Here you can see and listen within a couple of minutes, how Janis Brizga from Green Liberty delineates how participatory Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) policy assessment was organized by Green Liberty in Latvia. Ferda Ulutaş, Coordinator of Environment Project Group at Technological Development Foundation of Turkey (TTGV) outlines efforts to promote the development of SCP policies in Turkey, whereas Charles Carlos, Director of Management Systems at ECODES (Spain) gives a summary of developed indicators for Sustainability in Financial Products as well as the process and follow-up ideas. And finally, Nora Brüggemann, the Action Town Project Manager, explains in a nutshell the idea and work process of the EU-funded project in general.

For more information and the podcasts, please visit our library.

Being in the process of finalising their small scale pilot project on SCP in their respective countries, the National Focal Points ECODES (Spain), TTGV (Turkey), Green Liberty (Latvia) and MAMA-86 (Ukraine) shared their initial project results. Key lessons learnt and potential follow-ups have been discussed. For more information watch this space.

In addition, conference participants looked at why CSOs should – and how they can – work towards a more holistic and systemic transition to a sustainable society instead of pursuing the narrow technical policy focus of many of today’s strategies (as the Action Town Survey Report has shown most CSOs still do). As already the outcomes of the Action Town Roadmap Workshop have shown, researchers and CSOs alike are here needed; both have also equally shown a high interest in discussing this topic. Conference participants decided to took current thinking to the next level and to develop practical ways forward. These promising discussions – enabled and kicked-off by the Action Town project – will be continued by a group of enthusiastic and engaged individuals. This is a huge success for Action Town in sustaining its activities on supporting the collaboration of CSOs and researchers.

For more information on the follow-up activities please see also www.smart-csos.org.

To download the program of the SMART CSO conference, click here.

The project Participatory SCP policy assessment, carried out by Action Town partner Green Liberty in Latvia, aims to identify main driving forces behind our consumption patterns and propose policy recommendations to enable sustainable consumption and production (SCP) in Latvia. This is being done by bringing together environmental NGOs and scientific community from Latvia (at least 10 people from different institutions) and running series of participatory co-creation workshops to discuss the methodology, assessment tools and recommendations for SCP policy development.

Until now Green Liberty has carried out 2 workshops, discussing driving forces of consumption and policy tools for sustainable consumption development in Latvia. During these workshops experts have created mind maps with main driving forces in each of the three consumption clusters and indentified main policy tools for SCP. This will be followed with the third workshop focusing on the policy recommendations.

For the main driving forces for sustainable and unsustainable consumption, click here.

Watch this space for more information from the project.

A major driver for the initiation of this conference is the ESDinds EU research
project, which has exciting results to report on the development of values-based
indicators, trialed in the field with CSOs and businesses, and remotely by a further
50 organisations, some of whom will report at the conference. It was during this
project that the need for such a conference to bring together workers in the
different but overlapping fields of Indicators, Sustainability and Values became
apparent. Benefits of such interdisciplinary approaches are already emerging;
several groups wish to report on them and learn from each other. It is hoped a new
Community of Practice will emerge from these interactions.

Key themes
Values – The relevance of values to the success of businesses, CSOs and other
organizations, even when they are not themselves values-based, is becoming
increasingly recognized, and a theme of the conference will be the usefulness of
values-based indicators in that context.

Useful indicators for CSO projects – The development of useful indicators for any
type for civil Society (CSO) projects have always been problematic. At this
conference speakers from CSOs, funders and researchers will give updates on
challenges and emerging ideas.

Co-design and partnership in research – The importance of co-design and the
involvement of Communities of Interest for the success and appropriateness of a
research project will be explored.

Ethics and Sustainable Development – Major advances have been made in developing indicators, but challenges still exist at the project (or local) level, and in linking to ethical values.

An emerging Community of Practice in Indicators, Sustainability and Values
16 – 18 December at the University of Brighton
Registration is free (if you book before 1st December)

For more information, click here.

The essence of the Green Economy concept will be studied and inter-sectoral discussions on perspectives for “green growth” of Ukrainian economy carried out by looking at the UNEP Concept, the example of EU Strategy 2020 and proposals from Green 10 NGO Coalition and EaP SCF participants focused on environmental component of European Neighborhood Policy.

For more information, please contact Anna Golubovska-Onisimova from MAMA-86 (for
contact details visit: http://action-town.eu/town-hall/)

Sustainable Consumption

Building on the success of the previous “Sustainable Consumption” conferences organised in the past last two years, and closing the project supported by Norway Grants, an international conference on sustainable consumption, production and communication is organized:

It is the final conference of a project, which aims to establish an efficient and reasonable economic-, social- and settlement -policy, which can lead to the steady improvement of lifestyle in such a way that it maximises/prioritises the conditions of ecological sustainability. At the centre of the development path is consumption, which is, on the one hand, fundamental to reducing the rate of industrial pollution of human activities on the environment, and on the other hand it is the central element of the social organisational methods which prepare the circumstances for production processes.

