Expert Speak Terra Nova
Published on Feb 12, 2021
There are growing calls amongst a section of political and industry leaders for a “great reset” of capitalism.
Reorienting sustainability in the “post-normal age”: India’s policy imperatives

In 2010, much of the world was grappling with the ruins of the 2008 financial crisis, the swine-flu pandemic, multiple terrorist attacks and the never-ending threat of nuclear proliferation, over and above frequent extreme climate events. In June that year, amidst these challenges, the British futurist Ziauddin Sardar welcomed his readers to what he called “post-normal times” in an article in the journal Futures. The post-normal, he said, is a time devoid of “the confidence that we can return to any past we have known and with no confidence in any path to a desirable, attainable or sustainable future.”

The optimism of the 2030 agenda for “transforming our world” has taken a hard-stop.

A decade since Sardar’s formulation, India is grappling with the transformative shock of COVID-19, an economy in disarray, an uncertain and incredibly hostile neighbourhood, a dynamic global order, and the current and impending impact of climate change. The optimism of the 2030 agenda for “transforming our world” has taken a hard-stop.

Amidst all this, there are growing calls amongst a section of political and industry leaders for a “great reset” of capitalism, a term that is — for those of us outside of the Davos circle — confusing at best and anxiety-inducing at worst. Notably, this global reset, its proponents claim, would involve a radical turn towards sustainability through public and private investments even though the finer points of the same have yet to be laid out. In these identifiably post-normal times, as we chart our path to a desirable future, it is essential to understand the current discourse on sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12) in India and the world. Through this article, we highlight the stopgap nature of conversations and policies around sustainable consumption and the need to reorient them.

This global reset, its proponents claim, would involve a radical turn towards sustainability through public and private investments even though the finer points of the same have yet to be laid out.

Current discourse

The post-2015 sustainable development agenda (Agenda, hereafter) broad-based the needs-centric understanding of sustainability through the 17 “integrated and indivisible” goals that seek to balance its economic, social, and environmental dimensions. Enshrined under SDG12, efforts towards making consumption and production sustainable are said to be essential to reduce the burden of human lifestyles on the planet. The World Energy Outlook 2020 has also noted that realising a net zero emissions scenario by 2050 is not possible without necessary changes in consumer behaviour.

Globally, such efforts have largely been focused on improving resource use efficiency. This includes reducing food wastage which, if it was a country, would be the third highest source of emissions after China and the USA, as per the FAO. It also includes, among other things, improving energy efficiency, producer-to-consumer supply chains, and promoting sustainable lifestyle choices. The implicit assumption in this approach is that production and consumption can be made sustainable through efficiency gains based on technological advancement and increasing demand for more efficient products. Lorek and Fuchs (2013) have termed this the weak sustainable consumption (wSC) approach, which is market-centric and overly relies on technological solutions. For instance, even if an apparel manufacturing unit improves its energy use over time and invests in sustainable sourcing of raw materials, its end goal is to keep producing and delivering to the consumer to stay in business, whether it is their tenth or hundredth purchase. The unit essentially relies on the insatiability of a consumer who can afford to buy endlessly and gains satisfaction from additional purchases, i.e., marginal utility.

The implicit assumption in this approach is that production and consumption can be made sustainable through efficiency gains based on technological advancement and increasing demand for more efficient products.

While that is true, the buying power of consumers varies across economic class and geographical context. So, consumers in developed countries are more likely to display insatiability compared to those in the developing world, within which, the affluent class will have a higher buying capacity. While SDG12 does expect the developed world to take the lead on this, there is no specific sub-target that seeks to address consumption from the point of marginal utility. As states are expected to simply ensure the availability of information on sustainable lifestyles, their adoption has been left to the discretion of consumers regardless of their buying power. This is partly why, even though countries like the US, Canada, and Australia have over time reduced their emissions, their per capita consumption-based CO2 emissions are still significantly higher than those of India, China and much of the developing world.

