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Introduction to the roundtable:
There is an increasing realisation that business and industry, both in
the North and the South, hold many of the keys to changing production
and consumption patterns. The challenge is to establish how governments
can encourage businesses and consumers to take the necessary steps.
At
the Roundtable, invited experts from business, governments, academia and
NGOs, both from the North and South, exchanged experiences from
initiatives that have been taken to promote sustainable production and
consumption through their business relations. They discussed
opportunities and barriers that they have encountered and propose ideas
for what can be done to promote more sustainable production and
consumption.
The
Roundtable will contribute to formulation of UN and EU policies on
Sustainable Production and Consumption.
The
Roundtable focussed on:
| How
business relations in a North/South perspective can
contribute to more sustainable production and consumption
patterns and what governments and business should do to
promote necessary changes. |
The
Roundtable was organised by the Nordic Ad Hoc group on Sustainable
Consumption and Production, in cooperation with
GRIP, the Norwegian
Centre for Sustainable Consumption and Production, and the
Nordic
Partnership. Funding was being made available by the Nordic Council of
Ministers, the Swedish Ministry of Sustainable Development and was hosted
by the Norwegian Minister of the Environment.
Ambassador Viveka Bohn from the Swedish Ministry of Sustainable
Development chaired the Roundtable. Bohn is also co-chair for the
next international meeting on Sustainable Consumption and Production
meeting to take place in Costa Rica.
The
results from the roundtable have been published as a
report,
which is being used to promote international cooperation in this area, in
particular, as input to three international
activities aimed at making the world more sustainable:
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April 2005: UN Commission for Sustainable Development in New York
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September 2005: UN meeting in Costa Rica on Sustainable Production
and Consumption
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EU work on Sustainable Consumption and Production.
The
importance of a more sustainable development – economic, environmental
and social - is now internationally accepted. In the long-term, the
results depend on how we adapt our production and consumption patterns.
The
Nordic countries are putting high priority on this theme. The Nordic
Swan has been leading in environmental labelling schemes, and the
revised Nordic Strategy on Sustainable Development (2005) now includes a
new keynote chapter on Consumption and Production.
To order printed copies
of the report, or for more information,
contact:
martin.standley@grip.no
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