Program Objectives

1. Raise the political priority of SPAC

Program Objectives

1. Raise the political priority of SPAC.

2. Promote monitoring, assessment and reporting

4. Strengthen communications and knowledge exchange

Despite the commitments made by governments, especially those in the industrialized countries, to "reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption," as declared at the 1992 Earth Summit and their more recent affirmation of this "overarching objective" at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), many if not most governments continue to display reticence if not resistance to implementing SPAC this as policy priority.

Raising SPAC as a political priority requires building alliances among informed civil society groups and with institutional players, including those within industry, media and civic groups, but especially in and around government (local, state and national). Although environmental and consumer groups have been raising public awareness about the impacts of individual consumption and the value of voluntary simplicity, some of the biggest commercial and institutional consumers and polluters remain unconvinced, requiring more politically-oriented persuasive strategies.

This calls for active and informed civil society participation in those policy dialogues, such as the shaping of the Ten Year Framework on Sustainable Production and Consumption agreed to by governments at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. It also means developing collaborative strategies and communications with groups working on promoting SPAC, both here in the United States and around the world.

ISF will continue to participate and help enable and encourage other civil society groups to participate in these intergovernmental policy discussions (e.g., in conjunction with the OECD, the UN Environment Programme, the Economic Commission for Europe, the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, and others) and to encourage greater public awareness and dialogue regarding the problem of unsustainable production and consumption and the policy tools needed to effectively address that problem.