begin to see how we 

set the stage for our current problems when we began the 

agricultural revolution (Quinn, 1992; Chesworth, 1996, 

2004; Diamond, 1997) and even more when we gained the 

power of controlled fossil fuel use (Reitan & Reitan, 2001). 

We sense with foreboding the impact of our present 

exponential growth and our addiction to it. 

We have two big problems: blindness and 

addiction! 

There are, however, those who see, but who 

cover or turn away their eyes, and deny what the sciences 

of Earth systems are telling us, deny the risks of their 

addiction. Denial is not the best way to treat an addiction. 

Can we accept or acquiesce in denial of our “In Growth We 

Trust” addiction (Cairnes, 2004), an addiction that is 

delusional in its unwillingness to admit to limits in a finite 

world? 

Blindness and denial make impotent the body of 

scientific knowledge and block the use of helpful 

technologies. What alternatives, then, should we seek? 

Effective education is the best treatment for 

blindness resulting from ignorance of the breadth and depth 

of the threats to sustainability. Self-interest must be 

enlisted to get past denial, whether of reality or of the 

dangers inherent in addiction. An addict must realize that 

his or her own self-interest is not served by experiencing a 

few more highs. The addict knows that getting off the 

“stuff” and going through de-tox will be very difficult. So 

the addict must want to change, must see that change is 

better not only for himself/herself, but for all concerned, 

and therefore want to quit the addicting “stuff.” 

Taking that analogy, however imperfect, and 

returning to the question of long-term human success, what 

can individuals and societies do to want to support 

collective efforts to bring global human policies and 

practices into accord with what Earth can sustain? What 

can help us to want to learn about and pay attention to what 

the sciences can teach us about how and where we threaten 

our necessary support systems, to select and use those 

technologies that minimize our impact, and to use the 

science and technologies that can reverse the harms we 

have done? What can help us to want to recognize that our 

own self-interest requires us to think about the non-human 

world with respect and concern for its own intrinsic values? 

When asking these questions, I realize that the 

sciences and technologies in themselves are not enough, 

and that we need to think about what can motivate us to get 

off our addiction, to open our eyes, and to actually make 

use of science and technology to help us. Those tools are 

necessary, but willingness to accept policies that really 

address our needs is indispensable. 

There are those--- and Mary Evelyn Tucker and 

John Grim are exemplary here (Tucker, 2003; Tucker & 

Grim, 1994, 2001; Tucker & Clugston, 1998) – who point 

out that all of the world’s religions have a deep-seated 

respect for both the human and the non-human worlds, 

recognizing that humans have an obligation to care for the 

integrated whole. Anyone who is religious should be able 

to find in the essence of their religion ample reason and 

ethical guidance to want to know the long-term 

consequences of present policies and practices and how 

they will effect future human generations and the world in 

which they will live. And knowing the consequences, feel 

the moral mandate to act (Rockefeller & Elder, 1992; 

Tucker & Grim, 2001). 
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For both the religious and those who feel no 

special connection to any religion, there is environmental 

ethics, and for me, in particular, the philosophy called 

Deep Ecology (Naess, 1973, 1988; Fox, 1990, 1994). Some 

will read this and groan and regard me as hopelessly – even 

naively – idealistic. I would remind them that the way 

humans are now living on Earth is not working; essential 

Earth systems are breaking down and can’t be sustained. In 

other words, the present dominant worldview, or overall 

philosophy, which directs how lives are lived and choices 

are made, is bound to fail. So let’s heed the philosopher, 

William James (1991), who believes that the measure of a 

worldview’s value or worth is its practical consequences. 

If the behaviors that follow from a worldview cannot work 

well in the long run, then that worldview really is not 

practical (Reitan & Reitan, 2001). So, rather than live in 

the truly naïve dream world of “business as usual,” let’s try 

to be practical and stick to what at least has a chance of 

working. That would be to adopt a worldview that makes 

us want to change course, one of respectful participation in 

the world’s community of ecosystems in which “enough is 

sufficient.” Do we, Homo sapiens, have the wisdom to do 

that? 

This is what Arne Naess (1973), the Norwegian 

philosopher who introduced Deep Ecology, asks us to 

strive for, to go beyond concern for pollution, resource 

depletion, and geologic and biologic hazards. Though 

necessary, these are not deep enough. 

Deep Ecology uses a total-field image, one of 

organisms as knots in the geobiospherical field of intrinsic 

relations. In this image the relation between entities is, in 

fact, an essential part of those entities. In Naess’s view, 

without the relationships, the entities are no longer the 

same, no longer whole or complete. This expanded sense of 

identification is central to the Deep Ecology worldview and 

results from internalizing this total-field model. 

It is exactly in this respect that Deep Ecology, 

with its enlarged sense of self – the recognition that “I am 

an integral part of the whole field and the whole field is an 

integral part of me” – changes my response to what is 

happening around me. I cannot look around and say, “First 

I have to take care of myself.” That sort of lifeboat ethic is 

not conceivable, because by myself I mean the whole 

thing! We realize that the only lifeboat is the one that holds 

all of us – Lifeboat Earth (Hardin, 1974; Zen & Palmer, 

2004; Reitan, 2004). 

As individuals we must recognize that “by 

myself I have to mean the whole thing!” The psychological 

impact of that recognition, but – not necessarily the 

intellectualization of a coherent philosophical position, is 

the great benefit and power of Deep Ecology. The way we 

want to live is changed. To paraphrase the environmental 

philosopher, J. Baird Callicott (2000), what we do 

collectively depends upon what we collectively think and 

want. 

We can only accomplish our goal, to change the 

behavior that undermines a sustainable future, if we change 

what we collectively think and want. That is, we will have 

to change the dominant worldview. The Deep Ecology 

worldview leads us to want to moderate our impact, to 

want to share equitably, and to want to adopt sustainable 

behavior. 

The idea of “mutual coercion mutually agreed 

upon” (Hardin, 1968; Zen & Palmer, 2004) – the idea of 

cooperation according to mutually accepted rules –

becomes a self-evident and automatic response when each 

of us sees ourself as inextricably embedded in the web of 

life and relationships, all of which are parts of myself and 

of yourself. We end up working together for our mutual 

best because we want to. 

Educating broadly about the science and 

technologies of sustainability is essential, because it leads 

us to realize that a sustainable future is being undermined. 

The need to seek a worldview compatible with 

sustainability becomes evident. Education helps to remove 

the scales from our eyes; it can cure our blindness. But then 

we have to take the other step – deal with our addiction and 

denial. We have to find and communicate worldviews, such 

as Deep Ecology, that can lead us to want to cooperate with 

all other humans and with all of the non-human world, to 

respect Earth and its limits, so that all of us and our 

progeny can continue to enjoy this marvelous planet – our 

one and only lifeboat. 

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