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Common Assets and Environment: The Future Contribution of Consumption to Progress and Well-being

The Council of Europe, which comprises 47 member states, all of whom are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights, produced this report as part of its research programme on social cohesion. Cooper was one of eight contributors. According to its website, the Council of Europe “asked several noted intellectuals about their vision for the future, inviting them to share their thoughts in order to spark a debate on how to envisage societal progress and ways of living together” (http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/socialpolicies/socialcohesiondev/trends_en.asp).

In his chapter Cooper drew upon his 32 years of experience of environmental thinking, the first 15 as campaigner and the past 17 as academic researcher. Its premise is that progress and well-being require security about future prosperity, which in turn necessitates environmental sustainability and social justice. This will entail change in the dominant culture of immediacy and short term gratification reflected in people’s tendency to discount the future and thereby ignore the wider implications of their consumption. The necessary transformation will involve a new, circular economic model, a trend towards fewer and longer lasting products, and recognition in the debate on climate change of embedded carbon in products. This latter argument foreshadows Cooper’s later work on sustainable materials with Cambridge University in the £11m UK INDEMAND research centre established in 2013. The chapter concludes that prosperity is possible without rising levels of affluence but Governments and industry need to provide a more supportive environment in order that people have confidence that environmental security and social justice can be achieved.

The report was widely distributed during the Council of Europe’s Conference on Shared Social Responsibility held in Brussels in 2011, which was opened by José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, and attended by around 400 participants from 42 countries (http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/socialpolicies/socialcohesiondev/conference2011_EN.asp)