The Consortium 

The organisations participating in the Action Town project have formed a project consortium that provides an excellent combination of expertise and network enabling a bridge between CSOs and the research community. It can strongly stimulate the contribution of CSOs to guide new agenda in the field of sustainable development. Additionally, new partners selected to take part from summer 2009 on will contribute to the strengths of the initial consortium and will intensely expand the consortiums geographical reach-out.
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Consortium Coordinator 

UNEP/Wuppertal Institute Collaborating Centre on
Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP)

The CSCP provides scientific support to activities undertaken by UNEP and other organisations in the field of SCP. This support includes the development, testing, implementation and monitoring of concrete projects, especially in developing countries, which enables these countries to leapfrog to sustainable consumption and production patterns using life cycle thinking and regional perspectives as guiding principles. In this respect the Centre supports the integration of environmental, social and cultural concerns into decision-making at the level of national governments, regional and local authorities, the private sector, and consumer groups. The Centre works on the exchange of experiences with partners in both developing and developed countries, with support for capacity building and training approaches as an integral part of its programmes. Among these programmes, the Centre especially focuses on developing tools and initiatives for the management of environmental and social issues long global product chains. www.scp-centre.org

CSCP contact person: Nora Brüggemann 

Consortium Partners 

Northern Alliance for Sustainability (ANPED)

ANPED is a democratic network of local and national action NGOs, national NGO networks, environment groups, and development groups from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) region. ANPED links the knowledge and experience from organisations active at the local national level to international processes and back again. It enables networking between their membership and works to common competence and position building. Within ANPED there are several issue-related working groups consisting of a geographical cross-section of members, such as for example ‘Sustainable Production and Consumption’, ‘Agriculture, Biodiversity & Bio-safety’, Sustainable Energy and ‘Local Action for Sustainable Development’. www.anped.org 

ANPED contact person: Leida Rijnhout 

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Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)

SEI is established as a major expert on SCP within Europe and especially the UK. It works closely with the European Environment Agency as well as national, regional and local governments ensuring that the research is applied, relevant and timely. The research on sustainable consumption brings together a number of key issues: sustainable lifestyles; improving resource efficiency; minimising emissions and waste; lifecycle perspectives; equity dimension; policy analysis and future scenarios. SEI also has extensive knowledge and experience in stakeholder engagement in assessments for policy support, as well as strategic assessments (e.g. impact assessment, sustainability assessment, integrated assessment and strategic environmental assessment) supporting the integration of the sustainability dimension in the formulation of policies, plans and programmes. www.sei.se 

SEI contact person: Annika Varnäs 

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Sustainable Europe Research Institute (SERI)

The Sustainable Europe Research Institute (SERI) is a Pan-European think tank exploring sustainable development options for European societies. It was set up in September 1999. SERI integrates the ecological objective to reduce environmental space use with elaborated economic, social and institutional sustainability strategies. SERI develops strategies on the macro, meso, micro and meta levels of economies/societies. SERI has a vast track record of projects in this field including the international network SPACES, studies for OECD, the EEA, and others. Moreover, SERI holds broad experience in coordinating international projects, in the implementation and maintenance of web-based project communication tools, in the organization of meetings and in various participatory processes involving experts and stakeholders. www.seri.at  

SERI contact person: Elke Pirgmaier
 

WWF-UK

Founded in 1961, WWF-UK is part of the WWF global environment network, one of the worlds largest and most experienced environmental civil society organisations. WWF aims at stopping the degradation of the planet’s natural environment, and building a future in which humans live in harmony with nature. Strategies towards this major goal include ensuring sustainable use of natural resources, reducing pollution and wasteful consumption. WWF-UK is part of a global network present in more than 100 countries and has built credible relationships with a variety stakeholders coming from public policy, other NGO and business communities as well as the civil society. Having worked on natural resource conservations for decades, WWF is now increasingly looking into system changes required to ensure that our market economies are sustainable. Together with stakeholders, WWF-UK is exploring transformative ways for business to create value and meet human demand in a severely resource-constrained world. Within its network, WWF-UK is leading sustainable consumption and production thinking. www.wwf.org.uk 

