§ Norman BakerTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what plans her Department has to conduct research on the relationship between production and consumption with reference to the delivery of sustainable development. [101672]
§ Mr. MeacherThe agenda for sustainable consumption and production (SCP) agreed at WSSD last year is a very ambitious one, in terms of the scope of the issues to be addressed, the range of actors involved, and the range and inter-dependence of the measures that could be considered. The Government have been actively building up the knowledge base to support this agenda: in particular, substantial research and analysis has been carried out over the last three years as inputs to the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit reports on resource productivity ("Making More With Less") and waste ("Waste Not, Want Not") and the Energy White Paper published last month. The Government now plan to draw some of the main threads together in a strategy document on Sustainable Consumption and Production, to be published in the summer. My Department is coordinating this work, which will itself feed into the review of the UK Sustainable Development Strategy and its associated sustainable development indicators, to be completed in 2005.
We will be considering what further research the Government may need to commission as part of this evolving work on a longer-term strategy. In addition, organisations outside central Government are also looking at issues connected with the SCP agenda and we shall be making full use of such material where we can.