Abstract
Since December 2019, the spread of COVID-19 has brought severe impacts on the world’s socioeconomic system. After such unprecedented socioeconomic crisis, it is important to anticipate post COVID-19 situation and provide appropriate recommendations for the world to recover in the best possible manner. The COVID-19 pandemic has left priceless effects on human life and has severely disrupted the sustainable production and consumption system in the world. This situation of crisis is being viewed as a deepest global recession that is going to leave extensive effects on both society and economy. Even before the spread of COVID-19, world was facing several issues of social, ecological, and economic systems due to constant industrial development and globalization. Unsustainable pattern of production and consumption is considered to be major cause of such environmental and economic deteriorations in the world. Sustainability advocates have been struggling to explore various ways to nurture sustainable consumption transition. In light of this, the spread of COVID- 19 has acted as a catalyst toward prevailing issues, particularly encouraging authorities to take aggressive actions to ensure wider sustainability. Hence, the purpose of this chapter is to explore and discuss post-pandemic situation in the development of sustainable production and consumption system. Particularly, this chapter discusses multiple future scenarios in the context of sustainable production and consumption system. Similarly, it also discusses various socioeconomic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, it also provides an assessment of COVID-19 effects on different socioeconomic aspects and post pandemic recovery strategies of the world for sustainable production and consumption with a focus on Europe and China. Most importantly, this study contributes by discussing that how the production and consumption system would work sustainably in post-pandemic era. Particularly, it recommends implementing industry 4.0 in production and consumption system that promotes deploying digitization in the manufacturing firms to manage their operations. As implementation of industry 4.0 technologies could help in improving waste management, decreasing resource-intensive consumption, enhancing efficiency in supply chain management, and improving environmental performance, thus, ultimately achieving socioeconomic sustainability goals.
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Umar, M., Zia-ul-haq, H.M., Ali, S., Yusliza, M.Y. (2021). Post COVID-19 Development of Sustainable Production and Consumption Systems. In: Chiappetta Jabbour, C.J., Khan, S.A.R. (eds) Sustainable Production and Consumption Systems. Industrial Ecology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4760-4_4
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