The challenge of achieving economic growth and development in the face of the limited carrying capacity of the environment has become increasingly apparent in recent years. In order to meet this challenge, Israel developed Sustainable Consumption and Production strategy as part of the SwitchMed Programme. Israel formulated its own national roadmap under the guidance of an advisory team from the Israeli Ministries of Environmental Protection and Economy and based on a year-long scoping review process of 8 professional workshops with over 300 participants from over 50 institutions, including government, civil society, private sector, media and academia:
Date | Subject | Targeted Groups |
16-17 December 2013 | National Strategies for SCP | Multi stakeholders |
18 December 2013 | SD in Government Companies | Government Companies |
17-18 June 2014 | Policy Tools for Circular Economy | Government |
19 June 2014 | Mainstreaming Life Cycle Thinking | Practitioners |
24 June 2014 | Toward Sustainable infrastructure | Government Companies |
6 January 2015 | Environmental Funds Management | Government |
7 January 2015 | Environmental RIA | Government |
8 January 2015 | SCP Roadmap consultation meeting | Multi stakeholders |
Building on past experiences the focus of the SCP roadmap is on achievable, innovative and high impact projects. Some of the projects are developments and updates of previous plans and some introduce new concepts and strategies into already existing Israeli policies. Although SCP strategies are by definition spanning the complete life cycle of products and services, most of the designed projects have either a producer- or consumer-oriented approach, which complements each other. The SCP roadmap for Israel is divided into three main parts, according to consumption vs. production focus and includes a series of SCP initiatives that are due to be launched and implemented by 2020.
Sustainable Production: Key issues identified: emphasis on SMEs, the prospects of driving change through governmental and public companies, innovative business models in the adoption of sustainable production. Several projects were developed:
Sustainable Consumption: Key levers for change are green public procurement, household behavior and behavioral economics:
Connecting the Dots – between sustainable production and sustainable consumption: several fields identified for SCP roadmap implementation: sustainable materials management, sustainable urbanism, environmental standards, reliable environmental labeling and greenwash prevention, development of reliable footprint labels: