Program Objectives

2. Promote monitoring, assessment & reporting on progress on SPAC

Program Objectives

1. Raise the political priority of SPAC.

2. Promote monitoring, assessment and reporting

4. Strengthen communications and knowledge exchange

Part of the effort to raise the political priority of SPAC, including here in the United States, is the active monitoring, assessment and reporting of progress, especially by government, towards sustainable production and consumption policies, priorities and practices. In 1999, ISF helped design and launch the international SPAC Watch initiative involving a collaboration of civil society groups and networks in coordinating research and analysis and SPAC policy advocacy to heighten attention to the status of SPAC policies in their respective countries and governments.

In addition to helping manage this initiative, ISF agreed this year to be the focal point for monitoring and reporting on U.S. progress towards SPAC. This project involves working with other groups around the country in assessing the trends, history, efforts to change and integrate policy, and obstacles that need to be overcome in order for SPAC priorities to be adopted by the appropriate bodies of U.S. government -- nationally as well as at state and local levels. This is of course an ambitious task, which needs to be done step by step.

The first step is in identifying those groups around the U.S. promoting SPAC policies -- which ISF is currently doing in conjunction with the North American Sustainable Consumption Alliance, in the development of an online regional database of SPAC activities in the US, Canada, and Mexico.

The next step involves working with those groups to assess the status and potential of SPAC policies in the United States. ISF has, in conjunction with the CitNet Working Group on SPAC, organized a series of meetings and discussion with US groups on SPAC strategy and coordination. Participants in these discussion includes groups such as World Resources Institute, Sierra Club, World Wildlife Federation, World Resources Institute, Green Seal, Worldwatch Institute, Center for a New American Dream, Friends of the Earth, the North American Sustainable Consumption Alliance, the American Planning Association, and the UN Environment Program Regional Office of North America. Overall, the main question of these discussion is how best to promote SPAC in the U.S. and internationally.

In the months ahead, ISF will work with these and other groups in preparing a preliminary assessment of U.S. progress as part of our contribution to this year's SPAC Watch report, as well as work with other groups internationally in preparing the overall report . This report will be circulated to an audience of selected policymakers, researchers and activists working on SPAC issues.