What is SCP?

Sustainable consumption and production (SCP) is a comprehensive approach, from a systemic and life-cycle perspective. SCP is progressively acknowledged as an systematic viewpoint to understand the multiple social, economic and political drivers of environmental change in the world. The SCP approach offers a variety of practical methods and policy tools to achieve a resource efficient, low-carbon economy and support societies to adapt to changing global and local environments including climate change adaptation. The Sustainable Production component has evolved out of initiatives for cleaner and efficient industrial production.

Sustainable Consumption addresses the demand side recognising the role retailers and consumers can play. Consumers have enormous potential for driving change through the choices that they make. Economic growth continues to be highly relevant for developing countries, including Asia, and contribute to poverty alleviation and improving living standards of their populations but without negative environmental impact. The vision of the SCP approach is to achieve absolute decoupling of economic growth and improve human wellbeing on the one hand, and resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions on the other.

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