Sustainable development and consumers a perspective from the Netherlands

Households, according to ERM's report, make a sizeable direct contribution to the Netherlands' environmental problems - and many of the trends are going the wrong way. Domestic fuel consumption contributes 14% of the country's carbon dioxide emissions, and gas and electricity consumption per capita is rising. The use of private vehicles, which has increased by 20% since 1980, contributes another 20%, as well as being the single largest source of nitrogen oxides.

Adverse trends
Households are the largest consumers of water, using 665 million cubic metres per year compared to industry's 507 million m³. Water consumption has almost doubled since 1960, and is projected to grow by 15% per year.

Household waste generation has also been rising steadily, increasing by 46% to reach 410 kilos per capita in 1990, one of the highest rates in Europe. Meanwhile, high consumption of meat and dairy products encourages intensive livestock farming, which is a major source of CO₂, methane and nitrous oxide - all greenhouse gases - and generates 15 million tonnes of manure annually, creating severe acidification and waste management problems.

These and other indicators pose a severe challenge to a Government committed to achieving sustainable development within a generation - and it is now beginning to respond.

Long-term environment plan
The Dutch Government began to develop its sustainable development strategy in 1990, with its first revision of the 1989 National Environmental Policy Plan (NEPP). In broad terms, it decided to select those sectors of society which had been shown to be large contributors to the country's environmental problems and to set improvement targets for each of them. These were calculated to ensure that the overall environmental objectives defined in the NEPP would be met. The baseline for the exercise was 1985, and the target date was set at 2010.

For industry, the Government opted for a combination of legislation and pioneering, quasi-voluntary covenants with individual sectors. The basic metals industry and, more recently, the chemical industry (see pp 16-19 ) were among the first to enter into these agreements.

But the Government is acutely aware that tackling the production side of the equation will not be enough. Consumers will also have to be encouraged to recognise and accept their own contribution to environmental deterioration and the need to change their patterns of demand for products and services.

The new national environmental policy plan, NEPP 2, will map out the strategic priorities and policies for the next four years which are needed to keep the Government and the various sectors on course towards the overall objective. A key priority will be the role of consumers.

Focus on lifestyles
Early in 1992, the Department of Strategic Planning within the Government's Directorate-General for the Environment began thinking about how consumers could be brought into the country's sustainable development strategy.

The potential pitfalls were evident. Unlike industrial sectors, consumers are not organised into representative groups with which the Government can negotiate, and they do not have uniform aspirations. The opinions of environment and development groups, while important, could not be assumed to represent the thinking of all Dutch citizens. But the Government perceived that one of the greatest dangers would be if people felt that it was imposing alternative lifestyles upon them because this would arouse suspicion rather than co-operation.

The thinking that emerged was that citizens should be encouraged to aim for a lifestyle that made less of an impact on the environment but "without going back to the 1950s", as an official at the Department put it. It was felt that the Government could influence, but not dictate, this process by two means: it could employ the traditional methods of education and social marketing through various media to suggest alternative lifestyles; and it could enlist the support of intermediaries to act as links between Government and the people.

Role for intermediaries
Potential intermediaries that have been identified include utilities such as energy and water suppliers, waste disposal companies, employer federations and trade unions, as well as environmental groups. Erik Brandsma of the Department of Strategic Planning told ENDS that "our main focus is to create a momentum for discussion about consumption patterns and lifestyles within society and we need intermediaries to do that - to start a discussion about what the actual priorities of their lifestyles are and what their environmental priorities are and how they might be combined."

Mr Brandsma stresses that the Government does not intend to push itself forward in this debate. He said: "It has to be a debate in which society says to Government: 'When we look at our consumption patterns we see that we can make improvements here and there. Would that represent a fundamental change? Will it have any effect on the environmental effect that consumers have?'" It will then be for consumers to signal to the Government how the process of change should be facilitated, for example, by providing more information, changing the fiscal system, or financing infrastructural measures.

He acknowledges that at some time in the future consumers may well conclude that the only way they can reduce certain impacts on the environment will be to reduce consumption of some products, but the immediate process has to be one of gradual change. However, he is certain of one thing: that the role of manufacturers of household goods in helping to shape consumption patterns and quantities "will become more and more important in the future."

Principles for sustainability
That conclusion is reinforced by ERM's report. After outlining the present environmental impacts of Dutch households, the report then speculates how these might be reduced by applying four principles of lifestyle change: