SEI INITIATIVE The SEI Initiative on Producer to Consumer Sustainability

The SEI Initiative on Producer to Consumer Sustainability (P2CS) is a research and action platform designed to address the complexity of global production-to-consumption systems (PCSs). The initiative focuses on developing 'next-generation' footprint accounting tools to provide higher spatial resolution and better attribution of responsibility across supply chains. It also investigates supply chain governance to identify gaps in existing risk-management commitments and foster new mechanisms for sustainable trade. Initial pilot projects (2015–2016) target beef and soy in Brazil and oil palm in South East Asia for European markets.

• Standard environmental footprint accounts are often too crude for effective policy use because they rely on aggregated country-level data and proxies that cannot be linked to specific production areas.
• The P2CS initiative is developing 'next-generation' footprint accounting characterized by four improvements: enhanced spatial resolution to link consumers to specific production areas, accounting for socio-economic benefits, clearer attribution of responsibility among actors, and the inclusion of indirect impacts like waste and indirect land-use change.
• The initiative utilizes specific SEI tools to trace commodities: SEI-PCS traces from a production site (such as a municipality) to the first consumer, while IOTA traces from the producer country to the final consumer country through processing stages.
• P2CS aims to evaluate the effectiveness of current governance and risk-management tools—including voluntary standards, legal compliance, and consumer labelling—and identify where these mechanisms fail to meet aspirational sustainability targets.
• The first phase of the initiative (2015–2016) focuses on pilot studies of three major agricultural commodities: soy and beef in Brazil, and oil palm in South East Asia, all destined for European markets.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2015). SEI INITIATIVE The SEI Initiative on Producer to Consumer Sustainability. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-Initiative-2015-Producer-consumer-sustainability.pdf

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. SEI INITIATIVE The SEI Initiative on Producer to Consumer Sustainability. 2015. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-Initiative-2015-Producer-consumer-sustainability.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=SEI INITIATIVE The SEI Initiative on Producer to Consumer Sustainability |date=2015 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-Initiative-2015-Producer-consumer-sustainability.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2015sei, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{SEI INITIATIVE The SEI Initiative on Producer to Consumer Sustainability}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2015}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-Initiative-2015-Producer-consumer-sustainability.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }