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Imagine a country that met the basic needs of its citizens – one where everyone could expect to live a long, healthy,
happy and prosperous life. Now imagine that same country was able to do this while using natural resources at a level
that would be sustainable even if every other country in the world did the same.
Such a country does not exist. Nowhere in the world even comes close. In fact, if everyone on Earth were to lead a good
life within our planet’s sustainability limits, the level of resources used to meet basic needs would have to be reduced
by a factor of two to six times.
These are the sobering findings of research that my colleagues and I have carried out, recently published in the journal Nature Sustainability. In our work, we quantified the national resource use associated with meeting basic needs for a large number of
countries, and compared this to what is globally sustainable. We analysed the relationships between seven indicators of
national environmental pressure (relative to environmental limits) and 11 indicators of social performance (relative to
the requirements for a good life) for over 150 countries.
Americans live the ‘good life’ – but at what cost?
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The thresholds we chose to represent a “good life” are far from extravagant – a life satisfaction rating of 6.5 out of
10, living 65 years in good health, the elimination of poverty below the US$1.90 a day line, and so on.
Nevertheless, we found that the universal achievement of these goals could push humanity past multiple environmental
limits. CO emissions are the toughest limit to stay within, while fresh water use is the easiest (ignoring issues of
local water scarcity). Physical needs such as nutrition and sanitation could likely be met for seven billion people, but
more aspirational goals, including secondary education and high life satisfaction, could require a level of resource use
that is two to six times the sustainable level.
Although wealthy nations like the US and UK satisfy the basic needs of their citizens, they do so at a level of resource
use that is far beyond what is globally sustainable. In contrast, countries that are using resources at a sustainable
level, such as Sri Lanka, fail to meet the basic needs of their people. Worryingly, the more social thresholds that a
country achieves, the more biophysical boundaries it tends to transgress.
Measures of a ‘good life’ vs overuse of resources for different countries (scaled by population). Ideally, countries
would be located in the top-left corner.
O'Neill et al, Author provided
No country currently achieves all 11 social thresholds without also exceeding multiple biophysical boundaries. The
closest thing we found to an exception was Vietnam, which achieves six of the 11 social thresholds, while only
transgressing one of the seven biophysical boundaries (CO emissions).
Vietnam has come closest to balancing sustainability with a good life, but still falls short in some areas.
O'Neill et al, Author provided
To help communicate the scale of the challenge, we have created an interactive website, which shows the environmental and social performance of all countries. It also allows you to change the values that we
chose for a “good life”, and see how these values would affect global sustainability.
Time to rethink ‘sustainable development’
Our work builds on previous research led by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, which identified nine “planetary boundaries” that – if persistently exceeded – could lead to catastrophic change. The social indicators are closely linked to the
high-level objectives from the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. A framework combining both planetary boundaries and social thresholds was proposed by economist Kate Raworth, and is
described in her recent book Doughnut Economics (where the “doughnut” refers to the shape of the country plots, such as the one above for Vietnam).
Our findings, which show how countries are doing in comparison to Raworth’s framework, present a serious challenge to
the “business-as-usual” approach to sustainable development. They suggest that some of the Sustainable Development
Goals, such as combating climate change, could be undermined by the pursuit of others, particularly those focused on
growth or high levels of human well-being.
Interestingly, the relationship between resource use and social performance is almost always a curve with diminishing
returns. This curve has a “turning point”, after which using even more resources adds almost nothing to human
well-being. Wealthy nations, including the US and UK, are well past the turning point, which means they could
substantially reduce the amount of carbon emitted or materials consumed with no loss of well-being. This would in turn
free up ecological space for many poorer countries, where an increase in resource use would contribute much more to a
good life.
If all seven billion or more people are to live well within the limits of our planet, then radical changes are required.
At the very least, these include dramatically reducing income inequality and switching from fossil fuels to renewable
energy as quickly as possible. But, most importantly, wealthy nations such as the US and UK must move beyond the pursuit of economic growth, which is no longer improving people’s lives in these countries, but is pushing humanity ever closer towards
environmental disaster.
Dan O'Neill, Lecturer in Ecological Economics, University of Leeds
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.