The Story of Stuff

 

The Story of Stuff

The next 700 words or so are going to be about stuff. We use stuff for everything. It defines us and our world. Stuff is how we look at our growth and development. Stuff is all the goods and products we use through the day. Our resource driven economy can be broken into five stages -extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. We will focus on the extraction and production phases.

The Stuffy Economy

“Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life,that we seek our ego satisfaction, in consumption… we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.” ~ Victor Lebow (1955)

In order to keep consuming, we need to keep producing. And producing is resource intensive. The current economic model and the growth it has led to over the last few decades managed to lift millions of people out of poverty. With living standards rising in much of the South, the proportion of people living in extreme incomepoverty worldwide plunged from 43 % in 1990 to 22% in 2008^[1].

With its heavy reliance on natural resources, the pursuit of sucheconomic growth has created unprecedented environmental damage and resource depletion. Unsustainable production and consumption patterns of land-based products are exerting unprecedented pressure on land resources across the globe^[2]. Production of conventional fossil fuels has peaked^[3].  Total material extraction increased by a factor of 8 to support a 23-fold GDP growth^[4]. Annual extraction of ores, minerals, hydrocarbons and biomass to keep us fed, clothed, housed, mobile, entertained and connected grew from 7 billion tonnes in 1900 to 60 billion tonnes today;expectingto reach 140 billion tonnes by 2050.

Sustainable Production

Increasing populations have forced us to rethinkour production systems like the global consensus to adopt sustainable consumption and production (SCP) systems. SCP refers to “the use of services and related products… responding to basic needs…bringing a better quality of life… minimising the use of natural resources and toxic materials and emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle of the service or product …. not jeopardising the needs of future generations^[5]”.

Robins and Roberts (1997) noted that the emphasis of sustainable production is on the supply side of the SCP equation^[6]. It is a cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder approach aiming at decoupling resource use from environmental degradation through resource efficiency in production processes while transitioning towards a green economy.

Goals for Sustainable Production

Though the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)made definitive progress onmanyaspects, they paid little attention to resource use and related impacts on the environment. Goal 7 on Ensuring Environmental Sustainability targeted reduced biodiversity and resource loss, improved access to water and sanitation etc. However, aspects of resource extraction and consumption were not tackled.  The formulation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), building on the MDGs,present an opportunity to bring attention to issues of resource use as a means to pursue focused coherent action on sustainable development.

Development Alternatives is working with the UNEP-International Resource Panel on developing a reflection on the establishment of SDGs aimed at decoupling economic growth from escalating resource use and environmental degradation^[7]. The report proposes a separate SDG on Sustainable Resource Management focusing on resource productivity, outlining a trajectory for efficient use of natural resources in an equitable and environmentally responsible manner. The targets are designed to account for different levels of development with common but differentiated responsibilities to enable universal application.

While there is a standalone goal it is imperative to ensure synergy with other goals. The presence of overlapping targets help in achieving the aim of sustainable development.

Goal	Efficient use of natural resources in an equitable and environmentally benignmanner for human well-being in current and future generations.
Target A	Double the yearly rate of resource productivity increase by 2030
Indicators	Raw Material Consumption/GDP or Material Footprint[1]/GDP Total Material Requirement/GDP MaterialRequirement/GDP (per sector: energy production, food production, housing etc.) Global Land Use for Domestic Consumption/GDP Green House Gas Emissions/GDP
Target B	Decoupling economic growth rates from escalating use of natural resources to achieve the average material intensity of consumption per capita of  6-8  tonnes/capita/year[2] in 2050
Indicator	Average national metabolic rates(material intensity of consumption per capita measured in tonnes/capita) RMC/capita (raw material consumption per capita or material footprint[3] per capita)

Image Source: http://divergentmba.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/the-story-of-stuff/