Project Details
Description
Theme at the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies
Popular science description
The generational goal – changes of consumption patterns and their environmental impacts.
The purpose of this research programme is to study the generational goal, which is a political goal, adopted by the Swedish parliament in June 2010 and supported by several parliamentary parties.
According to the generational goal, “the overall goal of Swedish environmental policy is to hand over to the next generation a society in which the major environmental problems in Sweden have been solved, without increasing environmental and health problems outside Sweden’s borders”. Environmental policy, therefore, should aim at ensuring that “patterns of consumption of goods and services cause the least possible problems for the environment and human health”.
As the length of a generation is normally considered to be 25 years, this is a very ambitious goal. With the proposed research programme we aim to investigate how the goal can be interpreted and translated into action pathways.
The research team will study historical and current changes of consumption patterns and their global environmental effects. This will provide an opportunity to deal with some of the vital questions for humankind. We will primarily address basic research questions, rather than applied ones. The programme will in this respect be different from many research collaborations in the environmental field today that are initiated by funding bodies.
Nevertheless we expect the research programme to result in new knowledge that would serve as an input to Swedish climate politics. Even though consumption patterns and their global impacts are being studied in several disciplines, the broad and collaborative approach on changes in consumption patterns and their global effects is a unique feature of this programme. In addition to generating knowledge relevant for policy making, the research team aims to reach out to the public through media and debate book(s). To facilitate this we have invited one scholar with broad contacts and experience from public media (Magnus Jiborn).
The purpose of this research programme is to study the generational goal, which is a political goal, adopted by the Swedish parliament in June 2010 and supported by several parliamentary parties.
According to the generational goal, “the overall goal of Swedish environmental policy is to hand over to the next generation a society in which the major environmental problems in Sweden have been solved, without increasing environmental and health problems outside Sweden’s borders”. Environmental policy, therefore, should aim at ensuring that “patterns of consumption of goods and services cause the least possible problems for the environment and human health”.
As the length of a generation is normally considered to be 25 years, this is a very ambitious goal. With the proposed research programme we aim to investigate how the goal can be interpreted and translated into action pathways.
The research team will study historical and current changes of consumption patterns and their global environmental effects. This will provide an opportunity to deal with some of the vital questions for humankind. We will primarily address basic research questions, rather than applied ones. The programme will in this respect be different from many research collaborations in the environmental field today that are initiated by funding bodies.
Nevertheless we expect the research programme to result in new knowledge that would serve as an input to Swedish climate politics. Even though consumption patterns and their global impacts are being studied in several disciplines, the broad and collaborative approach on changes in consumption patterns and their global effects is a unique feature of this programme. In addition to generating knowledge relevant for policy making, the research team aims to reach out to the public through media and debate book(s). To facilitate this we have invited one scholar with broad contacts and experience from public media (Magnus Jiborn).
| Status | Finished |
|---|---|
| Effective start/end date | 2012/08/12 → 2013/08/13 |
Subject classification (UKÄ)
- Social Sciences