Consumption and
Environment
Davina Vačkářová
Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Charles University, Environment Centre
Outline
• Consumption, trade and global supply chains
• Consumption, economic growth, environment and human well-being
• Environmental footprints of consumption, incl. food
• Role of businesses
Introductions
Warm up questions:
• What is consumption?
• What we consume?
Consumption
• Consumption ranks with population and technology as a major driver of environmental
change and yet researchers and policymakers have paid it scant attention (Princen 1999)
• Consumption is defined as the use of goods and services by a household. It is a
component in the calculation of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Macroeconomists
typically use consumption as a proxy of the overall economy.
• Since 90s, there has been big progress in addressing consumption as one of the key
drivers of global environmental change (SDG 12)
• Sustainable consumption, Responsible consumption
• Overconsumption, Consumerism
International trade
• The traditional view of international trade is that each country produces goods
and offers services that are exported as final products to consumers abroad.
However, in today’s global economy, this type of trade only represents around
30% of all trade in goods and services.
• In reality, about 70% of international trade today involves global value chains
(GVCs), as services, raw materials, parts, and components cross borders – often
numerous times. Once incorporated into final products they are shipped to
consumers all over the world.
(OECD)
Global supply chains
• A supply chain is made up of all the stages involved in the production and sale of
a specific product.
• The term “global supply chains” refers to the cross-border organization of
the activities required to produce goods or services and bring them to consumers
through inputs and various phases of development, production and delivery.
Trade and environment
• The expansion of global trade and the increasing integration of global
value chains raise questions about how trade and the environment
interact with each other. What are the effects of trade on the
environment? And inversely, how can a changing natural environment
(e.g. climate change impact) modify trade patterns?
• Economic growth resulting from trade expansion can have an obvious
direct impact on the environment by increasing pollution or
degrading natural resources.
• However, increased trade can in turn, by supporting economic
growth, development, and social welfare, contribute to a greater
capacity to manage the environment more effectively.
Economic growth, green growth and degrowth
Ecological modernisation paradigm:
• Economic growth is believed to support environmental protection, produce innovations and „green“
jobs, investments required to spure technology change positive to environment
• Decoupling refers to an economy that would be able to grow without corresponding increases in
environmental pressure (GDP compared to environmental indices)
• Cost of growth: calculating economic cost and „externalities“ (Dasgupta review, Stern review,…)
Alternative models
• Inclusive sustainable wellbeing – good quality of life (Millennium Assessment, IPBES)
• Alternative measures of sustainable well-being („Beyond GDP“, „Genuine Progress Indicator,…), rooted
in ecological and feminist economics
• Doughnut economics – planetary and social boundaries
• Life satisfaction – subjective well-being („Happy Planet Index“)
• Degrowth
UNEP (2011) Decoupling natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth
Bending the curve of global biodiversity loss
Leclère, D., Obersteiner, M., Barrett, M. et al. Bending the curve of terrestrial biodiversity needs an integrated
strategy. Nature 585, 551–556 (2020).
Andrew T. Jebb et al., Nature Human Behaviour 2, 2018.
Daniel O´Neill et al., A good life for all within planetary boundaries. Nature Sustainability 1, 2018, pp. 88–95
Andrew L. Fanning et al., The social shortfall and ecological overshoot of nations. Nature Sustainability 5, 2022, pp. 26-36
How to measure impact of consumption:
environmental footprints
The effect that a person, company, activity, etc. has on the environment, for
example the amount of natural resources that they use and the amount of
harmful gases that they produce
• Environmental footprints are quantitative measures showing the
appropriation of natural resources by humans (Hoekstra, 2008). Footprints
are divided into environmental, economic, and social footprints, and
combined environmental, social, and/or economic footprints.
• Product environmental footprint, a multi-criteria measure of the
environmental performance of a product or service throughout its life
cycle.
Environmental footprints of households
Environmental impact of household consumption
in terms of the material, water, and land-use
requirements, as well as greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions, associated with the production and use
of products and services consumed by these
households.
Consumption contributing to more than 60% of
global GHG emissions and between 50% and 80%
of total land, material, and water use.
Mobility, shelter, and food are the most important
consumption categories across the environmental
footprints. Globally, food accounts for 48% and
70% of household impacts on land and water
resources, respectively, with consumption of
meat, dairy, and processed food rising fast with
income.
Diana Ivanova, Konstantin Stadler, Kjartan Steen-Olsen,
Richard Wood, et al. 2015. Environmental Impact Assessment
of Household Consumption. Journal of Industrial Ecology. DOI:
10.1111/jiec.12371
Material footprints
How many and which natural resources are needed to sustain modern economies?
