Ensuring the well-being of citizens while minimizing resource consumption presents a significant challenge. Policymakers in the European Union are actively seeking new strategies to provide for citizens’ needs without imposing excessive environmental burdens.
A study conducted across five EU countries suggests that prioritizing the satisfaction of citizens’ needs over economic growth is essential for rethinking and redesigning provisioning systems.
“In order to deliver on the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement we must change the current unsustainable patterns of production and consumption across the four central provisioning systems of food, mobility, housing, and leisure. Our research sought to identify the key structural barriers to change.
“To achieve this, we conducted interviews with experts in five EU countries—Germany, Latvia, Sweden, Spain and Hungary—and held discussions in Stakeholder Think Labs with local representatives from politics, civil society, media and think tanks,” explains lead author Halliki Kreinin, from the Research Institute for Sustainability—Helmholtz Center Potsdam (RIFS).
This research was part of the EU 1.5° Lifestyles project consortium, coordinated by RIFS.
The interviewees identified the economic growth paradigm as the most significant barrier to transforming provisioning systems. They noted that this paradigm is so entrenched that it has been universally adopted as a goal.
A needs-oriented approach, which prioritizes ensuring the well-being of all, provides an alternative. Shifting to this narrative could also foster acceptance for the necessary downsizing or phase-out of harmful industries and technologies.
Focusing on individual and collective well-being as a guiding principle offers the chance to implement more consistent sustainability policies. The interviewees indicated that many people support measures such as bans, limits, and taxes when necessary.
“Restricting or strongly disincentivizing the purchase and use of extremely polluting goods and services such as private jets, private space travel or SUVs would be one important step. However, individual measures alone will not suffice; rather, interlinking policies and measures are needed. At the moment, climate and economic policies are frequently at odds with each other,” stated study’s co-author, Doris Fuchs.
To implement coherent sustainability policies, governments must reduce the influence of powerful interest groups, such as the fossil fuel industry. Other important enablers for change include incentivizing investment in sustainable technologies and products and incorporating environmental costs into pricing, for example, by lowering taxes on labor and increasing those on emissions and energy consumption.
The interviewees also highlighted the importance of soft factors, such as promoting alternative narratives and adopting alternative indicators of quality of life. The issue of inequality was frequently mentioned in the Stakeholder Think Labs.
Lower-income groups are most affected by climate change but lack the resources to drive change. Future policymaking must facilitate their participation. Sustainability issues should also be integrated into curricula and education to encourage change.
Interviewees across all five countries emphasized the necessity of comprehensive structural change.
“We cannot leave the fight against climate change to individual citizens. Instead, we must fundamentally change our provisioning systems,” further stated Kreinin. “Currently, these systems are failing to meet the needs of populations and are operating at levels of resource consumption that are too high to deliver.”
Developing sustainable provisioning systems that meet needs and fulfill the Paris Climate Goals will require paradigm shifts with comprehensive transformation through coordinated strategic measures at the system level.
The findings are published in the journal Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy.
H Kreinin et al. Transforming provisioning systems to enable 1.5° lifestyles in Europe? Expert and stakeholder views on overcoming structural barriers. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy (2024). https://doi.org/10.1080/15487733.2024.2372120
