The Role of Government & CSOs in Promoting Sustainable Consumption

The Government of Egypt (GoE) had signed in the year 2007, the agreement for a 10 years African Framework Program that aims to introduce Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) programme in the City of Cairo. Later, the SCP report, which was issued in the year 2008, reviewed policies relevant to Sustainable Development at both; National and Local level within four different thematic areas. However, the report fails to cover household service consumption behavioural patterns. Therefore, this research aims to look into policy and strategic options for reaching sustainable household consumption in the City of Cairo, focusing on water and electricity use. This is done through studying the factors affecting consumer behaviour. In addition, investigate the role of both government and civil society organizations in influencing household service behaviour. It looks at the perspective of stakeholders on identifying the effective policy instruments to promote sustainable service use with regards to water and electricity use. This is an exploratory policy-related research. The main tools and instruments used in this research, next to the literature review, is the in depth interview conducted with government officials and civil society organizations involved in the field of household water and electricity consumption. Moreover, a survey was conducted in one district within the City of Cairo which is Al-Manial district to review the factors which influence household water and electricity consumption behaviour and to know their perception on how sustainable household water and electricity consumption should be promoted. The research findings include documenting the currently used instruments by the national government and the civil society, to arrive at more sustainable water and electricity consumption patterns. These instruments include the issuance of new water and electricity law, besides the existence of service pricing and the use of different type of awareness campaigns. However, this is not always clearly targeted as sustainable consumption. Another finding of this research, that it gives clear understanding on the factors which affect household service behaviour. This include, level of awareness, level of responsibility, following conservation practice and level of trust. However, it was observed that there is a directly proportional relation between these factors and the level of income, education and religious belief. Generally, the attitude of households is considered very promising for receiving awareness campaigns due the current situation in Egypt. Moreover, awareness campaigns are found to be the most effective policy tools to be used. The topic of sustainable service use is essential in city development and management. Therefore, it would be considered vital to allocate more time for professionals and experts to work on finding alternative sustainable solutions for water and energy resources, which may help in improving the consumers' quality of life. Finally, the topic of sustainable service consumption requires a lot of effort to be spend in Egypt, in order to remove all the current barriers and challenges which may face the implementation of this concept. Accordingly, further research should be done in the field of household service behaviour on large scale in the City of Cairo, as a step forward to build a strong data base for consumer service behaviour.