Report on the International Expert Workshop “Sector-Specific Approaches for Communication of Life Cycle Information to different Stakeholders” held in Escola Superior de Comerç Internacional, Barcelona, 8th September 2005, organized by the Task Force on Communication of Life Cycle Information of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative The edition of this report has been funded by the Ministry of Environment of the Government of Catalonia.

In developed societies, there still linger some individual and collective habits stemming from an erroneous environmental conception of progress and well-being.

This conception translates into accelerated consumption of raw materials and non-renewable and scarce resources, like fossil energy resources and water; generation of large amounts of wastes which are harder and harder to manage; and mobility habits that impair air quality and, year by year, increase the greenhouse effect which is responsible for climate change.

In this century, an extraordinarily complex transformation is bound to occur, which will bring about gradual but inexorable change in the development model that we have been following till now. We will move from growth based on production and consumption patterns characterized by little to no respect for the environment, to a new growth model that will harmonize quality of life with economic activity, and preserve future generations’ rights on natural patrimony.

Experts from all over the world agree that only this new growth model, known as sustainable development, will be able to ensure the long term well-being of the world’s citizens and nations.

For that reason, the governments of the most developed countries have taken this change of model as a challenge, and consider promoting public consent in order to implement sustainability strategies in this first third of our century to be an unavoidable goal. The European Union has recently expressed this will most clearly in the Communication “on the Sustainable Consumption and Production and Sustainable Industrial Policy Action Plan (2008)”