The consumption problem, or, the problem of specifying the consumption problem

distinguishes a consumption approach to en6iron- mental problems from other approaches. It must conceptualize the problem, separate consumption from other problems and show how a consump- tion perspective raises new questions — analytic and policy oriented — and, ideally, generates new insights into environmental and related issues. This article deals with the latter — conceptualizing a consumption and environment perspective. Before proceeding, a methodological note is in order. A research agenda can be set either by adapting an existing framework to a newly iden- tified social problem or it can specify the problem first and then build concepts to fit. I opt primarily for the latter on the assumption that few existing frameworks of social or natural analysis are ori- ented to the problem of excessive material throughput of one species. What is more, as I will show, employing an existing framework risks con- cept stretching, fitting the problem to concepts that were designed for a different purpose. For example, it is tempting to appropriate consumer theory in microeconomics as a basis of a con- sumption and environment agenda. One would begin by defining consumption as the purchasing of goods and services in the marketplace. Envi- ronmental impacts would be assessed and added to production impacts to estimate the total mar- ket failure of a purchased good. When the pur- pose of conventional economic analysis is to explain market behavior and prescribe corrections to enhance efficiencies, this may indeed be use- ful — that is, useful to the pre-existing objectives of microeconomic analysis. But when the purpose is to explain how consumption affects the envi- ronment, how it relates to ecologically excessive throughput, then marketplace purchasing is only one dimension of consumption. Other dimensions such as product use and non-market acquisition are at least as important and yet will be down played, if not completely ignored. In this article, then, I distinguish the consump- tion issue from other ‘big issues’ by first arguing that the consumption problem is not the problem of production, overall human or economic activ- ity, equity, technology, or population. I then ar- gue that, in pursuing the consumption and environment topic, researchers must choose either to adopt the production – consumption dichotomy or to build an alternative framework. On the first count, I note several ways to expand existing research agendas. On the second, I posit three means of defining consumption as ‘using up’ ma- terial, energy, and other things of human value. I finish by noting problems in pursuing such re- search, showing why actors in all contexts tend to ignore or dismiss the topic. Along the way, I explore ways of setting boundaries on the agenda. Boundary setting is critical because a consump- tion agenda, like a sustainable development or a population or a peace agenda, can easily be stretched by analysts and practitioners alike to encompass all imaginable concerns. The effect, as these other agendas have experienced, is to dilute the research, to lose focus, and, most egregiously, to simply re-label old problems and old solutions. Also, I should stress that my purpose is not to extensively survey and critique existing literature, nor is it to generate a list of topical issues for consumption applications. Rather, my aim is to reason out some of the fundamental conceptual and boundary questions. My experience in pursu- ing the topic of consumption and the environment is that, to the extent the question is addressed, these fundamentals are commonly skirted.

2. The consumption problem, or, the problem of specifying the consumption problem

On the face of it, the consumption and environ- ment problem is straightforward. Humans are using material and energy at unprecedented levels threatening global climate, biodiversity, soil fertil- ity and a host of other environmental factors. With growing affluence in many parts of the world, the trends are only increasing. At the same time, the consumption problem conjures up im- ages of excess: shopping binges, gas guzzling vehi- cles, luxury spending, energy intensive conveniences, and throwaway products. And for some, the environmental impacts of overcon- sumption are yet another sign of moral decay brought on by material self-indulgence. So what exactly is the consumption problem? Is it overall resource and waste sink use? If so, why not call it just that, resource use? Or if it is primarily a problem of economic activity why not call it, say, economic output and its externalities? Or might the consumption problem simply relate to what consumers do, that is, purchase and use goods and services? If so, humans have engaged in mutually beneficial exchange throughout his- tory. If it is that basic, why is such activity now a problem? Are there some kinds of consumption that are good, or natural or acceptable, and oth- ers not? Or is it the overall level of consumption and, if so, how is that different from economic output? There is no resolution, let alone systematic at- tention, to such questions in the literature. The term is taken as self-evident and is rarely defined. These questions reveal, in fact, the considerable ambiguity if not confusion in contemporary usage. In this section I identify four common usages and note their