Research

What is ecological sufficiency and why should I care ?

So basically, if we want to keep the 1.5° objective alive, the dominant approach in public policy, in modeling exercises and in public debate of improving the efficiency of the goods and services we consume is not enough. There are many reasons for this, including potential rebound effects, the risk of technological lock-in or simply the cost of a transition based on sole efficiency policies.

A complementary approach is that of sufficiency, which can be roughly summarised as a reduction in the production and consumption of certain goods and services to achieve mitigation.

To put it a bit simplistically, research on sufficiency tries to answer three questions:

• What does it look like? Meaning what changes in production and consumption patterns are imaginable?
• Does it work? Meaning what are the potential mitigation benefits and what are the potential side-effects?
• How do we get there? Meaning what policies, drivers and barriers?

Figure 1: Sufficiency in the literature - A framework analysis

Focusing on the socio-economic impacts of sufficiency

The commonplace is to say that any reduction in consumption in an economy would lead to a vicious circle: less consumption less production fewer jobs increased public deficit fewer public services growing inequalities … . This just goes to show how important it is to examine the socio-economic impacts of sufficiency!

My research focuses in particular on the notion of structural changes in a sufficiency transition. In short, the idea is that sufficiency should not be reduced to an exogenous reduction in consumption, the impact of which we would analyse, but that this reduction is the consequence of wider changes in the way we consume and produce. Producing less but better quality, or less but more locally, is indeed sufficiency, but the potential socio-economic outcomes (higher-skilled jobs, greater added value from consumption, better redistribution of wealth, etc.) are likely to make this transition more acceptable.

There is very little literature on these subjects and my work will aim both to document in more detail the potential socio-economic impacts of systemic sufficiency and to model the causal links between them.

Stay tuned for updates on my research !!