Over the last decades, climate change has emerged as a significant threat, impacting on human health, ecosystems, biodiversity, food and energy security. Climate change has been fuelled, among others, by unsustainable consumption and production patterns.
SCP policies have contributed greatly in minimising those negative effects by following the ‘doing more and better with less’ approach and by adopting a life-cycle perspective which helps to identify those areas where impact on climate is the most significant and where action needs to be taken. Nonetheless, further efforts are required if we are to combat climate change effectively.
In October 2016 the SWITCH-Asia Network Facility and Policy Support Component for Sri Lanka organised a one-day conference on The role of sustainable consumption and production in climate change mitigation and adaptation within the framework of ‘Sri Lanka Next - A Blue Green Era,’ a major three-day forum and exhibition organised by Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Mahaweli Development and Environment on local, regional and global efforts addressing climate change.
Several SWITCH-Asia projects presented their approaches, experiences and recommendations, while leading experts highlighted the opportunities and challenges for exploiting synergies between the two fields.
Building up on these discussions aTd presentations, this briefing focuses on three main issues addressed during the conference, which pertain to SCP and climate change, namely:
- The need to adopt a holistic approach
- The obligation to act at the local level, and
- The need to devise conducive policy and institutional frameworks.
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