News

Prof. Dr. Annette Elisabeth Töller presents the SRU special report at the annual conference of the Federal Network for Consumer Research at the Federal Ministry for the Environment

At the annual conference of the Federal Network for Consumer Research, taking place at the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) in Berlin on November 2, 2023, under the title "Regulation, self-regulation and co-regulation - governance models of consumer policy", Prof. Dr. Annette Elisabeth Töller presented the special report by the German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU) "A Political Responsibility: Facilitating Environmentally Friend Behaviour". In front of an audience of approximately eighty representatives of politics, business, civil society, and science, she stressed the necessity of combining production-related regulation with measures addressing individual consumer behaviour in her presentation titled "Individuals as addressees of environmental regulation policies". After discussing the legitimacy of such state interventions, she set out the conditions under which changes in consumer behaviour are necessary to reach climate targets, e.g., where planetary boundaries are already exceeded. In addition, Prof. Dr. Töller touched on the social dimension of consumer regulation as well as its political feasibility and acceptance.

The complete presentation by Prof. Dr. Annette Elisabeth Töller is available in German here.