Assessing in-formation as a consumer citizen

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Tallinn, 6 May 2006

Thank you for the invitation to give an opening speech at this impor-tant European conference on Consumer Citizenship, and for the possi-bility to present some views on the conference theme. It's an honour for me to greet such a dedicated audience. Research and education are the basic pillars in consumer politics.

The Nordic countries and the Baltic countries have a tradition going back to the 90’s for cooperation on a line of consumer education pro-jects under the Nordic Council of Ministers. One of the results is that each Baltic country now has developed a national curriculum analysis and a teacher guide for consumer education, including a joint version in Russian for all three countries. The Nordic policy document “Pro-posal on objectives for and content of consumer education”, elaborated in the mid nineties has been an essential tool for the Nordic countries in this field.  Through our cooperation, I believe that it has turned out useful for developing consumer education in your countries as well.

The fast development of technology, and the strong need for media and digital competence, are reasons for our wish to update this 2000 document to a 2010 version. Finland has submitted an application on behalf of our countries to the Nordic Council of Ministers, which we do hope will give a clear go for this project.

Another reason for an update, which I think deserves special attention, is the environmental climate challenges. The role of consumption and consumption patterns in this respect is so crucial that these challenges must be strongly reflected also in consumer education. Looking at it from a different angle, it is crucial that all consumers, of all genera-tions, “assess this kind of information as a consumer citizen”, to quote the headline for this conference. We must change and reduce our con-sumption, witch is a particular challenging task in rich Western Europe countries, such as Norway

The Ministry of Environment and our Ministry have commissioned a research project at the institution “Vestlandsforskning” to make a de-tailed look into the developments in Norway over the last 20 years – that is from the presentation of the Report from United Nations World Commission for Sustainable Development, (The Brundtland Commis-sion), in April 1987, and up until today.

The method used in our statistical comparative study is one known in-ternationally as “the ecological footprint”. The footprint measures the consumption of factual and computed biological productive area. In other words, the footprint measures human consumption of the earth's ecosystems and natural resources, and Planet Earth's ecological capac-ity to regenerate the resources. Climate emissions are included when energy use is converted to productive area in the footprint.

Among the World Commission's recommendations 20 years ago were producing “more out of less”, and to organize for improvement of the developing countries’ economies through increased exports to west-ern countries. The statistics and footprint for Norway identifies that we certainly have been more efficient in producing “more out of less” and we have “increased imports from the developing countries”. However, the big problem and challenge we have to face, is that our consump-tion has increased far more than the efficiency in production. The con-sumption level seems to surpass the limits of sustainable growth.

As a result, we have not managed to reduce the size of the ecological footprint - rather the opposite.

There are differences to how different elements of consumption have developed. The footprints from food, housing and cars are about the same as 20 years ago, while those from air travel and, not the least, imported goods from Asia, have increased. As for Norway, our moun-tains and waterfalls have made it possible to produce sufficient and sustainable hydro electric power. But growth in energy consumption based on import from less sustainable sources may increase the foot-print in the years to come, if we are not able to improve environmen-tally friendly production and substantially better use of our energy.

Thinking and working along these lines are fully integrated in "The knowledge promotion", the 2006 national curriculum from 1st to the 13th grade. Our Ministry have strongly supported this development, and we are very pleased with the result as sustainable consumption is concerned. Neither education nor consumer policies can function in our modern societies without a green base.

The link to our national curriculum can be found at CCN’s home page. For this conference, we have gathered and copied the consumer rele-vant objectives in the new curriculum in one small paper, which also has an English version. Again; This must be a field of concern, not only to those of us being dedicated to the connection between con-sumption and the environment, but for all. And that's a challenge.

At the same time, other and more traditional aspects of consumer and consumption topics remain important. Consumer protection and household economy have found their natural places in the social sci-ences curriculum, and the topic "food and health" has been updated. As the latter is concerned, food industrialization, heavy marketing and a globalized market, make individual choices concerning ones health and safety precautions more difficult - and more important than ever.

From our point of view, two lines of actions or roads to the future are important: Curriculum development nationally and internationally, and teacher training.

On a national basis, we have asked the Hedmark University College to prepare a full teachers guidebook on consumer citizenship for all teacher students, their teacher colleagues, and others who want assis-tance in implementing the new plans.

On a European basis, CCN has, and you all have by taking such an ac-tive part in this EU project, placed yourselves exactly in the middle of the important crossroads - where teacher training, international cur-riculum development and the didactical teaching of consumer citizen-ship all meet.

Thank you very much for your attention. I trust that you all will have an interesting and important conference.