Getting the Goods: 2005

Sustainable Consumption
& China perspectives

Changhua Wu,
Professional Association for China's Environment, China

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There seems no controversy about the ultimate goal of sustainable consumption. “Improved quality of life for all” has been accepted by both developing and industrial countries and become the common ground for the world community to work together to achieve sustainability. A rather broadly defined concept, sustainable consumption is now more of an issue of how and when. It will take each country's wisdom, determination, commitment, and innovation when policy and practice changes are concerned.

The recently concluded UNEP “Regional Cross-Learning Seminar on Sustainable Consumption” brought together representatives of government, business, NGOs and academics from 13 Asian countries to Manila to share the information and best practices within the region and with some European counterparts. While sharing many common challenges with other Asian countries, China represents a rather unique case. Its uniqueness comes from its size of the population, the path of creating an “economic miracle” over the last two decades, the transitional political, economic and social reforms, as well as the daunting pressure from the growth on the ecosystem and heavy price the country has paid for achieving the maintained high economic growth rate.

Besides the population pressure, with 1.3 billion people, or about 20 percent of the world total, to feed, clothe, house and transport, three other concurrent trends determine that China has to take on the sustainable consumption initiative and seek alternative development path: 1) trends of consumption and towards consumer society; 2) intensive resource use development; and 3) continued and emerging poverty.

Firstly, the large population base and the increasing number of households entering the middle class put China on top of the world's list of consumer products. A latest survey shows that in 2004, China's total consumption expenditures reached USD 700 billion, about 9 percent of the US total. Even though the average per capita consumption remains still low, in 2003, Chinese consumers ate 33 percent of the world's rice, 22 percent soybean oil and 12 percent meat products. It is forecast that the expenditures will continue to grow at a rate of average annual 18 percent, much faster than that of the US. Some organizations even predict that China will rapidly exceed the US and become the world's largest consumer society.

Secondly, even though China has succeeded in partly decoupling the energy use and economic growth in the last decade or so, official statistics points to a worrisome trend that China's rapid growth of GDP over the last two decades heavily relies on total resource input, including biomass, metal minerals, non-metal ores and construction materials. In the meantime, total pollutant discharges, such as water and air pollution, solid wastes and suspended matters, continue to rise. As a result, the Chinese consumers' welfares have been greatly compromised and threatened. If the current trends remain, China could be kept in a vicious cycle – rapid economic growth in steps with continuous intensive resource use and increasing pollutant emissions, and in the end, the growth will be halted and even reversed.

And thirdly, one of the greatest achievements of the economic miracle in China is lifting millions of people out of poverty. While there are still millions of others in poverty, the increasing gaps between eastern coastal areas and the economically disadvantaged inland areas and the migration of rural population to cities have also generated new poverty-stricken groups in urban areas. As a result, the gaps between the haves and the have-nots have become a major cause of social unrest in many parts of the country.

Fully aware of the worrisome trends, the top leaders in China are determined to lead the country away from the current path and explore alternatives towards sustainability. This can be witnessed by the country adopting sustainable development as a national development strategy, and integrating principles of sustainability and environmental protection into national policies. Circular economy, resource efficient society, greening GDP and very lately harmonious society are now among the identified models and policies to drive its development process.

What does this imply? First, life-cycle analysis and 3 R's principles are now commonly accepted as the basic framework of the reindustrialization process, in particular in the Northeastern and the western regions. Second, some of the environmental externalities are gradually integrated into the indicator framework to measure the progress and real growth. Third, resource efficiency is recognized as one of the national priorities to decouple the resource intensity and economic growth. And, fourth, individual consumer's rights and interests will be better protected when access to information, participation and redress is more emphasized in legal and policy framework.

In practice, China has developed a rather comprehensive legislative framework to reinforce the shift towards sustainable consumption. Laws such as promoting cleaner production, environmental impact assessments, energy conservation, renewable energy have been passed and enacted in the last couple of years. Public access to government information and public participation are now officially endorsed by the legal framework. Waste recycling and minimization, certification, eco-labeling and product information are actively pursued. Mass media, education and information campaigns have contributed greatly to informing consumers to make smarter choices. And very recently, the government even started experimenting with green procurement.

And yet, barriers and challenges in reality remain daunting. And gaps between policy and practice remain huge. Partly, it is because the complexity of the issues related to sustainable consumption, which range from teeny tiny daily life decision to purchase a product to national policy of how to restructure economy towards sustainability. While sustainable consumption seems a rather simple concept to understand and many local initiatives are on the ground that could be linked to SC framework, the SC Asian review seemed to confirm a fact that the concept is poorly understood or misunderstood among governments and civil society stakeholders, including China. As a result, sustainable consumption, though being mentioned here or there in some government document, is not yet on national agenda.

An effective way to tackle the SC issues is to provide adequate public access to information, alternative products and services and infrastructure to deliver those products and services. Information-wise, Chinese media have played a significant role in raising consumer awareness and educating consumers so that they understand the impact of the current unsustainable behavior. But, what is inadequate is the availability of products and services on the markets that are deemed sustainable, let along the delivery infrastructure. This is also common to other Asian countries.

Then there is the issue of lack of law enforcement structure that severely affects the enforcement of laws and policies at national and local levels. When transforming unsustainable behaviors does not necessarily require hi-tech and huge amount of investment, instead, in many cases, more of an issue of shifting perceptions, influencing consumers' choices is much more complicated than expected since there are many factors, like values and cultural traditions that decide how a consumer chooses. And last but not the least, political wills and real commitments to change are not adequate and even missing in some cases. All those factors, including many others, are holding back the course towards sustainability.

One additional point I would like to emphasize here is innovation. When top level policies and legislation are absolutely necessary, innovations of practice from private sectors, civil society and consumers could be more powerful driving forces for change. While some innovative cases have been identified and shared at the regional cross-learning seminar, more and well-developed innovation strategies, policies and practices in China need to be investigated and shared in China and with the rest of the world.