SPACES at USER

Purpose and Approach

The SPACES program at USER focuses on treating commodity chains, from inputs, through distribution to consumption and disposal, as integrated production and consumption systems.

Our research has been aimed at identifying points of leverage for improving sustainability looking well beyond immediate production stages. As such we have become interested in issues of consumption and the creation of demand and wants.

Our empirical work began with on shrimp aquaculture farms in Thailand and Vietnam and has expanded to consider other production regions, and to look more closely at the full commodity chain through to end-consumers. More recently we have begun to explore these ideas with respect to sustainable tourism.

Our collaborative assessment activities are carried out as part of an international working group that goes by the same name as our program, SPACES. The current task of this group is to look carefully at knowledge and action linkages and try to identify where actions towards sustainability are possible now, and where, additional research-based knowledge is needed.

Our theoretical contributions have so far been limited but we are trying to find practical ways of re-conceptualizing production and consumption systems that make them more amenable to measurement and evaluation for performance.