This document summarizes a presentation on leapfrogging development and sustainable consumption patterns. It discusses: 1) The concept of leapfrogging at the national, sector, and technology levels to advance development. Examples include Korean firms outpacing competitors and mobile phone adoption leapfrogging landlines. 2) Challenges to leapfrogging include incremental rather than radical technological changes and lack of policies to catalyze alternatives. 3) The distinction between "weak" sustainable consumption focused on eco-efficiency versus "strong" sustainability involving lifestyle changes. 4) The concept of "lifestyle leapfrogging" to avoid unsustainable consumption patterns in developing countries by adopting sustainable practices from the outset. Examples of weak

1. Patrick Schroeder and Manisha Anantharaman
6th Future Earth in Asia Workshop, Kyoto, 15-16 January 2018
Thematic session:
Leapfrogging Development – challenges and opportunities

2. Presentation Overview
Leapfrogging development - review and introduction
Environmental leapfrogging and SCP
SCP 4.0
Q& A and discussion

3. 12.2
By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources
12.4
By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes
throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and
significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse
impacts on human health and the environment
12.5
By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling
and reuse
Achieving the SDGs requires a step change in
development

4. Leapfrogging development – beating a dead
horse?

5. The leapfrogging concept in industrial
development
1. National level: Leapfrogging as part of the entire development pathways of
countries;
2. Sector/company level: Leapfrogging ahead of competitors (incumbent players
overtaken by new competitors)
3. Technology level: Leapfrogging via the adoption and use of new technologies
Based on: Lee
and Kim, 2001

6. Examples of leapfrogging development:
Already happened:
Firm level: Korean, Taiwanese and Singaporean technology and
automotive firms in 1980s and 1990s
Technology adoption: ICT technology (mobile phones), leapfrogging 20th
landline telephone technologies (e.g. Steinmueller 2001)
Currently happening: adoption of solar PV for rural electrifications,
leapfrogging fossil-fuel generation and grid connection
Possibly happening soon (5-10 years): adoption of digital technologies
in manufacturing (3D printing) and transport (drones)
―But is this “leapfrogging”, particularly by
emerging economies, while theoretically
possible and practically desirable, really
going to happen? (Tukker 2005)
Leapfrogging – myth or reality?

7. Challenges and barriers to leapfrogging
development in Asia
Processes of technological changes and learning on the firm level mostly
proceed in incremental changes, rather than leaps.
‘It is vital to recognize sustainability transitions as hard slogs not leap
frogs from one landscape and regime to the next’ (Rock et al. 2008)
High degree of government engagement aimed at providing a wide
range of effective policies, including incentives, to catalyse such
leapfrogging scenarios, is deemed necessary (Ockwell 2007).
‘Policy-making should pro-actively embark on a leapfrogging
development path, rather than the common, reactive approach of slow
and incremental “muddling through”‘ (Ho 2005).
Green technology transfer from North to South and need to promote
innovation which can take the form of increasing absorptive capacity,
increasing transfer capacity and establishing interconnections between
parties (Gu and Lundvall 2006).

8. Tunnelling through the Environmental Kuznets
Curve

9. Presentation Overview
Leapfrogging development - review and introduction
Environmental leapfrogging and SCP
Sustainable Consumption 4.0
Q&A and discussion

10. Ecological integrity vs. robust consumption
The development agendas of many emerging economies, in Asia in
particular, emphasize the development of a robust domestic consumer
market as a means of maintaining economic growth and stability
Direct contradiction to the environmental reality
Environmental change and resource constraints would mean that
developing and emerging economies may not be able to develop or
consume in the same manner or to the same degree as the global
north

11. Sustainable consumption
If the ecological integrity of the planet is to be maintained and
systemic ecological, social and economic crises are to be
avoided, the consumption problem must be considered
The question of sustainable consumption is now receiving
systematic attention in emerging economies
Many competing conceptions and definitions of the term, both in
theory and practice

12. “Weak” sustainable consumption
Improving the eco-efficiency of consumption activities, but
not seeking any absolute reductions in consumption levels or
fundamental shifts in consumption patterns (Fuchs and
Lorek 2005).
Promotes green purchasing behavior requiring increasingly
complex decision-making processes by consumers
Emphasizes improving the efficiency of production and
distribution processes via technological innovations

13. “Strong” sustainable consumption
Systemic shift in consumption patterns resulting in absolute reductions in
consumption levels
Goes beyond viewing individuals simply as consumers, but
acknowledges other roles as community members and (ecological)
citizens (Seyfang, 2006)
Involves reconfiguring social practices, norms and cultural values and the
socio-technical regimes in which they are embedded
Finding balance between reformist efforts that focus solely on green
purchasing and eco-innovations and radical approaches that call for the
end of consumer capitalism (Geels et al, 2015)

