Vocabulary for Sustainable Consumption and Lifestyles : A Language for Our Common Future

Vocabulary for Sustainable Consumption and Lifestyles: a Language for our Common Future curates a shared vocabulary of concepts that enables a society-wide conversation about sustainable consumption and lifestyles, the future of consumer society, and ways to transcend it.

Since the United Nations (UN) Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the global environmental and social consequences of mass consumption have been well documented, yet progress is slow. Overconsumption and extractive practices continue to drive ecological overshoot. Set against this backdrop, each of the 87 essays in this book imparts a meaning to a concept, highlights its history, and offers different perspectives, interpretations, and applications for social change. The two premises of this book are that we need to transition to a society in which the well-being and dignity of people are achieved with a much smaller footprint and that technological solutions are inadequate for the challenge. Policies and actions are greatly lagging behind the growing understanding of the system of production-consumption because social change is often slow, and sustainable consumption does not have a clear political champion. The book addresses tensions that also interfere with progress, such as science versus politics, economic winners versus losers, traditions versus an uncertain future, and present needs versus future costs.

This innovative volume is an important resource for students, scholars, policymakers, grassroots activists, and agents of change interested in sustainable consumption and sustainable living more broadly.

Lewis Akenji is the executive director of the Hot or Cool Institute in Berlin, a public-interest think tank that explores the intersection between society and sustainability. Lewis has served as the executive director of SEED, founded as a United Nations partnership to promote entrepreneurship for sustainable development. He has consulted with multilateral institutions, including the UN, the Asian and African Development Banks, the European Commission, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and has served as technical or policy adviser to several national governments. He serves on several boards and international committees, including as a Full Member of the Club of Rome and Commissioner on the Transformational Economics Commission of Earth4All.

Philip J. Vergragt is a climate activist, professor emeritus of technology assessment at TU Delft, the Netherlands, and a research professor at Clark University, USA. He is one of the co-founders and a current board member of SCORAI. He co-chairs the Electric Vehicles Task Force and is an advisory member of the Energy Commission at Newton, MA. His current research interests are sustainable consumption, sustainable cities, and systemic change. He is the co-author of more than 100 scientific publications and five books. Philip holds a PhD in physical chemistry at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands (1976).

Halina Szejnwald Brown is professor emerita of environmental science and policy at Clark University. Her recent academic research has focused on the interface between culture, technology, and policy in facilitating a transition beyond the current consumer society. She is a co-founder and board member of Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative and chairs Citizens Commission on Energy in her home city of Newton, Massachusetts. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, fellow of the International Society for Risk Analysis, and fellow of Tellus Institute in Boston. Brown holds a doctoral degree in chemistry from New York University.

Thomas S.J. Smith is a researcher, writer, and editor based in the north of Spain. He received his PhD in geography and sustainable development at the University of St Andrews and has since held numerous roles including postdoctoral researcher in environmental studies at Masaryk University, Brno, and Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow in geography at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU), Munich. He is a member of the Community Economies Institute (CEI) and on the board of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI). His research interests relate to social ecological transformations, economic localization, and degrowth.

Laura Maria Wallnöfer is a postdoctoral research and teaching associate at the Institute of Marketing and Innovation, Department of Economics and Social Sciences at BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. She has an interdisciplinary background in energy and transport management and sustainable development and did her PhD on the Integration of Perspectives and Concepts about Individuals as Change Agents at the Doctoral School for Transitions to Sustainability at BOKU University. Her current research focuses on the intersections of different transition actors’ influence spheres and how the multi-actor process required for a sustainable transformation can be better coordinated if those intersections are known.