Experts say balance in consumption, production vital for restoring ecosystem

ISLAMABAD: Behavioural change is a key to striking balance between the consumption and production patterns to ensure sustainability of the resources and the ecosystem restoration.

The environmental experts said this while sharing their views with the participants of the webinar ‘Ecosystem restoration through sustainable consumption and production,’ organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), in connection with the World Environment Day.Romina Khurshid Alam, Member National Assembly, emphasized that South Asian countries need to work together to find solutions of the issues resulted by climate change as they are bearing most of the brunt of these impacts. She added further that responsible consumption is important for the ecosystem restoration.

However, behavioural change has a key role to play here and to achieve this objective, policy makers, academia and media need to work together and awareness should be imparted at school level. Dr Mushtaq Ahmed Memon, from United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with the help of his presentation, highlighted that imparting awareness to people on the consumption patterns is important and this awareness must include the information on daily used items and how they could be recycled and used multiple time. He added further that the hygiene concerns of the consumers also need to be addressed while discouraging single time used items.

Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri, Executive Director, SDPI, highlighted that the sustainable consumption and production is directly linked with ecosystem restoration. He said that some recent research studies indicate that we are consuming even more oxygen at present globally then the ability of the nature to replenished it.

“Changing the consumption and production patterns needs a collective resolve as no single government could do it alone,” Dr Suleri said and added further that we all have to play our respective roles for the ecosystem restoration. Bharati Chattarjee, the environmental expert based in Canada, was of view that creating equality in consumption and sharing what is beyond the need with less resourceful is the most important part of the sustainable consumption and production behaviour that needs to be adopted.

She said that climate change and its impacts are pushing people back to poverty and local plans are required to respond to this situation. Environmental expert, Afia Salam, opined that we need to focus on the green processes of the production by ensuring that compliance to all environmental standards has been made. She said that the consumptions patterns must be aligned with our resources and efforts to bring behavioral change about the responsible consumptions is the need of the hour. Archana Datta, from UNEP, highlighted that the world has enough to cater the needs of every individual if we follow the responsible consumption pattern.