Since the industrial revolution, anthropogenic activities have led to an unprecedented surge in greenhouse gas emissions, leading to global warming, and natural resources’ depletion and pollution causing environmental and health issues. These have brought us nearly to the brink of an environmental disaster and existential crisis which can be avoided only if we act with a sense of urgency. Thus, reducing greenhouse gas emission (in addition to tracking the other planetary boundaries) is the most pressing problem of the current century with an eventual goal towards net zero emissions (NetZero).
However, the path to NetZero is not straightforward and requires a nuanced approach involving various stakeholders. While it is a no-brainer that we need to increase our reliance on new, clean and renewable energy technology solutions, they must be context and locale specific and should be applied in harmony with economic, social and ecological dimensions. 14 Trees Foundation, Ecological Society and IIT Kanpur have together embarked on conducting brainstorming sessions to take this discussion forward. We are seeking participation and contribution from important stakeholders including Gen-Z, Industry, Academia and the Civil Society to take this initiative ahead.
In the fifth edition of this dialogue, we turn our attention to a crucial and often overlooked theme - “Sustainable Production”, the proverbial elephant in the room that influences every dimension of our sustainability discourse.
This edition aims to explore the strategic framework for the fundamental challenge: meeting evolving human needs within sustainable ecological boundaries. Yet before proposing solutions, we must critically examine the assumptions embedded in this challenge itself. Rather than treating growing aspirations for convenience and services as inevitable, we should interrogate their origins—particularly the role of advertising and affluent consumers in shaping desire and, consequently, patterns of production and consumption. We must also fundamentally reconsider what constitutes "quality of life" regardless of the polycrises in our ecologically constrained world.
Beyond environmental limits, questions of distributive justice demand equal attention: How do we ensure equitable access to shared natural resources among humans, and how do we extend ethical consideration to all life forms affected by our extraction and use of these resources?
The challenge operates on multiple fronts. First, we must limit further land degradation from extracting non-renewable resources while simultaneously improving human well-being. Second, we must address the pollution of primary resources—air, water, and soil—that sustains all life. These dimensions are interconnected: degradation in one sphere inevitably cascades into others.
In the context of the larger problem in the background, we may want to focus on some of the immediately feasible interventions. The proposed approach centers on four key intervention areas for change in systems: Design for Sustainability through circular material use, End-use focus through servitization, Output-based taxation mechanisms, and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) implementation. This dialogue session aims to develop actionable recommendations for government interventions, including exploring an idea of an open-source technology platform to enable the Product-as-a-Service paradigm.
The hope and expectation is that if Academia like the IITs and IISc adopt to work further, we might be able to suggest a suitable direction for development. Fortunately, some of the private sector industries are adopting these ideas and there is reason to be hopeful.