This year the conference has the following objectives:

• to review and summarise completed research activities on sustainable consumption, production and connected communication;
• keep alive the informal network of scientists who work and are interested in this field in order to share and promote knowledge about these subjects.

This year’s conference will have special sessions focusing on the results of  the project “Sustainable Consumption, Production, and Communication” sponsored by the EEA Grants and Norway Grants, but open sessions will also be organised.

Information on the “Sustainable Consumption” conference can be found here.

Accounting for Climate Change – What and How to Measure

14. EMAN Conference, January 24-25, 2011

The conference will focus on the assessment of business costs and benefits of climate change as well as mitigation options. There is growing evidence and scientific consensus about global warming. Companies are challenged by uninsurable risks from unpredictable weather conditions as well as new governmental regulations, like the EU Emission Trading System, carbon taxes, building codes and energy efficiency standards. At the same time new business opportunities also arise from energy efficiency innovations, product developments, new business models, and other mitigation and adaptation potentials. The conference will be the first one in systematically accounting for business costs of these challenges and for analysing the role of accounting to develop economic business potentials.

Information on the EMAN conference is available here.

Participating Alternative Nobel Prize laureates are among others Vandana Shiva (India), Taeko Ogiwara and Ikuko Sasaki (Seikatsu Club Consumers Cooperative Union, Japan), Melaku Worede (Ethiopia) and Pat Mooney (Canada). Other personalities who fight for a sustainable future will also participate in the parallel sessions.

For more information: www.ifoam.org/events/ifoam_conferences/Living_Change.html

Programme topics include among others the cooperation across Europe in a changing consumer and trade environment, positive leadership, future supply chains, carbon footprinting and sustainability as a joint duty.

Representatives from key international organisations, NGOs, politicians, media and more will join the ECR-day. Multinational enterprises, such as Coca Cola, REWE group, Henkel, DHL, METRO GROUP or Unilever will make the conference a unique melting pot of ideas and solutions.

For more information: www.ecrtag.gs1-germany.de

Economic performance indicators encompass all aspects of an organisation’s economic interactions and focus on how the economic status of the stakeholders changes as a consequence of the organisation’s activities. Examples of these types of indicators include company turnover, profit, and the amount of products sold can be used. Economic accounting and reporting is well established and the data required for using economic performance indicators can be retrieved from a company’s financial department.

Social performance indicators are concerned with an organisation’s impact on the social systems it operates within. These would include labour practices, human rights and broader issues affecting consumers, the community and other stakeholders in society. Data for calculating social performance indicators may be retrieved from, among others sources, human resource and safety and occupational health departments.

.

Strengths and weaknesses

.

How you can take action

Sustainability performance indicators can help in monitoring the overall activities of a company. Assessing the data these indicators yield over time can reveal to what extent the company’s economic and social performance is sustainable. SPIs can also be used to assess the sustainability of CSOs themselves. Given that many small and medium sized enterprises lack the awareness, time and resources required to implement sustainability performance measurements, CSOs could provide support and guidance on their usage. SPIs are also an effective tool for campaigning and can be used by CSOs as the basis from which to encourage companies to improve their policies. CSOs are in a strong position to get involved with political developments by lobbying for laws and regulations that call for coherent indicators and reporting standards. Monitoring using SPIs provides an additional channel for networking with businesses and other CSOs.

.

Case study: The Global Reporting Initiative

One of the most successful applications of a SPI is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which pioneered the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting framework. The GRI framework sets out the principles and indicators that organisations can use to measure and report their economic, environmental, and social performance. Started in 1997 by the non-profit CERES, the GRI quickly gained both support, from international organisations such as UNEP and Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), and acceptance from companies around the world. The number of organisations which have released sustainability reports based on these freely available guidelines has increased from 20 in 1999 to over 850 in 2006. Sustainability reports based on the GRI framework can be used to benchmark organisational performance with respect to laws, norms, codes, performance standards and voluntary initiatives; demonstrate organisational commitment to sustainable development; and compare organisational performance over time.

.

Learn more and get inspired

Global Reporting Initiative

World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)

.

You can download the whole paper on indicators “Measuring Performance towards Sustainable Consumption and Production – Types of Indicators and Indicator Sets” and other interesting papers of the Action Town project in the Library!