A Framework of Sustainable Consumption and Production from the Production Perspective: Application to Thailand and Vietnam

In the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations (UN), goal 12 (“ensure sustainable consumption and production [SCP] patterns”) has eight outcome targets (12.1-12.8) and three targets for the means of implementation (MoI) (12.a-12.c). This “SCP-via-SDGs” approach is a much narrower, specific concept based on historical agreements that range from the Stockholm conference (1972) to the 10-Year Framework of Programmes (10YFP) (2012-2022). Meanwhile, “the academic SCP” is a highly interdisciplinary and complex approach that pursues an answer to what sustainability is, and it has not explicitly provided the SCP-via-SDGs framework at present. Thus, this study proposes a five-by-five framework for the SCP-via-SDGs approach from the production perspective (i.e., for individual firms), following the literature on corporate environmental management. The five stages (I-V) consider environmental management systems (EMS; I. strategy and process) for target 12.4, environmental management accounting (EMA; II. accounting and disclosure) for 12.6, and environmental management control systems (EMCS; III. financial, IV. environmental, and V. overall performance) for 12.2. Meanwhile, the five factors (1-5) consider the baseline and material flow (MF) factors (total waste, hazardous waste, raw materials used, and recycled waste) for targets 12.3 and 12.5. As an application, this study surveyed non-financial listed firms in Vietnam and compared the results to a previous study on Thailand. The results show that the firms are more likely to be at stage III (financial performance of EMCS) in Thailand and stage I or II (EMS or EMA) in Vietnam, suggesting that each market requires its own SCP policies, depending on the economic growth of each.