Ensuring sustainable development by curbing consumerism: An eco‐spiritual perspective

Abstract

The contemporary economic growth models have directed the economies on an unsustainable trajectory where the present generation seems disenchanted with the heap of waste, debt, and insufficiency inherited from their forefathers. The present paper is an attempt to analyze the cause of consumerism and recommend an eco-spiritual policy perspective for ensuring sustainable development. The paper analyzes that the United Nations recently announced Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cannot lead the economies towards sustainable development. Ensuring sustainable development will require curbing consumerism consciously through exploring the unexplored spiritual dimension, which can inspire humanity to lead a life of simplicity, moderation, and minimum desires for sustainable and all-inclusive development. It has been stressed that aspiration of breakthrough result requires moving away from the external to the inward synthesis of the spiritual aspects, which believes in co-existence, acknowledging care, and concern for both human beings and the nature.The paper argues for an eco-spiritual perspective for furthering the goal of sustainability.

A balancing act between economic growth and sustainable development: Historical trajectory through the lens of development indicators

“…Similarly, O'Neill et al (2018) accept economic growth only if it is equitable and sustainable and, as a result, note the inevitability of degrowth in developed nations. Moreover, recognising the relentless economic expansion driven by consumerism, Jain and Jain (2019) call for degrowth in developed nations, by tackling the process of unlimited consumption from a spiritual perspective whilst justifying the need for growth amongst developing nations. More drastically, Kopnina (2019) rejects the opportunity for growth, even in the developing nations, without first fundamentally altering the economic growth model, since those nations would otherwise be likely to follow the trend set by developed nations.…”

“…Costanza et al, 2016; Sachs et al, 2021) acknowledges the importance of dashboards in addition to a single number, the resulting indices value economic goals over environmental goals. Indeed, the SDG Index ranks countries with a high ecological footprint as high achievers (Jain & Jain, 2019) and thus pushes Europe, North America and Oceania to the top of the ladder (Diaz‐Sarachaga et al, 2018).…”

Approaching sustainable development goals: Inspirations from the Arts and Crafts movement to reshape production and consumption patterns

“…Assadourian (2016) stated that changing the dominant cultural paradigm is a must for making individuals act sustainably. Jain and Jain (2019) also indicated that governments, schools, and media must spread eco‐spiritual principles to curb consumerism and ecological bankruptcy. Accordingly, we need a thought pattern to help build sustainable visions and lead our habits and norms toward more sustainable living.…”

“…These behaviours involve the interaction between individual consumers and organisations such as manufacturers, stakeholders, and public sectors. If producers/manufacturers and consumers cannot break away from consumerism, overproduction and resource depletion must impede SDGs (Jain & Jain, 2019). Assadourian (2010) presented several real-life cases showing how enterprises induce consumerism.…”

Ecological Approach for the Evaluation of Structure and Sustainability in the Tourism Industry

“…It is necessary to push to improve and seek green development of the tourism industry [2,8,15,17,[26][27][28][29][30][31]. Previous studies focused on the aspects of industrial organization structure, market structure, and optimization [19,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. In evaluating the structure of the tourism industry, the most commonly used methods are concentration ratio (CRn), location quotient (LQ), system entropy, diversity index, and shift-share method (SSM) [39][40][41][42][43].…”