Journal of Cleaner Production 87 (2015) 1e2
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Journal of Cleaner Production
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
Call for papers
Call for papers for a special volume on “Transitions to sustainable
consumption and production within cities”
Philip J. Vergragt a, *, Leonie Dendler b, Martin De Jong c, Kira Matus d, Xiaoling Zhang e
a
Tellus Institute, 11 Arlington Street, Boston MA 02116-3411, USA
b
Sustainable Consumption Institute, Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester, 188 Waterloo Place, Oxford Road, Manchester M139PL, UK
c
TPM, TU-Delft, Jaffalaan 5, 2628 BX Delft, Netherlands
d
Department of Government, London School of Economics, WC2A 2AE London, UK
e
Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 6 September 2014
Available online 7 October 2014
Environmental deterioration, climate change, biodiversity
losses, increasing resource scarcity, as well as inequality and
persistent poverty, are all inter-linked to, and driven by, globally
unsustainable production and consumption patterns and systems.
Traditional rules of the economic and financial system are
increasingly criticized, and so too are the impacts of an expanding
international consumer class. While developing countries are
working to overcome deprivation by growing their economies, the
growing urban middle classes in countries such as India and China
are increasingly joining into the material-intensive lifestyles of
their counterparts in Europe, America and already developed
regions.
Since the 1992 World Summit on Sustainable Development, the
transition to sustainable production and consumption (SPaC) sys-
tems has been heralded as a global priority. Accordingly, in 2012,
the United Nations General Assembly launched the Ten-Year
Framework of Programs on Sustainable Consumption and Production
(10YFP). In addition, the Science and Technology Alliance for Global
Sustainability initiated the Future Earth research plan http://www.
futureearth.info.
Over the past two decades, extensive research regarding SPaC
has been performed, which has addressed issues such as the cir-
cular and green economy, the attitude-behavior gap, collaborative
consumption, sustainable finance and investment, sustainable
procurement, and green supply-chain management. Other work
done by many diverse researchers has sought to identify the un-
derlying drivers of a wide-spread consumer culture and to question
the prevailing economic growth paradigm. Consequently, there are
new insights into the ‘complex challenges of systemic change,’
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 6172430744.
E-mail address: pvergragt@tellus.org (P.J. Vergragt).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.038
0959-6526
although actual progress has been slow due to limited compre-
hension of the multidimensional barriers that impede diffusion of
more sustainable consumption and production practices. Further
inquiry is necessary to understand these complexities and to more
effectively catalyze the transitions from research to policy to real
world practice.
Against this background, the Global Research Forum on Sus-
tainable Production and Consumption (GRF-SPaC) together with
the Fudan Tyndall Centre, a joint initiative of the UK's Tyndall
Centre for Climate Change Research and the Research Institute for
Global Environmental Change at Fudan University in Shanghai,
hosted the Second Biennial Conference of the Global Research
Forum on Sustainable Production and Consumption (GRF-SPaC)
under the theme “Global Transitions to Sustainable Production and
Consumption Systems” at Fudan University, Shanghai, from June
8e11 2014 (See the original call for papers for this conference
(Journal of Cleaner Production 64 (2014) 3e5 (February))). The
conference brought together more than 100 scholars and practi-
tioners, representing 23 countries from all five continents, to
consider the latest research in the field and to connect with Chinese
colleagues who have become increasingly active in drawing
attention to the risks inherent in current domestic consumption
and production trends.
This Special Volume (SV) is designed to build upon the knowl-
edge presented at this important conference, with a particular
focus on cutting edge research that examines the interplay among
consumption, innovation, and the transition to more sustainable
cities. We are currently witnessing a paradigm shift towards new
concepts, theories, perspectives and approaches designed to
accelerate the transition to post-fossil carbon societies. This is
occurring simultaneously with rapid urbanization that will see a
doubling of the urban population in the next fifty years. Urbani-
zation is an inevitable and irreversible process and it represents
one of the major trends in human society. There is no doubt that
achieving urban sustainability transition in the 21st Century is
crucial as cities have been recognized as ‘a battlefield for global
sustainability’. How could further urbanization and urban
2 Call for papers / Journal of Cleaner Production 87 (2015) 1e2
transitions be re-directed so that cities can be harnessed as gen-
erators of innovation and solutions to issues of global sustainable
consumption and production? Fostering the development of such
post-fossil carbon societies will require the implementation of
innovative technologies, policies as well as social norms, values and
identities. By interconnecting innovation, consumption, and ur-
banization, this SV is designed to build upon the work pertaining to
sustainability transitions in production and consumption. It is
designed to be trans-disciplinary, trans-sectorial, and trans-
formative by simultaneously addressing multiple objectives. Key
issues are expected to include (but are not limited to):
1. What are the Changing roles of Actors and Strategies in Cata-
lyzing Effective Transitions to more Sustainable Consumption
and Production within Cities?