14. Leapfrogging and Sustainable Consumption
The concept of environmental leapfrogging focuses
mainly on the greening of the production process
through technological innovations
Disproportionate focus on technological solutions or
value-chain efficiencies
Fails to bring the domain of consumption or human
behavior under its purview
This neglect of so called ‘soft’ factors has significantly
limited the explanatory and transformative power of the
idea of leapfrogging

15. Lifestyle leapfrogging
Our work extends the idea of leapfrogging into the domain of
consumption and behavior to ask if and how consumers in
developing and emerging economies might adopt sustainable
consumption practices from the outset, side-stepping the
resource intense consumption patterns of the developed world.
Lifestyle leapfrogging is a systems-based concept that explores
and outlines how sustainable lifestyles of consumers in developing
countries and emerging economies could be realized from the
outset, circumventing the unsustainable lifestyles of consumers of
Western countries.
Leapfrogging is both necessary and possible, and draws on a
holistic systems-based perspective of consumption practices to
demonstrate how leapfrogging could be made possible through
specific interventions in policy and behavior.

16. Lifestyle leapfrogging for weak sustainable
consumption
Green consumption
Changes in purchasing behavior leading to the uptake of
the most eco-efficient and least environmentally harmful
products
Emerging consumers in India and China as laggards,
adopting most-efficient option at the outset
Examples: efficient lighting, energy efficient appliances
and electronics, solar water heaters, solar PV home
systems, highly efficient vehicles, electric vehicles etc.

17. Evidence of lifestyle leapfrogging to weak sustainable
consumption
36
52
73
102
118
167
218
262
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Installed capacity growth of China's solar
water heating 2006-2013 (GWth)
Government subsidies and
promotional campaigns in
China
'Financial Subsidies Fund of
Promoting High Efficient
Lighting’, 2008
“Home appliances to the
countryside” (jia dian xia xiang)
subsidy program for solar water
heaters
India: Bureau of Energy
Efficiency STAR program,
Bachat Lamp Yojana

18. Lifestyle leapfrogging to strong sustainable consumption
Anti-consumption: Reject, restrict, and reclaim
Rejecting necessitates individuals intentionally and meaningfully
excluding particular goods from their consumption cycle.
Restricting incorporates cutting, lowering and limiting consumption of
specific goods and services when complete anti-consumption is not
possible.
Reclaiming represents an ideological shift regarding the processes of
acquisition, use, and disposal, e.g. voluntary simplifiers reclaim their
identity via production instead of consumption, when they choose to
grow their own vegetables rather than acquire them through
conventional markets.
Consumer resistance
Involves explicit opposition to certain actors, behaviors, and devices etc.
Explicitly political

19. Leapfrogging drivers and barriers
State/Policy
Market/Business
“Civil Society”

20. Growing number of car
trips/day/person
Environment
al pollution
Budgets allocated
to road expansion
Road widening and
flyover construction
+
+
+
+
+
-
Cars as cool
and
convenient
Traffic
congestion
Loans and
financing for cars
Advertisements
promoting cars
+
+
Market
Policy
Society
+
Causal Loop
Diagram
illustrating how
cities become
“locked-in” to
rapid
automobilization
pathways
R1
B1
+
R2

21. Automobilization resistance, rejection and reclaiming

22. Lifestyle leapfrogging towards reduced automobilization of
Indian cities

23. Presentation Overview
Leapfrogging development - review and introduction
Environmental leapfrogging and SCP
Leapfrogging to SCP 4.0
Q&A and discussion

24. Leapfrogging from SCP 2.0 to SCP 4.0
The Future of production and consumption
Industry 4.0 Consumption 4.0
?

25. Leapfrogging from SCP 2.0 to SCP 4.0
Non-conscious,intelligent algorithms are becoming a major factor in production
and consumption systems (decoupling of intelligence and consciousness).
Fundamental technologies such as behavioral algorithms are operating smart
buildings and autonomously-powered self-driving vehicles and will have more
powerful predictive capabilities.
The system will understand people better than they understand themselves
and will make most decisions for them
People will begin trusting algorithms more and more and hand over decisions
and life choices (e.g. online dating, body and health, food choices, travel
routes and times)
Learning algorithms are becoming the new matchmakers or middlemen
between production and consumption.
Will this offer opportunities for leapfrogging to rational, green
consumption choices and sustainable lifestyle practices?

26. Leapfrogging from SCP 2.0 to SCP 4.0

27. Publication details

28. Questions for discussions
1. Where do you see potentials for leapfrogging development
towards strong SCP in Asia, and what conditions are required
for this?
2. What might be some of the ethical questions to consider
around leapfrogging: agency, freedom of choice, rights to
resources.
3. How should the SCP community engage with tech companies
to shape the development of digital technologies for SCP, rather
than towards hyper-consumerism?