Rebound effects may jeopardize the resource savings of circular consumption: evidence from household material footprints

Industrial EcologyGlobal Challenges (FGGA

Unequal household carbon footprints in China

Households’ carbon footprints are unequally distributed among the rich and poor due to differences in the scale and patterns of consumption. We present distributional focused carbon footprints for Chinese households and use a carbon-footprint-Gini coefficient to quantify inequalities. We find that in 2012 the urban very rich, comprising 5% of population, induced 19% of the total carbon footprint from household consumption in China, with 6.4 tCO2/cap. The average Chinese household footprint remains comparatively low (1.7 tCO2/cap), while those of the rural population and urban poor, comprising 58% of population, are 0.5–1.6 tCO2/cap. Between 2007 and 2012 the total footprint from households increased by 19%, with 75% of the increase due to growing consumption of the urban middle class and the rich. This suggests that a transformation of Chinese lifestyles away from the current trajectory of carbon-intensive consumption patterns requires policy interventions to improve living standards and encourage sustainable consumption

Uncovering Blind Spots in Urban Carbon Management: The Role of Consumption-Based Carbon Accounting in Bristol, UK

The rapid urbanisation of the twentieth century, along with the spread of high-consumption urban lifestyles, has led to cities becoming the dominant drivers of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing these impacts is crucial, but production-based frameworks of carbon measurement and mitigation—which encompass only a limited part of cities’ carbon footprints—are much more developed and widely applied than consumption-based approaches that consider the embedded carbon effectively imported into a city. Frequently, therefore, cities are left blind to the importance of their wider consumption-related climate impacts, while at the same time left lacking effective tools to reduce them. To explore the relevance of these issues, we implement methodologies for assessing production- and consumption-based emissions at the city-level and estimate the associated emissions trajectories for Bristol, a major UK city, from 2000 to 2035. We develop mitigation scenarios targeted at reducing the former, considering potential energy, carbon and financial savings in each case. We then compare these mitigation potentials with local government ambitions and Bristol’s consumption-based emissions trajectory. Our results suggest that the city’s consumption-based emissions are three times the production-based emissions, largely due to the impacts of imported food and drink. We find that low-carbon investments of circa £3 billion could reduce production-based emissions by 25% in 2035. However, we also find that this represents <10% of Bristol’s forecast consumption-based emissions for 2035 and is approximately equal to the mitigation achievable by eliminating the city’s current levels of food waste. Such observations suggest that incorporating consumption-based emission statistics into cities’ accounting and decision-making processes could uncover largely unrecognised opportunities for mitigation that are likely to be essential for achieving deep decarbonisation

Quantifying lifestyle based social equity implications for national sustainable development policy

The aim of this research is to address the challenge of achieving more equitable social outcomes through a reduction and fairer allocation of environmental burdens, and in doing so, contributing to national sustainable development policy. This novel study demonstrates the nature of societal outcomes through the lens of inequity with respect to lifestyle related environmental footprints and stakeholder preferences. Footprints are derived using input-output analysis, while environmental issue preferences and potential remedial actions are identified using a national survey. To highlight the value of the broadly applicable framework, here we demonstrate a case study of Japan, which is interesting due to shifting demographics engendering an aging, shrinking population. Key findings include that the mitigation of environmental footprints in line with household preferences can positively influence both societal equity outcomes and contribute to closing the gap between rich and poor. Importantly, broad participation, i.e. participation irrespective of income level, is shown to be more effective than participation from a single sector. These findings can assist policymakers to develop policies which are responsive to societal preferences and demographic trends while also furthering the debate toward clarifying norms for acceptable levels of social equity