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clock graphic Cosmopolitans vs Locals The Real Wealth of Nations Factor 10 Ecological Debt Biological Complexity

3. Factor 10

In October 1994, the international Factor 10 Club met for the first timein Carnoules, France, at the initiative of the German thinktank, the Wuppertal Institute. A Club-of-Rome-styled group for people in industrialized countries to take responsibility for their production and consumption patterns, the Factor 10 Club was established because of 'mounting concerns over the uncharted role of human-induced global material flows, and the ecological ramifications of their unchecked growth', as outlined in the Carnoules Declaration. The number in the name of the group refers to its call for industrialized countries to increase, by a factor of 10, their current level of resource productivity - and presumably therefore also to decrease by a similar magnitude their resource consumption. The issue is of particular concern to industrialized countries because their inhabitants typically consume 20 to 30 times more than do their counterparts in non-industrialized countries. In the medium and long term, profligate consumption and waste patterns pose a serious threat to the survival of the biosphere, the Club says. Other items on theFactor 10 agenda to create a 'dematerialized economy' include: new cultural and economic priorities, a different vision for the role of work, and greentax reform. The distinguished membership of the Factor 10 Club includes Jim MacNeill, the principal architect of the UN's 1987 Brundtland Report; the maverick American ecological economist Herman Daly; Richard Sandbrook of London's International Institute for Environment and Development; and Ashok Khosla of the progressive New Delhi organization, Development Alternatives, among others.
[call for tenfold improvement in efficiency of energy/resource use]


Word Watch voluntary simplicity n. movement to simplify lifestyles and devote more time and energy to non-material aspects of life. Strong in Seattle& The Netherlands. Practitioners are sometimes called downshifters

Books
In Depth 		Factor 10 Club. Carnoules Declaration. Wuppertal, Germany: Wuppertal Institute, 1995. 6 p. Duane Elgin. Voluntary Simplicity: toward a new way of life that is outwardly simple, inwardly rich. New York, NY: William Morrow & Co., 1981. 312p.

Not Hot - Consuming at Current Levels

That rich countries commandeer 75% of global resource use for just 25% of the population is nothing new. Yet Canada's national newspaper recently saw fit to attack poor countries for their inefficient and unsustainable economies, while richer, more efficient economies could do no wrong. Since when did blaming others absolve anyone from their own responsibilities? 'Sustainable consumption' is still too often interpreted as meaning sustaining resource use at existing levels, rather than redefining needs and wants and 'downshifting' our material intake according to a new ethic of ecological restraint.

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Virtual Ideas		 Sustainable Consumption and Production: Linkage Virtual Policy Dialogue - a special electronic forum for policy-makers and interested parties to discuss global over-consumption. Hosted by the Earth Negotiations Bulletin.