 Analyzing different actors and stakeholders in promoting the
transition to urban sustainability.
 Expanding our understanding of the interconnected roles of
technology, market-based and other governance instruments,
patterns of behavior, social norms, values and identities in
driving change towards sustainable cities.
 Analyzing the role of marketing and social media in acceler-
ating sustainability transitions.
 Integrating new approaches in management and policy
making to encourage system change.
 Understanding holistic integration of sustainable production
and consumption (SPaC) throughout all educational levels.
2. What is needed to Systematically Explore the roles of Innovation
in Developing and Implementing Systems Changes to Sustain-
able Cities?
 Investigating sustainability challenges and barriers to inno-
vation and change, especially with respect to consumption
and production, but also pertaining to finance and invest-
ment, business and supply-chain management, lifestyles and
culture, public policies, and procurement.
 Analyzing the conditions for and barriers to transitions to
sustainable cities.
 Understanding how to achieve absolute reductions in material
throughput and energy use in urban settings, with a focus on
industrialized countries and the emergent global middle class.
 Understanding the roles of infrastructures and institutions in
transitions to urban sustainability.
 Exploring the evolving roles of ecological ethics and values,
which are relevant to post-fossil-carbon societies.
3. What roles can Societal Experiments developing new Metrics,
Lifestyles, Business Practices, and Governance play in Support-
ing Transitions to Sustainable Cities and Societies?
 Reporting on the results of experiments in collaborative
consumption, new forms of business ownership and practice
and in other novel modes of stakeholder collaboration.
 Exploring new approaches to urban governance to support
sustainable cities and regions.
 Enhancing the understanding of the relevance of urban
resilience, eco-villages, and alternative communities for more
sustainable cities.
 Understanding the development and diffusion of social in-
novations such as transition towns, slow food, and local living
economies, and peer-to-peer provisioning.
 Analyzing the role of financing experiments in achieving more
sustainable innovation and consumption initiatives.
 Developing typologies of cities and their development tra-
jectories based on social, economic, environmental, culture,
innovation and governance in order to better understand
strategies for achieving more sustainable cities.
 Developing and applying indicators and metrics to support
transitions to sustainable urban lifestyles.
 Ensuring the integration of ecological system's services &
ecological footprint tools within the indicator system of sus-
tainable cities and regions.
4. What Concepts and Approaches will help in Accelerating Sus-
tainable Consumption and Production in Cities of Developing
Countries and Regions?
 Analyzing the roles and impacts of implementing the circular
economy at different scales and levels in promoting sustain-
able consumption in cities.
 Understanding challenges of poverty and inequality and how
to create opportunities for sustainable livelihoods that rein-
force local and regional economies and contribute to living
wages and employment creation.
 Learning from and building upon ecologically sound wisdom
from traditional or historical practices, knowledge and norms
to contribute to innovative solutions for sustainable urban
lifestyles.
 Measuring and learning from the environmental and social
impacts of consumption.
 Investigating how to change consumer behaviors towards
enhancing urban sustainability, especially for urban middle-
class consumers in all economies.
This Call for Papers is designed to attract contributions that will
build upon the foundation of the papers presented at the
conference.
Schedule
 Call for papers published October 2014 in the JCLP
 Submission of draft papers by January 15, 2015 to one of the
Guest Editors of this Special Volume
 Responses to authors by the SV editorial committee February 15,
2015
 Selected authors will be expected to submit their ‘peer-review
ready’ documents to Elsevier via the EES system by May 1, 2015.
Paper submission
All authors must follow the editorial guidelines provided in the
instructions for authors for the Journal of Cleaner Production,
which can be accessed via the website: http://www.elsevier.com/
journals/journal-ofcleaner-production/0959-6526/guide-for-
authors.
Guest Editors
Dr. Leonie Dendler, Sustainable Consumption Institute, Tyndall
Centre for Climate Change Research and Manchester Institute of
Innovation Research, University of Manchester (UK) and Fudan
University (China), leonie.dendler@mbs.ac.uk
Prof. dr. Martin de Jong, Delft University of Technology
(Netherlands), Fudan University (Shanghai), w.m.dejong@tudelft.nl
Dr. Kira Matus, Department of Government, London School of
Economics and Political Science (UK), k.matus@lse.ac.uk
Dr. Xiaoling Zhang, Department of Public Policy, City University
of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (China), xiaoling.zhang@cityu.edu.hk
Managing Guest Editor
Prof. dr. Philip Vergragt, Tellus Institute, Boston, and Clark Uni-
versity, Worcester MA (USA); and former Subject Editor, Journal of
Cleaner Production. pvergragt@tellus.org