1. Sustainable production and
consumption
Professor Mark Harvey
Centre for Research in Economic
Sociology and Innovation

2. Current relevant research
• Transition to a sustainable bioeconomy (ESRC)
– Sustainable transport: energy and engines
– Beyond the petro-chemical technology platform
• ESRC Centre for Research and Engagement in
Sustainable Behaviour (possibly).
– Macro-, meso-, and micro- framework for behavioural
analysis
• Eating
• Sheltering
• Washing and watering
• Moving and communicating

3. INTERLOCKING CHALLENGES AND CRISES
“Peak petro-chemicals”
Global climate change
Food crises
Land use + water
Biodiversity
Socio-economic
welfare

4. Instituting economies
• Market-led modes of innovation and consumption are
inadequate to the six challenges
• Range of political instruments, national and international
– Mandates, fiscal incentives, legal constraints, public
procurement, public provision, etc.
– Innovation through “directed evolution”
• Governments, NGOs, incumbent and new entrant firms,
scientists – a complex interaction of multiple actors and
interests.
• “Consumers”, social practices, groupings:
interdependent systems of provision and end-use.

5. Sustainable consumption and
production
• Distributed and interdependent innovation
towards sustainability: systems of provision and
consumption
• Sustainability AND growth versus sustainability
as a restriction of consumption, localisation, etc.
• Collective and political choices – rather than
individual moral or market choice
• “Triangular affairs” (state and market actors,
consumer organisations/groupings) – at least.