WWF-UK contact person: Michael Narberhaus 

ECODES

ECODES is an independent not-for-profit organisation, founded in 1992 to develop, manage, and promote sustainable development projects and corporate social responsibility in Spain and Latin America. The organisation develops research initiatives on sustainability and social responsibility, including reports, briefs, articles, studies and best–practice manuals on environmental and social issues. It also designs, develops and manages innovative demonstration projects to show how changes in actions and behaviour (consumption patterns, investments, resource utilisation) can lead to significant environmental and social change. Our collaborative and integrated approach seeks the involvement of all sectors of society – governments, businesses, and civil society – to achieve positive social, economic and environmental change. 

ECODES contact person: Aurelio García 

Green Liberty

Green Liberty is a non-profit non-governmental environmental NGO based on personalities and the strong intentions to change the conventional attitude of society towards environment by a variety of means. Green Liberty’s mission is to develop a society in which people live in harmony with each other and their environment, to be achieved by: informing people of the social and environmental implications of current trends in consumerism, trade and globalisation; empowering people to participate more effectively in decisions that impact directly and indirectly on their lives; opposing abuses of power. Green Liberty has been working on SCP issues for some 10 years, starting with consumer awareness campaigns on household chemicals, promotion of eco-labels and sustainable food choices going on to lobbying for green budget reform and green public procurement. Green Liberty has also developed a webpage to consult consumers on social-environmental issues of consumer choices and has  become an opinion leader on SCP in Latvia. It is part of several networks, working on the national level in an environmental consultancy board dealing with environmental lobbying, and on the international level as a member of ANPED and Green Budget Europe. Green Liberty is furthermore participating in the formation of a network of NGOs in the Baltic states working on fair trade issues. 

Green Liberty Contact Person: Janis Brizga  

 MAMA-86

The Ukrainian national environmental NGO “MAMA-86″ was founded in 1990 and registered as national-wide organisation by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine in 2001. The mission of MAMA-86 is focused on enhancing the role of women/mothers in the education and decision-making process for improvement of living standards of citizens via   developing socio-environmental conditions for transition of the Ukraine towards sustainable development. A key area of attention is   to ensure a ttransparent implementation of environmental policies that takes account of the opinion of the public and stakeholders. MAMA-86 implements campaigns of public lobbying for integrating environmental requirements into development policies, as well as pilot technical solutions to illustrate the advantage of progressive policy change. Health and environment is a cross-cutting theme of MAMA-86’s activities; the greening of development policy and practice in Ukraine (shifting to SCP pattern) one of three main directions of work. MAMA-86 works on SCP issues since 1995, and is member of ANPED’s SCP WG. Within the research community, it cooperates with leading researches of the Council of Production Forces Studies of Ukraine. Together they worked on drafting National Environmental Strategy and NEAP (ongoing). 

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MAMA86 Contact Person: Anna Golubovska-Onisimova 

 TTGV

TTGV, having been established in 1991, is a non-profit, non-governmental organization. Its main mission is to foster the competitiveness of producers (particularly SMEs) by supporting their technological innovation and eco-efficient manufacturing activities. As part of its vision it pursues an effective role in th  “protection of ecological system”. In accordance with the requirement to tackle unsustainable patterns of “consumption” in addition to “production” for protecting environment, TTGV has extended its scope towards the holistic approach of consumption and production, namely “Sustainable Consumption and Production” (SCP). Supporting the development of environmental technologies and   environmentally friendly products is one of the priorities for TTGV, within the framework of its Research and Development (R&D) support program. Being aware of the fact that manufacturing industries in particular are increasingly pressurised to incorporate economic, environmental and social performances in their activities, TTGV takes all opportunities to raise awareness for life cycle thinking and the requirement of supply chain performance enhancement. From the perspective of “competitiveness”, “consumer demand” is now one of the major motivations and driving forces, as a market pull factor, for the development of eco-innovation. Hence, TTGV has raised interest for the consumer side as well, and seeks for opportunities to take part in initiatives towards sustainable consumption and sustainable lifestyle. 

TTGV Contact Person: Ferda Ulutas