The Framing of Sustainable Consumption and Production in SDG 12
| Published date | 01 January 2019 |
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12592 |
The Framing of Sustainable Consumption and
Production in SDG 12
Des Gasper , Amod Shah and Sunil Tankha
International Institute of Social Studies (The Hague), Erasmus University Rotterdam
Abstract
This paper examines the processes of formulation of UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG 12) –‘Ensure Sustainable
Consumption and Production Patterns’–and its targets and indicators. We argue that business interests have steered its nar-
rative of sustainable growth. The outcome of the SDG 12 negotiations reflects a production- and design-centered perspective
that emerged in the 1990s and has a business-friendly regulatory approach and faith in solutions through new technologies.
We show how the targets and indicators emerged in debates between national governments, UN agencies, civil society and
private sector organizations –and how they reflect both the political process and technical and practical considerations in
translation of a broad concept into the SDG format. While the emergence of SDG 12 as a standalone goal stems from a push
by developing countries to build pressure on developed countries, and its presence may open space for attention to this area
in the future, many of its targets were watered down and left vague. The indicators to measure progress on the targets fur-
ther narrow the scope and ambition of Goal 12, whose current content does not adequately reflect earlier more transforma-
tive conceptualizations of Sustainable Consumption and Production.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are envi-
sioned as universal goals, relevant for both developed and
developing countries.
1
They link economic, social and envi-
ronmental dimensions of development (UN, 2015), moving
beyond the narrower focus on poverty and human develop-
ment which characterized the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) (Fukuda-Parr, 2016), and merging it with the
environment agenda pursued through the UN Conferences
on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) since the early 1990s.
The combined agenda now includes a focus on achieving
sustainable consumption and production (SCP) patterns,
which despite substantial discussion through the UNCSD
process had not become part of conventional development
approaches.
Our paper analyzes how the concept of SCP was incorpo-
rated as standalone goal SDG 12, ‘Ensure Sustainable Con-
sumption and Production Patterns’, and elaborated as a set
of sub-goals (known as ‘targets’despite often lacking speci-
ficity) and corresponding indicators. First, we evaluate how
SCP is conceptualized and operationalized in SDG 12, and
how this relates to the history of the concept and discourse,
by comparing assumptions underlying the goal and its tar-
gets with the predominant understandings of SCP. Second,
we study the SCP-related discussions in the Open Working
Group (OWG) of the UN General Assembly, to understand
the determination of the final text on SDG 12 targets.
2
Third,
we similarly explore the subsequent work of the Inter-
agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG). For the
third and fourth sections we studied the deliberations of the
OWG and IAEG as made available publicly by the UN and
supplemented this with reference to secondary sources,
including discussions of these and related processes
published by insiders.
3
To conclude we review how both
technical and political factors brought watered down SDG
12 targets and how the selected indicators are often prod-
ucts of compromise and expediency which need to be revis-
ited and deepened. The paper does not assess how far the
concept of SCP has been adopted in other SDGs, which
would require a separate exercise.
The pedigree of ‘Sustainable Consumption and
Production’Ideas and their influence on SDG 12
The evolving conceptualization of sustainable
consumption and production
Discourses on SCP have featured in UN discussions on the
environment and sustainable development since the 1972
UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm.
Earlier work had introduced closed-systems perspectives,
including the ‘spaceship earth’concept (Fuller, 1968; Ward,
1966) that the earth’s resources are finite and its capacity to
re-absorb the by-products of production processes is also
limited. Also in 1972, the Club of Rome, a network of senior
scientists and industrialists, released a report commissioned
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Using com-
puter simulations, Limits to Growth updated the Malthusian
vision of contradiction between static stocks of resources
and arithmetic growth in some means of production versus
geometric growth in population and consumption, to cau-
tion against continuing the extant economic trajectories
(Meadows et al., 1972). Much subsequent work has empha-
sized that several key limits concern not the earth’s stocks
but its ability to act as a sink for pollution. Both types of
Global Policy (2019) 10:Suppl.1 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12592 ©2019 The Authors. Global Policy published by Durham University and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use,
distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Global Policy Volume 10 . Supplement 1 . January 2019 83
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