Can we shop our way to sustainability?

Richard Hardyment, July 14th, Projects

“Can we shop our way to sustainability?” was the topic for a lively seminar Forum for the Future held last Monday evening.

"Yes - under certain conditions" came the answer from the majority of our panel: Lord Adair Turner, the new Chairman of the Government’s Committee on Climate Change; Lucy Siegle from the Observer; and Lucy Neville-Rolfe from Tesco.

Environmental guru Roger Levett was more doubtful – a view shared by the delegates. Just 29 per cent answered “yes” to the question in our snap entry poll; support fell to 22 per cent in a post-event survey. So what persuaded our attendees – 100 thinkers from industry, academia and NGOs – that something more complex is required?

The solutions to sustainable consumption are clearly not as simple as our poll question implied. Widespread agreement emerged on the range of changes needed: better information to empower consumers; careful framing of the alternatives in supermarkets; and removing the most unsustainable products - "choice editing" – altogether from the shelves.

So what are the barriers to making sustainable consumption a reality today? How can we change consumer behaviour effectively? And what might be the ideal consumer products of the future? See our summary of the evening for further details.

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Steering a sustainable path through GM issues

Claire Skinner, July 9th, General

Are genetically modified (GM) crops vital to solve the current global food and land crisis? The current situation has, if not shifted the European view, at least rocked it substantially. From a solid resistance to any trace of GM in the food chain, people are now beginning to question whether this resistance is valid in the face of a food crisis, rising prices, increasing demands on available land, and water scarcity issues.

In the UK we have seen plenty of articles in the press in the last few weeks around GM technology and its role in tackling the food crisis. Some different positions have been made clear – government ministers calling for wider use of the technology, yet the chairman of a major biotechnology firm has explained that GM crops will not solve the current food crisis. In April the international multidisciplinary IAASTD report highlighted the uncertainty of possible benefits and damage of biotechnology.

We’ve looked into what it would take for GM to form a part of a sustainable agricultural system and regardless of which sustainability framework or lens we use to look at the issues – whether it’s the Five Capitals approach, The Natural Step, or triple bottom line accounting – we come down to the same couple of principles:

• Current GM technology is designed to be used in agricultural systems and within overall business models which are inherently unsustainable and which rely on depleting stocks of resources, rather than maintaining or building them.
• The potential for GM crops to increase yields, without using up finite resources, and in ways which do not threaten people’s livelihoods, has not yet been realised.

Click here to download 5 Capitals summary of GM issues

The variety of issues that have led to food riots across the world show us that we need to use long-term solutions to tackle them. Many of the trends, for example land pressure to grow biofuel crops, have come around themselves from taking a short-term view in the past and not fully understanding knock-on effects when we have tried to find a more sustainable path.

Globally, the area under cultivation by GMOs increased by 12% last year, to 114m hectares. America topped the list, but there is rapid growth in Argentina, Brazil, India and China (The next Green Revolution – The Economist 21 Feb 2008). The main crops are Roundup Ready maize and soyabeans. It’s promised that the second generation will have further traits, such as drought resistance, 'stacked' on top, and that further ‘upgrades’ on plant traits will happen more and more rapidly. Deep concerns stem from the fact that current GM crops are owned and controlled by a handful of large companies, represented by the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, together holding major sway over lobbying and the public face of the technology, as well as proprietary control over crop genomes.

Qualities such as nitrogen-fixing by cereals, and drought and salt-resistance would no doubt increase yields, and allow crops to be grown on marginal land. So far these traits aren’t available. As Jonathon Porritt’s article for Prospect magazine last December explained, these traits need to be tested and proven before we can claim that GM crops will help tackle world hunger. The report by the IAASTD , 'the IPCC of global agriculture', gives a comprehensive list of priorities for tackling global agriculture issues, and stresses the need for delivery of agricultural technologies to involve “thorough, open and transparent engagement of all stakeholders”.

In summary, GM might have a role to play in securing a more sustainable food production system in the future…

…but, it’s definitely not a ‘silver-bullet’ solution to world hunger, climate change and poverty.

Right now, our priorities should be reducing waste in the food chain, eating a less meat-intensive diet, and ensuring our production systems are energy and resource efficient and non-polluting, as well as overall poverty reduction measures to increase access to food.

Claire Skinner
Lena Staafgard

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Voluntary carbon markets – making them work for the poor

Alice Chapple, July 8th, Projects

Researching for Forum's report on Making voluntary carbon markets work for the poor, I was struck by the tremendous passion and excitement of people who see poor people benefit directly from investments in forests and in small-scale renewable energy, made possible through the voluntary carbon market.

Of course no one pretends that it can on its own deliver the massive transformation required to combat climate change. But the voluntary carbon markets can offer opportunities for innovation and for closer personal connections that we simply can't achieve with slow and cumbersome global negotiations on regulatory frameworks.

Whether it's a story of a family in Mexico benefiting from efficient cooking stoves that result in lower wood use, less smoky fumes and improved health; or a family in India using solar lighting systems that enable children to study, and parents to generate additional workstreams; or protection of a bio-diverse forest in Indonesia on which many thousands of families depend – all of the stories illustrate lives being changed. Together they make up a market that grew fourfold last year.

