Sustainable Consumption and Production in an Era of Uncertainty

Abstract

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12, Responsible Consumption and Production, focuses on ways to reduce the environmental impact of commodity extraction, distribution, and consumption, while ensuring the flourishing of human life across the globe. However, the precarity of commodity chains, and thus the metrics used to measure them, were fundamentally altered by the COVID pandemic. Global trade was disrupted, leading to higher prices for producers and consumers. All of a sudden, just-in-time production, environmental accounting systems, and global commodity chains were called into question. As consumers, long-held environmental concerns and ethical concerns seemed quaint, as disposable masks and single-use plastic gloves saved the lives of those around us. Psychologically, consumers were disoriented as these invisible and allegedly solid commodity distribution systems melted into air, resulting in new purchasing behaviors.

This chapter lays out the foundations of commodification, as well as the history and evolution of commodity chains. More precisely, it asks the Covid pandemic affected commodity chains themselves, as well as ethical purchasing behavior by consumers. How did the psychological impacts of commodity chain disruption affect those quarantined, and how were consumer segments affected differently? Certain things are given – shopping moved online and demand for gloves and masks increased. But another key point is that consumers regressed to the local. While a logical response to empty shelves, it ignores the way in which most of us in developed world are fully embedded in global commodity chains. More problematically, it supports an ideology of exclusionism and ignorance of inherent global integration. A second key point is the way in which ethical consumption is secondary to simple consumption. Many consumers abandoned visions of recycled toilet paper in favor of toilet paper. Moving forward, more attention should be paid to the impacts of uncertainty on producers and consumers, and how that will affect ethical consumerism going forward. In a world where climate change is a reality, uncertainty will undoubtedly be wrestled with moving forward.