Changing consumption patterns with respect to the transport sector in New Zealand: A recipe for society crumble: RESM Group project

Abstract

Agenda 21, the principle document emerging from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, highlights amongst other issues the need for an investigation into the unsustainable consumption patterns of the developed world. Titls report makes a contribution to the debate regarding the consumption patterns of New Zealand by investigating the transport sector in particular as a major component of New Zealand's consumption patterns. The situation in Christchurch regarding road transport is considered, from which emerges some principle barriers to a change of consumption patterns. These include institutional fragmentation and lack of coordination in planning and decision making; lack of political will and substantial investment in the status quo; the dominance of one particular economic paradigm; and a social and psychological dependence on current transport systems that, coupled with the complexity of the transport issues, results in a failure to see transport as a consumption problem. The insights gained from looking at transport as an issue of consumption can be transferred to consumption patterns in general. It becomes obvious that whilst institutional change is a desirable step in the pathway to more sustainable consumption this cannot occur in isolation of social value change. This value change is part of a cyclic interaction between the public and the state and can be stimulated in a number of ways using education, the media and greater public participation in decision making.