shortcomings. One common usage is to equate consumption with overall material or economic activity. In an article in Science, biologist Norman Myers draws on Stern et al. 1997 to define consumption as ‘human transformations of material and energy’ Myers, 1997, p. 54. Such consumption is a prob- lem when it ‘‘makes materials or energy less avail- able for future use and... threatens human health, welfare, or other things people value’’ 1997, p. 54. Substituting economic acti6ity or even con- sumption’s apparent polar opposite, production, for the word consumption in this definition would render an equally meaningful statement. Or one could substitute any other species for human and get a similar result. What is more, in the human context, this definition could just as readily be for ‘the environmental problem’. In a rejoinder to Myers in the same article, economists Vincent and Panayotou define consumption as that which ‘‘spans the full range of goods and services that contribute to human well being ’’ Myers, 1997, p. 53. A synonym for lay people and policymakers might be an ‘economy’ or, maybe, all aspects of an economy that people desire. On the question of whether there is a problem of excess consumption, Myers is diametrically opposed to Vincent and Panayotou. But the two sets of authors share the proclivity to take an extremely broad view of consumption — human transformations or well being — a view that can be stretched to include just about anything. As transformation, consump- tion is equivalent to all human material activity. As well being, it is everything that is good for humans. These usages allow biologists and others to re-work the limits-to-growth arguments under the rubric of consumption and economists to deny there is a consumption problem except for full- cost pricing. None of these authors shows what is distinctive about consumption, as opposed to production, income, or overall economic or material activity. And none show how consuming behavior leads to environmental harm. Myers states that rich hu- mans are consuming excessively and wastefully and that aggregate levels are driving global warm- ing, pollution, and other environmental problems. Once again, substituting the term producing for consuming makes for an equally sensible state- ment. Vincent and Panayotou dodge the issue entirely. To seek correlations between consump- tion and environmental impact, they shift defini- tions from the nebulous ‘well-being’ to monetary income and employ the concept of private con- sumption, ‘‘conventionally defined in national in- come accounts [as] a narrower measure, which encompasses only marketed priced goods and services’’ 1997, p. 53. They find that there is no inevitable tradeoff between private consumption and environmental quality and that, in fact, many indicators suggest that the environment improves with private consumption. The real problem is market failures, that is, production failures that, once corrected, will lead to a consumption bundle that will ‘‘automatically adjust to a more environ- mentally friendly mix’’ 1997, p. 56. Problems of irreversibility and nonsubstitutability, intertempo- ral and threshold effects, buffering capacity, cause-effect time lags, valuation, scale, hierarchy, and problem displacement Dryzek, 1987; Arrow et al., 1995; Costanza et al., in press are ignored. In short, broad sweeping definitions of con- sumption allow analysts from two opposing camps to rehash familiar arguments and, at least with respect to pricing, come to similar policy recommendations, namely, taxes and subsidies. Neither shows how a consumption perspective, as opposed to a production perspective see below or, say, an income or industrialization or even population perspective, offers new insights into environmental problems. Most significantly, nei- ther ties consumption patterns to biophysical pro- cesses. Myers in effect says that all economic activity or at least that conducted by the wealthy few destroys the environment. Vincent and Panayotou say consumers do not destroy the en- vironment, producers do or producers in dis- torted markets do. In the book, En6ironmentally Significant Con- sumption 1997, arguably the most thoroughly reasoned analytic treatment to date on the con- sumption and environment problem, psychologist Paul Stern and his colleagues do show how some consumption patterns lead to environmental im- pacts. For example, motor vehicle travel can be disaggregated to show how carbon emissions vary over time and among Northern countries. But in some of the work in this collection, consumption is individual and household purchasing, in others it is energy and material flows, and in still others it is economic activity. By defining consumption as human transformations, the authors not only employ the term variously, they readily slide into the broad research agenda known as human di- mensions of global change. In fact, in the book’s conclusion, the authors barely mention consump- tion, instead focussing almost exclusively on ‘‘the causes of significant anthropogenic environmental changes’’ p. 136, a critical agenda to be sure, but not distinctively consumption. The central weakness of this and related ap- proaches may derive from the apparent intended audience, governmental policy makers, primarily those at the federal level. In En6ironmentally Sig- nificant Consumption, a brief reference to a pur- portedly successful