Rethinking Consumption & Production: Systems Design for Sustainable Lifestyles in the Global North

Abstract

Climate change & sustainable development are two of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. The dominant narrative for addressing the crisis revolves around technological innovation, which presents an incomplete framing of the problem and produces solutions that only address symptoms and not the root cause of our existential predicament. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the drivers of unsustainable lifestyles in the Global North by drawing upon scholarship in the field of Sustainable Consumption & Production. The research methods include qualitative secondary research and the application of systems thinking in the social sciences to represent a system of consumption & production.

The output of this research is a framework titled ‘The Forces that Shape Consumption & Production’, which assists system designers in mapping the relationships and interactions between 4 primary actors – the individual, community, enterprise, and government. A core argument of this paper is that choices made available by a system of consumption & production determine the lifestyles that emerge. The framework is also used to conduct a macro-level analysis of transnational corporations with special attention paid to the United States. The findings reveal six drivers of unsustainable consumption & production that have undermined progress on sustainable development. In order to address these issues, twelve design solutions are identified in 3 intervention categories – practice, cultural, legal – that can be applied to leverage points within the system. Lastly, I propose using the framework as an analytical tool to complement human-centered design methodologies and to create a bridge between academia & industry.