Brief Report on the North American Roundtable on Sustainable Production and Consumption Inaugural Meeting

Philip Vergragt

The newly formed North American Roundtable on Sustainable Production and Consumption (NARSPAC) held its first meeting on August 19-20 at the Tellus Institute in Boston. SCORAI is one of the four founding partners of the Roundtable together with the North American Sustainable Consumption Alliance (NASCA), the Canadian Environmental Network (CEN), and the Citizens Network for Sustainable Development (CitNet). Twelve people participated in person and six more connected by telephone. The group included five members of the SCORAI executive committee (Halina Brown, Maurie Cohen, Jeffrey Barber, John Stutz, and Philip Vergragt). A full (draft) report of the meeting is available upon request from Phi

We agreed on the mission of NARSPAC as follows:

The North American Roundtable on Sustainable Production and Consumption seeks to promote dialogue, understanding, and collaboration among different stakeholder groups within North America and with other regions, with the goal of catalyzing the transformation of society to sustainable production and consumption patterns.

NARSPAC has been created partially as a follow-up to a meeting held at the end of 2008 in Washington, DC on sustainable consumption and production that was organized by the United States and Canadian governments, which thus far has not produced any other notable subsequent activity. Another important motivation is the upcoming Rio+20 conference that provides opportunities to infuse issues central to the new economics and steady-state economics into the dominant discussion on the "green economy." The new Roundtable will organize stakeholder dialogues and seek to influence United States and Canadian policies in connection with Rio+20. NARSPAC will also work on outreach especially toward youth. It was tentatively agreed that the Roundtable would organize a series of workshops around themes like "the green economy" and "a shorter working week." Consideration is also being given to convening a citizens' consultation. November 15 is the deadline for a first round of workshop proposals.