Sustainable consumption in India

In India, this conversation is still at a nascent stage, and not only because the dominant discourse around sustainability is about the justifiably greater responsibility of developed countries to this end. India’s 2020 voluntary national review (VNR) document reveals a clear picture in this regard. The action areas listed under SDG 12 in the VNR mostly involve efforts to improve resource efficiency on supply side and procurement. These include, sustainable agricultural practices, energy efficiency considerations during public procurement, adoption of green building practices, regulatory mechanisms for sustainable tourism, efficiency in resource extraction and production, and waste management. The chapter covering SDG 12 towards the end acknowledges two things:

• 40 percent of the food produced in the country is wasted, and

• Sustainable supply chains are crucial and require cooperation among producers and simultaneously, increased awareness among consumers about sustainable consumption.

This acknowledgement in passing indicates that there is a policy level push required. We argue that the concept of marginal utility and based off that, a differentiated approach to sustainable consumption choices based on affluence is the need of the hour. This would mean that instead of a once-size-fits-all policy of simply encouraging people with lower marginal utility (higher buying power) to adopt sustainable lifestyles, the government would take conscious policy actions to:

• Incentivise such choices for the affluent class and,

• Reorient resource availability towards those with high marginal utility (low buying power)

The Indian imperative

Once this understanding is developed at the institutional level, some near-term policy actions could be:

i. Incentives for rental and shared-use businesses: At present, India’s rental housing market is worth US$ 20 billion, out of which US$ 13.5 billion is in urban areas. Additionally, the combined worth of the country’s furniture, electronics, and two-wheeler rental market is US$ 1.5 billion. The rental economy, at its core, goes against the idea of ownership of products or hoarding, which is increasingly finding its foothold among young upwardly mobile urban youth in India. Any specific incentives to propel entrepreneurship in this space will not only aid job-creation but also spread the shared-use mindset at least among urban consumers.

ii. Facilitating a gradual move towards circular economy: In a conventional linear economy, value creation is synonymous with endless production and sale, which makes it almost impossible to decouple economic growth from resource use. A circular economy makes this decoupling more feasible by prioritising value preservation of a product. This is achieved by minimising the need for new raw material, maximising reuse of products, and upcycling. Incentives and investments in circular businesses, particularly new MSMEs are now essential, something that has been acknowledged by the CEO of the government’s premier policy think tank NITI Aayog.

iii. Setting up boundary organisations: In sustainability literature, boundary organisations are considered a prerequisite for effective environmental governance. Such organisations are comprised of members from the scientific, political, and policy research spheres and seek to facilitate science-policy dialogues. While the closest examples we have in India of such organisations are think tanks and research institutions, most such organisations lack permanent representation from the political class and do not necessarily focus on cutting-edge environmental research. There is, thus, an extant need for such organisations not only for knowledge-sharing between researchers and policymakers, but also awareness-building among consumers.

At the G20 summit in 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said India was not only meeting its Paris Agreement targets but was exceeding them. Subsequently, in late November 2020, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) issued a Gazette notification on constitution of a high-level inter-ministerial Apex Committee for Implementation of Paris Agreement (AIPA). The purpose of the AIPA is to generate a coordinated response on climate change matters which ensures that India is on track to meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement (Agreement, hereafter), including its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). This is a welcome move in response to the need for better transparency and periodic global stocktaking as part of the Agreement. However, achieving global and national targets under the Agreement requires a much greater policy push to reduce consumption levels through normalisation of sustainable lifestyle choices. This is particularly true for high-income countries. With the US formally rejoining the Paris Agreement under President Joe Biden, one hopes that there will be a significant change in the way sustainable consumption is perceived by consumers and producers globally.

The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.

Contributors

Jitendra Bisht

Jitendra Bisht

Jitendra Bisht is Senior Analyst at Social and Political Research Foundation (SPRF) Delhi.

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Neha Simlai

Neha Simlai

Neha Simlai is a sustainable value chains specialist. She currently leads market engagement in India for deforestation commodities at IDH The Sustainable Trade Initiative. Neha ...

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