Discussions on sustainable living often revolve around a few behaviours that can reduce the negative impacts to the environment, such as adoption of veganism, avoidance of flight, and reduction of plastic use. While such measures are essential, it must be recognised that for lifestyles to be truly sustainable, actions must be taken across the whole spectrum of food, housing, mobility, goods, services and leisure, which account for over 75% of lifestyle carbon emissions.
In transitioning towards sustainable lifestyles, one might legitimately ask what is the indicator of a sustainable lifestyle? Or how much carbon footprint we shall reduce. Our research on 1.5 Degree Lifestyles has tried to answer some of these questions by identifying the globally unified carbon footprint targets that can contribute to the ongoing global efforts in limiting global warming below 1.5 °C. According to the study, we should save the average carbon footprint to 2.5 (tCO2e) in 2030, 1.4 by 2040, and 0.7 by 2050. The current global average is estimated to be 4.6 tCO2e.
Moreover, our previous work identified that individual carbon footprints among and within countries can vary significantly.
Cities, where consumption and production intersect, are prime leverage points for enabling 1.5 °C lifestyles. The ‘Envisioning Future Low-Carbon Lifestyles and Transitioning Instruments (Future Lifestyles Project)’, led by IGES in collaboration with partner agencies identified city-specific sustainable living options in Cape Town, Kyoto, Nonthaburi, New Delhi, Sao Paulo and Yokohama. Through workshops and household experiments, researchers and residents of these cities (project participants) discussed feasible and desired sustainable lifestyle options that can be adopted immediately, as well as those that require adequate supporting measures from policymakers and business sector.
The project finds that mutually reinforcing support measures between individual households, governments at different levels, and the business sector can reduce average per capita carbon footprints due to lifestyle.
| City | Baseline Carbon footprint (2015-2020 reference data) | Potential Carbon Footprint after adoption of sustainable lifestyles |
| Cape Town, South Africa | 10.3 tCO2e/capita/year | 5.5 tCO2e/capita/year |
| Kyoto, Japan | 7.0 tCO2e/capita/year | 4.1 tCO2e/capita/year |
| Nonthaburi, Thailand | 2.5 tCO2e/capita/year | 2.5 tCO2e/capita/year |
| New Delhi, India | 2.8 tCO2e/capita/year (projection in 2030) | 2.5 tCO2e/capita/year |
| Sao Paulo, Brazil | 3.6 tCO2e/capita/year | 2.5 tCO2e/capita/year |
| Yokohama, Japan | 7.1 tCO2e/capita/year | 4.2 tCO2e/capita/year |
The potential reduction in carbon footprint can be achieved when governments and businesses provide appropriate support to the households in implementing suggested lifestyle change options effectively, while household awareness and efforts to take actions enable government and businesses to materialise supporting/promoting measures.
In cities such as Cape Town, Kyoto, and Yokohama, it was found that the globally unified target for a 1.5 Degree Lifestyles of 2.5 t-CO2e/capita/year by 2030 cannot be achieved without transformative systemic changes on the production side such as drastic increase of renewable energy share and technological innovation. In addition to provide enabling conditions of lifestyle change actions for citizens, the government and the business sector should take adequate actions to realise systemic changes.
On the positive side, it was observed that many residents of Cape Town, Kyoto, Nonthaburi, New Delhi, Sao Paulo and Yokohama deliberately took actions that reduced their carbon footprint across Food, Housing, Mobility, Goods, Services, and Leisure domains.
For example, the vicious cycle of buying more clothes and discarding more, where over 87% of the total fibre used to manufacture clothes ends up in a landfill or incinerators. A simple but effective action by the project participant from Yokohama, illustrate steps towards sustainable living:
“Children grow up fast, and since they don’t wear their clothes often, they tend to outgrow them in relatively good condition…Buying a dress in good condition from an online auction, I fix the length and let my child wear it. When my child outgrows them, I sell them again through online auctions while enjoying the growth of my child. This is my idea of not wasting clothes.”
Project Participant, Yokohama
Interestingly, the actions that contributed to reducing the carbon footprint were often not motivated by environmental awareness. Actions were motivated by cultural, religious, economic, as well as moral reasons. Although project participants found it refreshing that the carbon footprint potential of their positive actions was quantified and placed in the perspective of reducing global warming and mitigating climate change, it should be emphasised that there is a clear need to identify both environmental and non-environmental factors to communicate the sustainable living message.