High-income countries (United States,
Japan, the European Union) are net
importers of a relatively evenly
distributed mix across the main four
material types because they import
mainly composite manufactured goods.
By contrast, net exporters are often
developing or emerging economies
specializing in primary materials
extraction.
Brazil features large biomass embodied in
its soybean and meat exports. Australia
and Chile are significant exporters of
metal ores and their derivatives. Russia,
Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Australia, South
Africa and Indonesia export primary fossil
fuels.
Lenzen, M., et al. Implementing the material
footprint to measure progress towards
Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 12.
Nat Sustain 5, 157–166 (2022).
The global bottom 50% emit on average
1.4 tCO2e per year and contribute to 11.5%
of the total. The top 10% emit 28.7 t (48%
of the total).
Chancel, L. Global carbon inequality over
1990–2019. Nat Sustain 5, 931–938 (2022).
Inequalities in
carbon/GHG
footprints
Biodiversity footprints
Biodiversity footprints link species threats, taken from the IUCN Red List, to production
activities and then onward to the final consumers whos demand induces that production. It
provides one method for attributing species threats to companies and consumers.
Role of diets in environmental footprints
Searchinger, T.D., Wirsenius, S., et al. Assessing the efficiency of changes in land
use for mitigating climate change. Nature 564, 249–253 (2018).
Global displacement of net primary production footprint–
teleconnections in global system induced by international trade
Weinzettel J, Vačkářová D, Medková H, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2019
Embodied potential NPP is displaced and disconnects production from
consumption. EU, USA, Japan and wealthy regions drive displacement through
consumption by international trade
Ecological debt
Ecological debt is a concept first elaborated among environmental justice
organizations in Latin America and used mainly for political purposes with the aim
of mobilizing public opinion to recognize the exploitation of the South by the North,
and to support financial debt relief. More recently it was it further elaborated by
academics and official bodies (Warlenius 2016)
Ecological debt as ecological overshoot: demands made on a natural ecosystems
exceed its regenerative capacity.
Earth Overshoot Day, also known as Ecological Debt Day, marks the date on which
humanity’s demand for resources in any given year surpasses the Earth’s capacity
to regenerate those resources that year.
Ecologically unequal exchange
• Asymmetric net transfers of resources (including labor) from peripheral to
core areas of the global economic system (Hornborg 1998, 2019)
• Exporting products from poor regions and countries, at prices which do not
take into account the local externalities caused by these exports or the
exhaustion of natural resources, in exchange for goods and services from
richer regions (Martínez-Alier 2002)
• In the broader context of natural resources being extracted from resourcerich
but cash-poor countries to satisfy consumer demand in wealthy
countries, it is called ecologically unequal Exchange. In the context of CO2intensive
production moving offshore, this phenomenon is called carbon
leakage. (Moran et al. 2013)
Role of businesses
• EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)
• Published in December 2022, the directive applies to some 50,000
businesses that are listed in the EU or have significant operations there,
regardless of where they’re based. And it requires them to report more
about their sustainability performance than any other piece of regulation
to date, beginning with the 2024 fiscal year in some cases.
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a management concept in which
companies integrate social and environmental concerns into their business
strategy
• ESG is a sustainability assessment using Environmental, Social, and
Governance metrics to evaluate how sustainable and resilient a company is
to make it accountable for its sustainability claims.
Double materiality
Discussion questions
• Brainstorming on what we consume and global supply chains
• Can you think about the global telleconnections between the origin of
products and consumed goods and services?
• Do you know what is your ecological footprint?
• What is the role of consumption vs. other factors and drivers
influencing global change?
• What are possible solutions to reduce the consumption-based
environmental footprint?
Take-home messages
• Defining consumption and consumption categories is not trivial and is subject to economic models
and statistical classifications and accounts, including hybrid environmental-economic accounting.
• Consumption is a major driver of global environmental change, contributing by 50 – 80 % to
environmental impacts.
• There is an increasing attention to consumption as a driver of global environmental change,
including footprint studies. It is addressed in SDGs 12 and 8.
• Consumption is a major contributor to economic growth. The role of economic growth is
ambiguous, as evidence shows. Decoupling environmental impacts and human well-being from
economic growth is however required for sustainability transitions.
• The sustainability can be defined as a good life within planetary boundaries. However, there are
several challenges to implementing safe and just pathways, reflecting ethical, economic and
political aspects, including postcolonialism. Understanding coupling of consumption and global
environmental change is important to uncover limits of current sustainability paradigms.