What would a "fair consumption space for all" look like? Between high-carbon Canada and low-carbon Indonesia, there are a range of options
From Hot or Cool’s 1.5 degree lifestyles paper
This excellent and detailed report from Canada’s Hot Or Cool think tank is really helpful in measuring the differences between prosperous, middle-income and poorer countries, and their consumption footprints. It also gives very concrete advice about what consuming options to go for, while also keeping the pressure on the “rapid decarbonisation of products, production systems, and infrastructure” - that is, collective action.
From the conclusion to the full paper, below:
The study highlights the huge differences in lifestyle-related greenhouse gas emissions that exist among the world’s major economies.
An average person in Canada, the country with the highest per-capita emissions among the economies studied, was found to have a life-style footprint six times larger than a person in Indonesia.
The other high-income countries studied (Finland, Japan, and the UK) were found to have around 70% larger footprints than the three more prosperous middle-income countries included in the study (China, South Africa, and Turkey).
These results confirm the well-known relationship where greenhouse gas emissions are strongly linked to per-capita national incomes.
However, there is also considerable variation in emissions among some of the high-income countries. Canada, which has a lifestyle carbon footprint around twice as large as Japan and the UK, is a case in point. This variation shows the significance of factors other than economic activity, such as population density, public investments, climate, and culture, in explaining the carbon intensity of lifestyles.
When looking at different domains of consumption, the footprints related to food are relatively similar for the ten countries studied, with the exception of India and Indonesia, where meat consumption is notably lower. In addition to meat, dairy products are a major contributor to footprints, especially in high-income countries, in particular in Canada and Finland. Different food cultures are reflected in the footprints, for example with respect to fish, dairy, beans, rice and meat consumption.
In the housing domain, non-renewable grid electricity is an important source of lifestyle carbon footprints in all countries. This shows the importance of changing the socio-technical context in order to support sustainable lifestyles. In addition, gas used for heating and cooking is another major contributor to the footprint for some countries, such as the United Kingdom, Japan, and Turkey. Large average living spaces contribute to the higher footprints of high-income countries. This is the case, especially in Canada and Finland, where large living spaces together with long and cold winters increase the overall energy demand.
Footprints for personal transport are highest in the high-income countries due to high overall transport demand and a high share of car use and carbon-intensive air travel. Japan, however, has a high mobility demand but a notably higher share of public transport use than other high-income countries.
In countries with a lower share of car use, transport demand is mainly met through public transportation (bus and train), except in India and Indonesia, where motorcycles are the biggest contributor to both mobility demand and footprints.
Pathways to a fair consumption space
The study proposes a “fair consumption space” as a guiding principle for sustainability and the transition to a low-carbon society. This concept recognises the need to simultaneously address both underconsumption, which results in unmet human needs, poor health, and limited freedoms, and overconsumption, which harms planetary systems disproportionally. Based on this notion, the study establishes “contraction and convergence” pathways for countries’ lifestyle carbon footprints.
Drawing from model scenarios used by the IPCC, the study sets mid-century global targets for lifestyle impacts. The lifestyle carbon footprints target to stay under a 1.5-degree increase in global temperature is 0.7 tCO2e by 2050, with intermediary targets of 2.5 tCO2e by 2030 and 1.4 tCO2e by 2040. These targets are consistent with the goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C and derived from scenarios that require only limited deployment of negative emission technologies.
The pathway analysis focuses mainly on the intermediate target of 2.5 tCO2e per person per year, which would need to be met around 2030. For high-income countries, this requires footprint reductions of 69– 82%. Middle-income countries, such as China, South Africa, and Turkey, currently have lifestyle carbon footprints that are about twice as large as the 2030 target. Of the ten countries analysed, it is only Indonesia that has some limited room to grow footprints in the current decade. Even so, it is already above the 2050 target, and so emissions would need to peak and fall soon thereafter.
The study analyses the potential footprint reductions from a range of solutions options, for each of the target countries. The results show that there is a huge reduction potential, especially for high-income countries. In these countries, the largest reduction potentials (of 500 to over 1,500 kg CO2e/person/year) are found in
car-free private travelling/transport,
reduction of international flights,
vegan diet,
electric car,
vegetarian diet,
renewable grid electricity.
vehicle fuel efficiency improvement,
renewable off-grid electricity,
low-carbon protein instead of red meat,
and renewable based heating and/or cooling.
In the upper-middle income countries studied, the options with a potential to save more than 500 kg/person/year per option on average are vegan diet and low-carbon protein instead of red meat.
In lower-middle income countries, only reducing commuting distances exceeded 500 kg per option.
Based on the assessment of options for reducing foot- prints, the study analyses how the 2.5t target for 2030 could be reached in each of the countries covered. For each country, two different scenarios for how to reach the 2.5t target were developed—one that relies more on supply-side solutions and one that builds more on changes in behaviour. A consistent finding across all countries is the need for both systems and behaviour change.
Even with very ambitious assumptions on supply-side measures (reduced carbon intensity) there is still a need to also reduce and shift overall consumption patterns. This need is especially pronounced for high-income countries where drastic cuts are needed.
Canada, which has by far the largest footprint among the countries studied, is not even able to meet the 2.5-ton target with the options considered in this report. Middle-income countries also need lifestyle carbon footprint reductions of 23–50% by 2030, but have more leeway in terms of what domains to focus on and what options to adopt.
The scenarios show that the low-carbon lifestyle options assessed in this report can meet the target for 2030 in most countries but this generally requires high adoption rates of several options in all consumption domains.
Although the 2030 target can be met in different ways, the scenarios with more emphasis on supply-side measures were generally found to be more effective. This finding highlights the importance of rapid decarbonisation of products, production systems, and infrastructure—transformations that cannot be brought about by individual consumers but require collective action, including political decisions and effective public policies.
From Hot or Cool’s 1.5 degree lifestyles paper
We noted this passage at the conclusion of the paper - which struck us forcibly. “Capacity development” for these changes, with the tools and knowledge directly in the hands of community, is what we hope for the advance of CANs (community agency networks). See below:
…An unprecedented amount of capacity development is needed in order to support a global transition to sustainable future societies. The scale and urgency of change described in this report and by others, such as the IPCC, cannot be addressed with current levels of capacity.
Capacity building for future lifestyles will be needed, not just for individuals and households but also for businesses, government agencies, and institutions influencing socio-cultural norms and physical infrastructures that shape lifestyles. Capacity is needed:
to reject familiar but unsustainable practices and institutions;
to imagine alternatives to current consumerist lifestyles;
to understand and accept policies and solutions that may seem radical but are needed;
to learn new ways of meeting needs;
to build practical life-skills for sustainable living;
and to be proactive and innovative towards future directions.
More from the report here. We guess that “institutions influencing socio-cultural norms and physical infrastructures that shape lifestyles” is where a CAN process might make its intervention.