example of consumption management is revealing. In critiquing a popular usage of consumption that targets individuals, not organizations, Stern cites automobile emissions control technology as a ‘politically practicable policy’ and then argues that ‘‘a broader definition of consumption might help identify such strategies and allow analysis of how much they can accom- plish’’ p. 19. As I will argue further below, such policies are best seen as consistent with the pre- vailing perspective on economic and environmen- tal problems, namely, the production perspective. Production-oriented policies may be politically ex- pedient and they may reduce the intended envi- ronmental impact, but they do not fundamentally change the problem, in this case, automobile use and its myriad environmental consequences. Rather, they tend to displace the problem or create new problems. A second common usage is to equate consump- tion with materialism. Critical and religious stud- ies have a longstanding history examining changing patterns of consumption in modern soci- eties in the context of materialism, alienation in the work place, cultural imperialism, gender dis- crimination, and personal dissatisfaction e.g. Sci- tovsky, 19761992; Rappoport, 1994; Richins, 1994; Miller, 1995; Schor, 1995; Agarwal, 1996; Ger and Belk, 1996; Ahuvia and Wong, 1997; Ger, 1997; Wilk, 1998. With the rise of environ- mental concerns, these critiques have expanded to include the environment. What is more, social critics and environmental analysts and activists alike have tended to appropriate each other’s findings. Anthropologists can not only denounce the rise in materialist values among traditional peoples, but show that forests are despoiled in the process. Environmentalists can not only argue that biophysical conditions limit overall consump- tion, but that personal well-being does not im- prove with ever-increasing convenience and material indulgence. The mutual crossover of these two lines of analysis and prescription may enhance the agenda of each but it does not consti- tute a focussed research agenda on the consump- tion – environment interface. A consumption and environment agenda is useful to the extent it generates new questions and insights which is unlikely when one field merely appropriates issues from another field to buttress a pre-existing framework or prescription. A third common usage is to insert consumption in analyses and action agendas regarding the un- evenness of the distribution of economic goods. It is commonplace to hear, for example, that the North with 20 of the world’s population con- sumes 70 of the world’s resources. Such a state- ment could read equally well as the North produces 70 of the world’s goods. To frame the North – South discrepancy as a consumption problem is to imply excess or inequity. If it is excess, then the analyst must specify what exactly is excessive — any material use beyond basic hu- man needs? Anything beyond the society’s aver- age? Anything beyond comparable societies’ average? Such questions lead one into a morass of competing claims for the moral high ground in lifestyle and individual and collective choice. Res- olution is extremely unlikely. If excess is anything that has environmental impact, then all material use is indicted, production and consumption, hu- man and non-human. If it is only that which is harmful then it begs precisely the key question — what is harmful? Answering this question — that is, what is harmful about consumption as opposed to production or overall economic activity or material provisioning generally — begins to nar- row the agenda. Research must show how con- suming behavior itself is harmful. It should show how the distribution of harms is distinctively tied to consumption patterns, not to, say, investment, lending, trade or technological patterns, all of which have distinctive research agendas. If the problem is one of inequity, no analytic advantage is gained by calling it consumption. Adding the environment and calling the problem consumption only muddles the longstanding de- bates of North and South, haves and have-nots, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, to include environmental inequities. These problems are real and serious, but, a priori, there is no reason why consumption per se should be identified as the problem. Access to resources, control of decision making, and ability to resist external intrusions are closer to the problem and agendas are devel- oped in politics, community development, civil society, and the like. A fourth usage is to conflate consumption with population or technology issues. One tendency is to label what is truly a consumption problem as a population problem. For example, from 1960 to 1990 in the US state of Michigan the amount of land converted to residential and commercial use increased 76 Wilkins, 1997, p. 7. A common reason given is that more and more people need housing and the evidence is their willingness to pay for lots and houses in the countryside. The fact, however, is that in the same time period, Michigan’s population increased only 13. The problem is not primarily a population problem but, indeed, a consumption problem, using up farmland when other residential space is available. Freshwater usage is similar. According to a United Nations report, worldwide water usage this century has been increasing more than twice as fast as population