2.4 SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION


at


local


scales. Such consumption pressures often


produce localized environmental pressures that, while consequential, seldom have global impacts. On the other hand, the consumption and production of affluence create global pressures, including climate change and other transformations of ecosystems at global scales. In terms of climate change, the relationship between ‘lifestyle consumption’ and emissions presents a reverse portrait: the poorest 50% of the global population is responsible for around 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while the richest 10% of people in the world are responsible for around 50% of global emissions (Oxfam 2015; 2016).


The world’s poor, who produce the least greenhouse gas emissions, are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. A recent World Bank analysis found that most people live in countries where the poorest 20% of the population are more exposed to disasters such as droughts, floods and heat waves than the average population as a whole – significantly so in many countries in Africa and South East Asia (Hallegate et al. 2016). In most countries it is the poorest people who face the greatest environmental risks overall, including through exposures to air, water and soil pollution, hazardous waste and degraded environments (OHCHR 2016; UNEP 2012b; WHO 2010).


Such inequalities are manifested along several social axes. Women often face greater environmental risks than men, rural communities may be more exposed than urban ones, and groups who are marginalized because of race, ethnicity or other factors are likely to be affected disproportionately (Oxfam 2015; Ringquist 2005). Poverty is an environmental threat-multiplier and, in most parts of the world, women are more likely than men to live in extreme poverty (UN 2015; UNDP 2015c; USAID 2015; UNDP n.d.).


People in developing countries have the right to aspire to and achieve a higher standard of living. As individuals and economies emulate the patterns of affluent developing countries, however, there will be global-scale environmental impacts. The consumption patterns of the new consumer classes will result in


larger houses and apartments fitted with new appliances, increasing private car ownership, more air travel, a range of new manufactured goods, and new diets based on much larger amounts of meat and dairy. Without interventions to suggest and support more sustainable paths, emulation of developed countries’


consumption patterns in emerging and developing economies threatens to overwhelm ecosystems already on the verge of collapse following decades of over- consumption in the developed world (UNEP 2015a; UNEP 2015b; UNEP 2010).


Households as sites of consumption


How to measure consumption, particularly as a driver of environmental change, is a challenge. In measuring greenhouse gas emissions, for example, it is extremely difficult to separate consumption emissions from production emissions (Oxfam 2015). One approach is to determine “ecological footprints”, which usually measure consumption as end-user demand. Consumption of


resources by industrial sectors is


typically not represented as intrinsic to those sectors, but rather as embedded in end-user sectors such as governments or households. Using this footprint lens, the household is positioned as the primary locus of consumption demand in most countries. In the United Arab Emirates, for example, which has an extremely high per capita ecological footprint, a 2010 study found that household demand represented 57% of the country’s total ecological footprint (Figure 2.4.1) (EWS-WWF 2010). Household demand can be divided into separate components (e.g. food, mobility, goods, housing) (Box 2.4.1).


Figure 2.4.1: Ecological footprint of the United Arab Emirates by demand sector.


57% Household


30%


Business and Industry


57% Government Source: EWS-WWF (2010)


105


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