20th European Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production – Professor Ágnes Zsóka’ Summary
ERSCP conferences have been the main conference in Europe on Sustainable Consumption and Production, as well as on Cleaner Production since 1993. ERSCP 2021 with the title PRODUCTION, CONSUMPTION AND RESILIENCE IN A +1,5° WORLD was held in Graz, between 8-10 September. Corvinus researchers contributed with two submissions and presentations.
The rationale of the ERSCP 2021 conference was provided by the recognition that “the goal of reducing global warming to +1.5°C requires us to reduce not only the greenhouse gas emissions caused by our direct activities (heating, cooling, mobility, electricity production, etc.), but also the emissions that have already been generated outside the usual limits of consideration through our consumption – as it were, stuck in the products. This “emission backpack” contained in the products is almost as large as the direct emissions. While many countries, regions and cities have developed strategies to reduce local emissions, there is often no plan to reduce the emissions contained in the purchased products.”
ERSCP 2021 considered both aspects: the possibilities to reduce the emission of climate-relevant gases during production as well as to reduce upstream emissions by changing consumer behaviour. It is essential that cities – where already more than half of the world’s population lives – and economic sectors reduce emissions, adapt to climate change, and take resilience measures. Changing consumption behaviour is an important issue in building a closed cycle economy, especially urban closed cycles including the forced utilization of local resources.
ERSCP 2021 covered a number of UN Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 12 “Responsible Consumption and Production” was the core target to discuss, but many other issues were in the focus as well, like SDG 4 “Quality of Education”, SDG 6 “Clean Water and Sanitation”, SDG 7 “Affordable and Cleaner Energy”, SDG 9 “Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure”, SDG 11 “Sustainable Cities and Communities” and SDG 13 “Climate Action”.
Researchers from Corvinus University of Budapest contributed with two submissions and presentations to the ERSCP 2021 conference: to the topic of Sustainable Cities and Communities, Krisztina Fekete and Prof. Ágnes Zsóka presented their research on “Resilient cities in practice”. To the topic of Quality of Education, Zsuzsanna Fehér, Dr. Katalin Ásványi and Prof. Ágnes Zsóka contributed with a presentation titled “The impact of sustainability-related courses on students: a systematic literature review and empirical study”.