Lewis, 1997. In general, the population problem is easily construed as a consumption problem because more individuals obviously consume more, all else equal. The consumption problem arises, however, when all else is not equal, when, regardless of population changes, demand on ecosystem ser- vices increases. If China’s population increases and everyone continues to mostly rely on pedal power for everyday transportation, the increase in demand for bicycle tyres is part of the population problem. But if China’s population increases or if it stays the same and people shift to automobiles, creating increased demand for car tyres, fossil fuels, and roads, it is a consumption problem. The problem of consumption also tends to be conflated with technological issues and manage- ment. If people buy a product that is produced with more pollution than an alternative product, the problem is primarily one of production. It can only be a consumption problem if, for example, the consumer has useful information about the life cycle of the product, prices and quality are equivalent, and the consumer still buys the more environmentally harmful product. These condi- tions stimulate important research questions about the distribution of impacts of consumption patterns — e.g. who really pays for gas guzzling private automobiles in the US. Similarly, resource management questions are generally framed as production problems when they are better construed as consumption prob- lems. To illustrate, if a fishery is being overfished and the proposed solutions are improved nets, more efficient use of by-catch, and better fishery management, the problem is being construed as a production problem. To construe the overfishing as a consumption problem one would have to ask about the nature of consumer demand, why it exceeds the regenerative capacity of the fishery, and why fishers whose livelihoods depend on the fishery are responding more to market signals than to ecological signals. I return to this point in the next section. In sum, when common usages of consumption are explored in some depth, the concept of con- sumption becomes slippery and the utility of their applications doubtful. Conflating consumption with overall economic activity risks sliding into a conventional approach to environmental prob- lems, namely, as problems of production that only macro-level governmental policies can correct. Conflating it with materialism or maldistribution only confuses other agendas and misses the eco- logical component. And conflating it with popula- tion or technology issues obscures many of the driving forces. An objective of the remainder of this article is to suggest ways of specifying and distinguishing the issue of consumption and envi- ronmental impact to avoid such conceptual and, eventually, policy problems. Not to do so is to risk the common tendencies of jumping on the bandwagon with the latest buzzword in the envi- ronmental debate, stretching the new concept to encompass all conceivable concerns and, in the process, forfeiting any advantage — for analysis or for behavior change — that may accrue to a new perspective on environmental problems. The risk, in short, is to simply re-label old problems and old solutions without generating new insights. The careful analyst and activist must accept the possi- bility that the consumption topic may, in the end, not yield new insights into environmental prob- lems. Consumption may be no more than a buzz- word. A premise in this article, however, is that it can be more. Below, I suggest two general analytic ap- proaches that may push the topic beyond mere fad. I assert that, in pursuing the research topic of consumption and environment, one has to make some basic choices, each of which has its own limitations. One choice is between accepting the prevailing production – consumption, supply – de- mand, producer – consumer dichotomy, on the one hand, and seeking an alternative framework on the other. In the production – consumption di- chotomy, one can investigate consumption via price and income elasticities and purchasing pat- terns. These are well developed in microeconomics and marketing studies and need no elaboration here. To focus on environmental effects, however, one can investigate a broad range of product-re- lated decisions of which the purchase decision is only one. I explore some of these in the next section below. This approach attempts to open the black box of consumer sovereignty and con- sumer preferences. It also rejects the exclusive focus on market purchasing and considers a range of behaviors that comprise the end use of re- sources and products. The limitation of this ap- proach is the tendency to focus on marketplace activity to the exclusion of a wider range of human activities that are, in some sense, ‘consum- ing’. Moreover, environmental impacts tend to be incorporated as add-ons, not as integral compo- nents of the analytic framework. Thus, in the following section I posit a framework that begins with material provisioning and its biophysical ef- fects. The aim is to suggest not only how research on consumption can transcend the production – consumption dichotomy and how it can follow different paths but, importantly, how the analytic starting points — price determination and pur- chasing behavior versus resource use — can lead to very different questions and prescriptions.

3. Consumption as product use