Despite the protracted gridlock at U.N. climate talks, the international community should step up efforts to make its consumption and production patterns more resource-efficient to help tackle global warming, top environmental experts said.

Sustainable consumption and production has emerged on the global environmental agenda in recent years in line with the growing weight of human factors as a prime driving force behind climate change.

And the logic is simple: If resources are used efficiently, goods can be made with less material and energy without compromising the quality. The proceeds from the saving can be invested in other sectors. Good practices spread. In the long term, a virtuous cycle is established.

Among the leading crusaders for the transformative shift are Yoon Seung-joon, president of the Korea Environmental Industry and Technology Institute, and Arab Hoballah, chief of sustainable consumption and production at the U.N. Environment Program’s technology, industry and economics division.

Since taking up the post in 2005, Hoballah has been promoting sustainable consumption and production around the world as key to keeping the balance in the ecosystem while maintaining quality of life.

“For me, sustainable consumption and production has always been considered the practical definition of sustainable development,” Hoballah said in a recent interview with The Korea Herald.

“It’s important for humanity because it allows us to better use our resources in a way that you can have less material, less energy per product, together with the same quality. This is what we call decoupling, which means doing more and better with less. And it is feasible.”

His view was echoed by Yoon, who in September became a director of the U.N. board of the 10-year framework of programs on sustainable consumption and production patterns.

Yoon stressed the need for such a transition to build environmentally friendly supply chains nation- and worldwide and expand the initiative to other areas.

“Many people think economy and environment have conflicting goals but they should, in fact, go hand in hand. SCP is a good, practical way of decoupling,” he said.

Though global discussions have made little headway in forging a new accord to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, Hoballah sees more mitigation opportunities in particular on the consumption and production fronts.

“The whole problem on environment and sustainability is that we have been focusing on the problems but very little on the solutions,” the French environment expert said.

“There are great solutions ― very limited, but they exist. … But you need to make this technology available to them. You need to make this information available to them. This is the challenge of SCP but also with many opportunities behind to be able to make a transformative change.”

The concept of sustainable consumption and production was first introduced at the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, despite being a very general reference.

It gained traction at the Rio summit in 1992 and then the 2002 conference in Johannesburg which identified SCP as one of the three overarching objectives, together with poverty eradication and the management of natural resources.

A breakthrough came in June last year when the so-called Rio+20 gathering adopted the 10-year framework of programs on sustainable consumption and production patterns. It laid out action plans to crank up enhance international cooperation to spur the shift toward SCP in both developed and developing countries through capacity building and technical and financial assistance.

“If we have the 19 YFP adopted at Rio, it’s not because of Korea, Japan or Europe. It was thanks to Africa, Latin America, poor Asian countries who have understood the interests of SCP,” Hoballah said.

“Of course we want developed countries to lead by example but they have understood the interests and they’re now the best ambassadors. The shift is very important.”

Korea, for its part, is seeking a bigger role in boosting SCP by sharing its experience of rapid economic ascent and recent eco-friendly initiatives.

“For some developing countries, our ‘compressed’ growth may sound like a success story,” Yoon said.

“But at the same time, almost no other country in the world could have suffered environmental destruction like us. We can offer our know-how for overcoming severe environmental pollution.”

As to the rich world, Seoul surely surprised many when former President Lee Myung-bak unveiled a goal of curbing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent from projected levels by 2020 at a 2007 U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen.

Other new eco-friendly programs have also been introduced in recent years, including carbon labeling and green public procurement.

Hoballah picked the green credit card as some of Korea’s best practices, along with its water treatment system converting wastewater to drinking water, and energy-efficient construction technologies.

Under the 2011 scheme, consumers receive credits for buying eco-friendly products or taking public transit with the green credit card, which then can be redeemed for cash or be used to pay utility bills.

“Even from an advanced country’s point of view, such system as the green credit card can be difficult to be successful on a national scale. I think we can be in a position to provide lessons for both the rich and poor worlds,” Yoon said.

In promoting SCP in Korea, Yoon pinned high hopes on consumers’ role, whereas other countries including those in Europe chiefly focus on resources efficiency in production.

A surging number of businesses worldwide have been investing in eco-friendly production and ramping up corporate social responsibility activities as consumers increasingly turn ethically conscious, he noted.

“We’ve been looking at the production part so far but I realized that consumers could be the true driver of SCP given the growing power of civic groups and media,” Yoon said.

“The distribution system should also be shifted in a greener manner, then production, and then again consumption. That way a virtuous cycle would be created where the whole system operates with fewer costs and less damage to the environment.”

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)