Sustainable consumption in focus for 13 Asian countries
Representatives from governments, business and civil society in 13 Asian countries will discuss how plans and activities to promote sustainable consumption can be put into practice.
Delegates will review ways and means to minimise the negative environmental and social effects of rapidly increasing consumption levels in Asia while at the same time ensuring that the regions poor get access to products and services to achieve an improved life quality.
The initial findings from a review of the conditions and best practices for sustainable consumption in Asia and Europe will also be discussed.
The three day meeting is part of the SC.Asia project, an initiative coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and funded by the European Union’s Asia Pro Eco Programme.
According to the review, there are presently more ‘middle to high income’ consumers – those earning more than US$7,000 per annum - in Asia and the Pacific than in Western Europe and North America combined. Yet this still represents only 26 percent of the region’s rapidly growing population.
“All this adds up to a future scenario where more and more people, by meeting their basic needs and demands through increased consumption, increase the ‘consumption pressure’ to levels corresponding to the ones found in Europe or North America today,” says Mrs. Wei Zhao, UNEP’s SC.Asia project manager.
“It is important that developing countries such as the Philippines, recognise the challenges posed by increased consumption at an early stage, said Julian Amador, Director for the Philippines Environmental Management Bureau. “There is a need to take appropriate action so as to avoid some of the serious problems in developed countries related to over consumption.”
The last half-century has been one of unparalleled worldwide increase in production and consumption of products and services, including food, clothing, transport, energy, sanitation, entertainment, water, land, electronics, and so on.
“Not only has the world population more than doubled in the past half century, but the consumption per person has also increased at an unprecedented rate,” said Mrs. Zhao. “Average household consumption increased 68% from 1980 to 1998, oil and paper consumption more than tripled since the early 1960’s, and the road traffic in several SE Asian countries more than doubled from 1990 to 1999,” he said.
The Manila meeting is expected to result in capacity building on sustainable consumption of national stakeholders, a hands-on guidance manual for government on how the UN guidelines on sustainable consumption can be practically implemented, as well as national action plans on sustainable consumption in participating countries.
About SC.Asia: The project, which is financially supported by the European Union, is aiming at identifying best practices on promoting sustainable consumption in Europe and Asia, and building knowledge and capacity in concerned governmental authorities in Asia to adopt these practices. Such practices may include consumer information campaigns, product testing, eco-labelling, legislation, economic incentives, corporate environmental policies, advertising and so on. The ultimate goal is to enable Asian Governments to implement the UN Guidelines on consumer protection, section G on sustainable consumption. The guidelines were formally adopted by the UN General Assembly already in 1999, but so far only a few Governments have been able to translate the section on sustainable consumption into concrete action.
The project partners, which include UNEP, Consumers International, The Danish Consumers Council and the Centre for Environment and Development (Sri Lanka) will review a range of approaches in Europe (Denmark, France, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdoms) and Asia (Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam) and together with government officials fro Europe and Asia synthesize the findings into a guidance manual. The project will also assist the Asian countries to draft, based on the guidance manual, national action plans for promoting sustainable consumption at the national level.
The Asia Pro Eco Programme is a programme dedicated to the improvement of environmental performance in Asian economic sectors through the exchange of environmental policies, technologies and practices, and to promote sustainable investment and trade between the European Union Member States and South Asia, South-East Asia and China”.
웹사이트: http://www.unep.org.
연락처
UNEP Press Officer in Kobe on 090 3466 5423
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2010년 6월 10일 10:36