Reflections on Sustainable Consumption in the Context of COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has abruptly disrupted progress toward many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Accordingly, the UN has underscored the need to design short-term responses to halt and reverse the adverse effects of the current COVID-19 crisis. However, some researchers have scrutinized the feasibility and note the potential counterproductivity of particular SDGs in our post-pandemic world. This perspective paper holds a more hopeful outlook and contends that the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to prompt efforts to carry out the UN's 2030 Agenda. In this regard, this paper engages the theme of “sustainable consumption” in the context of COVD-19 by discussing two perspectives or bodies of work-supply chain sustainability and post-colonial theory. Supply chain sustainability is discussed as one such promising, though underutilized practice, that could potentially catalyze progress toward SDG 12. Likewise, post-colonial theory, a body of knowledge rarely drawn upon in sustainable consumption and SDG conversations, is presented to call attention to some of the gaps in the orthodoxy of sustainable consumption approaches, practices, and theoretical perspectives. This perspective paper's novelty lies in the fact that it calls attention to the promise of the SDGs and the limits of our current theoretical frameworks related to sustainable consumption. For these reasons, these bodies of work can provoke additional questions and avenues for future research.

Sustainable Consumption in Consumer Behavior in the Time of COVID-19: Topic Modeling on Twitter Data Using LDA

“…The second cluster is about responsible consumption. This notion is used interchangeably with the concept of sustainable consumption [23]. In the growing number of publications, sustainable consumption is examined from the COVID-19 perspective [19][20][21][22][23].…”

“…This notion is used interchangeably with the concept of sustainable consumption [23]. In the growing number of publications, sustainable consumption is examined from the COVID-19 perspective [19][20][21][22][23]. The next cluster considers energy consumption on high computations for recent technologies like bitcoin and blockchain.…”

“…Although it is impossible to identify all of them, due to the growing interest in health issues during the pandemic, consumer behavior is evolving towards healthier and more sustainable patterns [3,18]. Among these publications, studies on the impact of the pandemic on sustainable consumption have a large share [19][20][21][22][23]. In various publications, different aspects of such behavior are analyzed in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example: eating a healthier diet [18,24], buying local [18], environmental awareness [20,25], or negative emotions [21].…”

“…Thus, most of the publications on sustainable consumption during coronavirus pandemic have been devoted to the analysis of individual issues in this area. In contrast, still, publications in which a more holistic and integrating approach is used, showing which topics (aspects) of sustainable consumption remain important for consumers, are few [23,26]. Meanwhile, knowledge about sustainable consumption behavior is a key element in implementing the concept of sustainable development, which involves departing from traditional consumption patterns towards a more sustainable model [19,27].…”

University students involved in a sustainable world: assessing sustainable consumption in Spain

“…Responsible or sustainable consumption implies the use of material products, energy and immaterial services in such a way that their use minimizes the impacts on the environment, and that way ensure the future of the next generations (Rana and Paul, 2017). There is no doubt that the pandemic is marking a before and an after across the globe, which means that the value of responsible consumption is brought an urgent issue more than ever (Perkins et al , 2021). According to the World Economic Forum (2020), COVID-19 can be seen as a catalyst, which accelerates the progress of achieving the SDGs.…”