“Taking part in the experiment made me focus on my daily actions more than I am already used to.”
Project Participant, São Paulo
To communicate the messages on sustainable lifestyles, it is necessary to combine actions in the areas of food, housing, mobility, goods, services and leisure, in order to foster carbon footprint reduction efforts in the different areas simultaneously. Tools like the sustainable lifestyles options catalogue, could be developed for specific cities and enable governments, business and citizens to identify and introduce contextually appropriate carbon footprint reduction options that fit their personal circumstances and preferences while reducing their overall carbon footprint.
After all, there are different transition pathways towards 1.5 Degree Lifestyles, and collaborative efforts by all stakeholders through participatory approach shall be pursued to ensure effective transition taking account the specific conditions of each city.
Source Fig. 1 and Fig.2: Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Aalto University, and D-mat ltd. 2019. 1.5-Degree Lifestyles: Targets and Options for Reducing Lifestyle Carbon Footprints. Technical Report.
Acknowledgement
The findings presented in this blog are from the ‘Envisioning Future Low-Carbon Lifestyles and Transitioning Instruments project’, 2019-2021, funded by the Government of Japan through its contribution to the 10YFP Trust Fund, administered by UNEP. This project is led by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Japan, in collaboration with Hot or Cool Institute (Germany), the Akatu Institute (Brazil), Chulalongkorn University (Thailand), ICLEI (South Africa), Swechha India (India), ICLEI (Japan), D-mat (Finland), and National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan (NIES).
Authors
Aditi Khodke
Policy Researcher
Sustainable Consumption and Production
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)
Ms. Aditi Khodke is a policy researcher at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES). She conducts research on policy-driven accelerated sustainability transitions and manages the 1.5-Degree Lifestyles project in five countries. She leads training on urban climate resilience and action at the Asia Pacific Mayors Academy for Sustainable Urban Development. Aditi holds two master’s degrees in sustainability science and sustainable urban development from the United Nations University and the University of Oxford, and is a licensed architect.
Satoshi Kojima
Principal Researcher
Climate Change and Energy Unit
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)
Dr. Satoshi Kojima is a principal researcher at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES). Since he joined IGES in 2005 Dr. Kojima has conducted various quantitative policy impact assessments using computable general equilibrium models and he has led research projects on sustainable development policy including sustainable resource management and sustainable ecosystem use. Dr. Kojima studied environmental economics at the University of York in UK and received a Ph.D. in 2005.
Atsushi Watabe
Programme Director
Sustainable Consumption and Production
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)
Dr. Atsushi Watabe received a PhD in Media and Governance at Keio University. Since he has joined IGES he worked for several programmes including the international cooperation programmes to develop climate change policies and the action study on the recovery from the Nuclear Accident in Fukushima. He has led the Coordination Desk of the Sustainable Lifestyles and Education Programme of the UN 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns (One-Planet Network) since 2015. With his background in sociology, he has collaborated with and learned from many community-level initiatives to enable sustainable ways of living.
Kenji Asakawa
Programme Manager/Legal Expert
City Taskforce/Strategic Management Office
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)
Dr. Kenji Asakawa completed a Master of Urban Environment Engineering in Architectural Engineering at the Waseda University Faculty of Science and Engineering. While working at a consulting company on environmental preservation projects based on ODA and being involved in environmental impact assessment both in Japan and overseas, he obtained a class-1 certification as an Architect and as a Professional Engineer. Subsequently, after working in the development of global warming mitigation, including CDM projects, and climate policy, he obtained his Juris Doctor from Omiya Law School and passed the National Bar Examination. Since 2013, he has been working at IGES in research and investigation on the legal framework of the carbon tax from the viewpoint of legal risk management, such as setting fair tax rates based on net tax burden, as well as the practical application of “Soft-law” to lead voluntary urban development control and the governance of local government administration, including cross-sectional and regional cooperation.
Chen Liu
Senior Researcher
Sustainable Consumption and Production
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)
Dr. Chen LIU is a senior researcher at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES). She earned a PhD in Biosphere Informatics from Kyoto University in 2001 in Japan, worked as a researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES; 2001-2009) and an Associate Professor in Nagoya University Graduate School of Environmental Studies (2010-2014) in Japan. Since joining IGES in 2015, she has worked on a wide range of environmental issues, including municipal solid waste management and 3R policies, food waste, food production and consumption, and sustainable lifestyles in Asia.
