The Northern Alliance for Sustainability (ANPED) works to empower Northern civil society in creating and protecting sustainable communities and societies world-wide.
ANPED’s main focus is on sustainable consumption and production, the use of goods and services responding to basic human needs and bringing a better quality of life, while minimizing the use of natural resources, toxic materials and emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle, so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations.

We build capacity among Northern civil society organizations through information, knowledge and skill-sharing, and enable their participation in local, national, regional and international decision-making processes on sustainable development. Whereas our network has a worldwide reach, our member organizations are mainly located in the Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) regions.

Membership of ANPED is open to any NGO working on issues related to sustainable development. ANPED members work on several thematic issues through the ANPED Working Groups, with each Working Group striving to change unsustainable consumption and production patterns from its own angle.

Within the UNECE region, ANPED is one of the main actors promoting the development of a 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns as dealt with through the Marrakech Process. We see sustainable consumption and production as an interconnecting theme to various global problems such as unequity, climate change and loss of biodiversity as well as to various policy processes, such as the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UN CSD), the ‘Environment for Europe’ (EfE) process and the Carpathian Convention, as well as international structures such as the OECD, UNEP and the European Union.

ANPED has Special Consultative status to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). We are among the organizing partners responsible for providing the NGO Major Group input into the official meetings of the UN CSD as recognized under Agenda 21.