Economic growth over the past few decades has brought affluence to people around the world and reduced poverty. The extreme poverty rate has dropped considerably in most developing regions in the last two decades, reducing rates by between 46% and 94% in Asia (UN, 2015a). Significant negative the environment and societies have surfaced, however. Global resource consumption and environmental loads such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and waste discharge have increased to support a wealthier consumer lifestyle, and economic disparities among regions and countries are rising. These tendencies are expected to increase and expand even further in the future. 1 Department of Chemical Systems Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 2 Material Cycles Division and Social Systems Division, National Institute for Environmental Studies, 1. Introduction Key words: Asia, evidence-based policy making, sufficiency approach, Ensuring sustainable consumption and production (SCP) patterns in the Asia region is a high-priority policy issue but challenged by a number of obstacles and the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. This article argues that not only conventional policy approaches but also alternative approaches are needed in Asia to decouple socio-economic development and increases in environmental loads from people’s sense of well-being. To achieve human and planetary well-being under the situation of compressed development, four strategic courses of SCP policy are presented. These four courses are SCP policy expansion, enhanced linkage of consumption and production (CP), system transition and bottom-up approaches. Policy makers in Asia should keep these courses of action in mind and utilize opportunities, 13 of which are outlined here, to mainstream SCP. The 13 SCP opportunities, the key words of which include among others experience, genuine wealth, local design, digitalization, infrastructure, indigenous wisdom, collaboration and challenges, indicate entry points for Asian SCP policy development in the 2020s. Finally, based on these, the authors have devised an SCP case matrix and produced 43 example SCP cases for better application of the suggested SCP policy approach in the Asian region. sustainable consumption and production (SCP), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), system transition impacts on Today, the Asian region is the world’s cradle of production. Its economic growth is remarkable, with consumption and accompanying environmental impacts expanding at a rapid pace (UN ESCAP, 2021a). Between 2000 and 2017, the material footprint of the Asia-Pacific region increased at the largest and fastest pace in the world, and GHG emissions in the Asia-Pacific region were also remarkable (IRP, 2017). Per capita income is still low (UN ESCAP, 2021a), and environmental impacts in the Asia-Pacific region will continue to increase at the fastest pace in the world for now, with the region’s share in global environmental impacts expected to rise. One course of action for the future is the expectation that the conversion to high-value-added industries and industries with high levels of resource productivity will 2021 AIRIES 3 Global Environmental Research 25/2021: 003–014 printed in Japan 3 Sustainable Consumption and Production Area. Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki 305-8506, Japan 2108-11 Kamiyamaguchi, Hayama-shi, Kanagawa 240-0115, Japan 4 Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, 5322 Endo, Fujisawa-shi, Kanagawa 252-0882, Japan *E-mail: hirao@chemsys.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp Abstract Policy Development for Reconfiguring Consumption and Production Masahiko HIRAO1*, Tomohiro TASAKI2, Yasuhiko HOTTA3 and Norichika KANIE4 Patterns in the Asian Region
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