Of course there are challenges. Not all projects deliver carbon reductions and social development, and the growth of robust standards is an important part of ensuring that people can retain confidence in the market. Local communities seldom have negotiating power so there is scope for unequal deals and exploitation and this needs to be carefully monitored as the market grows and develops. Investment in preventing emissions from deforestation and degradation has its own set of issues, around land and carbon rights, the permanence of the forest and additionality. But an enormous amount of work has been done to find solutions because people on the ground can see the importance of these activities.

And the voluntary carbon market has to be seen in context. Offsets can only ever be valuable if they are used as the final part of a carbon reduction strategy and not as some kind of short cut. Perhaps in a few years' time we will have tighter regulation and there will be less need for a voluntary carbon market. But all the evidence shows that, in the meantime, they do have a major role to play in carbon reduction and in creating global connections, and deserve our discerning support.

Download 'Making voluntary carbon markets work for the poor' here.

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Renewable energy strategy

Jonathon Porritt, July 7th, Forum founders

There is a lot of (mostly justifiable) cynicism out there regarding the use of targets to drive environmental improvements. In May, the think-tank Policy Exchange brought out an analysis of all the different targets set by the Government on environmental issues since 1997, and gave them a real pasting on just how far short they have fallen on so many of them.

But the implication behind the Report that any target-setting process in the field of environmental policy is largely a waste of time is entirely misplaced. Targets can drive both policy reform and improved outcomes.

And there is no bigger target out there at the moment than the EU’s target of providing 20% of all the energy it needs (not just electricity) from renewable resources by 2020. After some lively horse-trading, it was decided earlier on in the year that the UK share of that EU-wide target should be 15% – which means at least 30% (and probably close to 40%) of our electricity will need to come from renewables – it’s just so much tougher doing transport or heating by renewables.

Acceptance of this target led to months of the deepest angst inside BERR. On Thursday last week, it eventually delivered itself of a draft Renewable Energy Strategy. And it’s not half bad. Indeed, after a decade of incredibly damaging dithering, BERR Officials have at last begun to think through the reality of meeting energy security and low-carbon objectives through renewables.

Part of that new-found purpose is based on the development and deployment of the technologies themselves – particularly offshore wind, which is where we can get the biggest bang for our renewable buck. But the most encouraging thing about this draft Strategy is the recognition that making renewables work depends not so much on the technology bit as on other key aspects of energy policy, namely: energy efficiency (properly accounted for in the Strategy, for the first time since the 2003 Energy White Paper, though even now without a clear plan of action); planning (with really encouraging new emphasis on community and local benefits); grid connections (at long last, BERR is getting tough with Ofgem to get its own act sorted out on low-carbon measures); and even behaviour change – rumour has it that BERR won’t be too upset if their Lordships force the Government to give way on accepting the need for the accelerated introduction of feed-in tariffs – the single most important factor in driving the astonishing renewables success story in Germany and elsewhere.

Real breakthroughs – as Greenpeace and others have acknowledged. Still some blindingly obvious blind-spots (doing this in a way that further hammers the fuel-poor in the UK is really not smart), but without doubt the best thing to emerge from BERR over the last five years.

To read the Sustainable Development Commission's reaction to the Renewable Energy Strategy, please click here.

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Forlorn in the USA (Unsure State of America)

Julian Agyeman, July 7th, General

Now that the dust has finally settled on the epic Obama-Clinton duel and the Democrats and Republicans are squaring up for some serious campaigning, what are some of the sustainability policy challenges and opportunities that await would-be Presidents Obama and McCain?

As a Brit living in the US for the past 10 years I have noticed the increasingly unsure state of America, an America where the dominant paradigm, based largely on the intergenerational expectation of cheap gas and food, looks increasingly frail.

I couldn't agree more with Yale's Dan Esty that "there has been a huge sea change in public attitudes on the environment in the last couple of years." Don't get me, nor I suspect Esty wrong. Americans have not had a wonderfully altruistic 'kumbaya' moment of planetary (com)passion where they are lining up to buy Priuses while ceremoniously recycling their Hummers and Chevy Suburbans. No, this is mostly a tipping point borne of reaction, an unwanted jolt of global reality, and with good reason.

Basically, the you-know-what is hitting the fan on all fronts. Gas prices at $4+ and climbing are compounding suburbanite woes by increasing the expense of their commute while simultaneously and directly related, sending their house prices into free fall; food prices are rising across the board in part because of the conversion of grain into fuel for cars; the rising cost of domestic air travel is revealing the stark lack of alternatives like European and Asian-style high speed rail infrastructure in the nation's high density regions (except for the Acela in the Boston-Washington corridor) and many of the extreme weather events such as the south east drought, Hurricane Katrina, wildfires in California and the west and flooding in the Midwest are, despite the protestations of an increasingly alarmed Bush administration, not 'acts of god' but the results of climate change and poor public policy and planning.

Basically the American dream is fast becoming the American nightmare and the problem is that neither presidential candidate is prepared to redefine and dematerialize the dream. Both are saying what the public wants to hear, not what the public needs to hear. Both are talking about 'the issues', but neither is fully linking the issues, joined-up style.

My point is that neither is talking about the bigger joined up picture: sustainability or sustainable development. Maybe Obama wants us to hope for sustainability and hope is a step in the right direction, but is not enough. McCain’s straight talk won’t deliver sustainability either. This being the USA, maybe we should all pray for sustainability?

Professor Julian Agyeman
Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning
Tufts University
Boston, Massachusetts.

Prof. Julian Agyeman will be writing a monthly informal blog for us from the USA

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