Consumer Responsibility Principle

Definition

Consumer Responsibility Principle is one of the approaches to attribute responsibility for economic externalities. The approach focuses on the role of Final Demand and the economic production pathways that are being setup to satisfy that demand.

Consumer versus Producer Responsibility

In order to determine the GHG emissions each country is responsible for and to monitor the progress towards established targets, the Kyoto Protocol requires that countries report, through national GHG inventories, "emissions and removals taking place within national (including administered) territories and offshore areas over which the country has jurisdiction".

These national GHG inventories captures only direct emissions and does not account properly for e.g.,international transportation. In addition indirect effects that are associated with international trade are not reflected. This may lead to sideeffects such as Carbon Leakage

The Consumer responsibility principle aims to address the above shortcomings by incorporating international trade relations.

Embodied emissions is a environmenal impact accounting concept that tries to implement consumer responsibility by assessing the emissions generated from all upstream economic activities, no matter from where, in the supply chain. In contrast to the producer responsibility principle, the consumer responsibility principle requires consumers to be responsible for all upstream emissions embodied in their consumption.

See Also

• Producer Responsibility Principle
• Income Responsibility Principle