Sustainable consumption, consumer protection and sustainable development: Unbundling institutional septet for developing economies

The chapter draws on the legal, institutional and stakeholder perspectives to develop a septet framework that provides clarity to the concept of sustainable consumption and production and aligns consumer protection to sustainable development in developing countries. This contextualizes the roles of consumers and corporations as institutional actors and consumption as an institution. The chapter uniquely unbundles the concept as consisting of six foundational components: sustainable consumption by proximate consumers for future generations; sustainable production for future generations; sustainable consumption by/for proximate consumers; sustainable production for proximate consumers; participation by proximate consumers; and CSR. The septet framework challenges conventional approaches to consumer vulnerability, disclosure regulation, contract law, consumer responsibilisation, stakeholder, corporate governance, institutional voids and international cooperation. The chapter’s interventionist consumer protection law approach includes public interest-oriented disclosure regulation, distributive justice-oriented contract law, resolution of business-to-consumer information asymmetry, credible corporate social reporting and certification standards, distributed/shared consumer responsibilisation, stakeholder enforcement rights, obligations and protection, independent stakeholder determination of standards, resolution of related agency problems through a stakeholder approach to corporate governance and international cooperation in regulatory standards and enforcement. It is also argued that a consumer protection approach to sustainable development can promote stakeholder engagement and meaningful corporate social responsibility.