Consumption and environment: some conceptual issues

Consumption ranks with population and technology as a major driver of environmental change and yet researchers and policymakers have paid it scant attention. When the topic is addressed, its conceptual foundations are either taken as self-evident or are conflated with production, overall economic activity, materialism, maldistribution, population or technology. The risk is to adopt the latest buzzword in the environmental debate, stretch the concept to encompass all conceivable concerns, and forfeit any advantage-for analysis or for behavior change-that may accrue to a new perspective on environmental problems. Consumption must be distinguished conceptually from other approaches to environmental problems. One approach is to work within the consumption-production dichotomy, examining not just purchasing but product use and non-purchase decisions. A second approach, one that challenges the prevailing dichotomy and its propensity to relegate consumption to a black box, is to treat all resource use as consuming, that is, 'using up', and ask what risks are entailed. Consumption can then be seen as material provisioning where risks increase with increasing distance from the resource; as background, misconsumption, or overconsumption depending on the social concern raised; or as a chain of decisions that compel the behaviors of restraint and resistance among 'producers'. Pursuing the consumption and environment topic engenders resistance among a wide range of actors for reasons that are personal, analytic, and policy related. Nevertheless, the topic appears to have the potential of helping analysts and others transcend conventional approaches to excess throughput. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.