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North America
North American Workshop on Sustainable Consumption and
Production, Washington, D.C., November 6-7, 2008
The First North American Workshop on Sustainable Consumption
and Production was held in Washington, D.C. from 6 to7 November
2008. The workshop was a valuable opportunity to shape North
American needs and priorities for achieving SCP, as well
as to identify success stories, best practices, lessons
learned, and gaps. The US and Canada committed to explore
increased involvement in the Marrakech Process, including
fuller engagement in existing SCP Task Forces and North
American leadership on additional sustainability topics
that address priority needs of developing countries.
Participants included a select group of senior experts
and stakeholders in the U.S. and Canada, from government,
academia and think tanks, industry and trade associations,
and NGOs.
For further information, see meeting
report and background
documents.
The workshop also discussed a way forward by proposing
some key activities over the coming years that
would help broader understanding and support for SCP and
contribute to a regional SCP approach and the elaboration
of the10YFP.
Proposed activities for the region include::
Framing SCP Issues:
-Conduct an analysis of how SCP links and can contribute
to greening approaches to help overcome the current economic
downturn and the climate change problem.
-Develop metrics to measure the progress towards SCP, both
for the design of the framework of policies and incentives
and to monitor their subsequent effectiveness in achieving
SCP.
-Collect the work and visions of different stakeholder groups
on SCP.
-Compile and publish SCP success stories, lessons learned,
best practices and their potential replicability.
Work in Various Economic Sectors:
-Explore the possibility of developing commitments to SCP
targets within sectors.
-Examine and make use of the sectoral analyses contained
in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) Poznan meeting documents addressing the greenhouse
gas emissions from electricity grids, steel, cement and
chemicals industries.
Other Specific Action Items:
-Establish a group or Task Force to look into specific issues,
such as ways to reduce the proliferation of product labels.
-Develop a website analogue to the election-related factcheck.org,
like a lifecyclecheck.org that could help inform citizens
about issues, such as organic vs. local, organic cotton
vs. bamboo.
-Seek to identify how the SPC work can be related to the
other discussion topics-transport, chemicals, waste management
and mining-at the upcoming CSD 18-19 cycle sessions.
The following documents provide additional background information
for this workshop:
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