Buy less, get more: sustainable consumption goes social

Collaborative consumption has a huge role to play in shifting attitudes to owning more ‘stuff’ and showing up those who talk about sustainable consumption and shifting more units in the same breath.

Corporate efforts so far have mainly dealt with work around reducing waste, reducing resource use in production, raising labour standards, promoting certification standards and adding socioeconomic benefits to products and services. All good but, at its heart sustainable consumption must mean buy/use less stuff.

This is not normal: (Isso não é normal), nor is Bhutan

The wonderful site from this Sao Paulo group combines good storytelling with loads of info and a simple idea to inspire people to make (mega)city life more liveable.

‘Being a tropical country is no longer bad for development’

I was at ExpoBrasil yesterday -a conference looking at local development strategies here in Brazil.It was striking how much expertise there is in this field which, when put alongside better public infrastructure, will work together to help many get out of poverty and at the same time help build this new articulation of prosperity that fits this high growth economy.

LUVing it

A LUV shaped recovery for the world economy:

China’s stimulus: sustaining growth over safety nets

Howard Davies, former Chairman of the Financial Services  Authority, current Director of the London School of Economics spoke at the LSE last night about where China was up to with its financial reform (download slides here). Davies, a member of the advisory boards of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (since 2003) and the China Securities Regulatory Commission, is ideally placed to talk about reform and the impact of the stimulus.

Davies main tenet: The crisis has meant that China will reform its financial system in its own way and at its own speed. Additionally, the crisis has not derailed the party’s development policies so don’t expect much dramatic change in the model for now.