Reflecting the importance of human needs fulfilment in absolute sustainability assessments: Development of a sharing principle

Abstract

Absolute environmental sustainability assessments (AESAs) evaluate whether the environmental impact of a product system is within its share of a safe operating space as determined by biophysical sustainability limits such as the planetary boundaries (PBs). The choice of sharing principle has significant influence on the result of an AESA, and any studies call for further research on how to share the safe operating space in an operational way that relates to the product's contribution to the welfare of the user. In this study, we develop the “Fulfilment of Human Needs” (FHN) principle as a sharing principle that operationalizes sufficientarianism (making sure everyone gets enough). The FHN principle is tested on two case studies (a food item and a textile) against four of the PBs: climate change, land‐system change, water use, and nitrogen cycling. The operationalization of the FHN principle is slightly different between the PBs; the starting point for climate change is the average consumption pattern in countries classified as “most sustainable,” while for the other three PBs the status quo impact in the most sustainable countries is used. To operationalize the FHN principle on the product level, each consumption category is downscaled according to objective sources that determine the value delivered to the users. We demonstrate that, compared to other previously applied sharing principles, the FHN principle supports a stronger relation to the importance to the users of the delivered outcome.

Embedded but overlooked values: Ethical aspects of absolute environmental sustainability assessments

“…Traditionally, this interlinkage between the social foundation and environmental ceiling of the doughnut economy concept has not been incorporated in AESAs. However, two methods to operationalize the theory of distributive justice known as sufficientarianism are emerging: the Fulfilment of Human Needs principle (Heide et al, 2023) and a bottomup method based on the concept of Decent Living Standards (Millward-Hopkins et al, 2020;Rao and Min 2018). These principles can add the required interlinkage and fulfill the overall goal of AESAs: providing the global population with at least minimal well-being while staying within the safe operating space.…”

“…The individual choice in the bottom-up approach based on the Decent Living Standards is undermined, whereas it is more present in the Fulfilment of Human Needs principle. The Decent Living Standards, however, allow differentiation between nations, climate, and geographical circumstances as illustrated by Millward-Hopkins et al (2020), which is an advantage compared to the approach by Heide et al (2023). We will get back to this differentiation in Section 4.3.…”

“…Products categorized as necessities have at least one of the universal characteristics of need--satisfiers described by Gough (2015) in Figure 4. In the Fulfilment of Human Needs sharing principle, there is no need to predefine a separation approach between necessities and luxuries, since the calculation method will assign a disproportionately minimal share to luxury or non-essential products, effectively implying the impracticability of their production in a sustainable way (Heide et al, 2023). Jackson (2021) argues that limits are an essential element in human prosperity.…”

“…This question cannot be answered without reference to normative assumptions about, for example, what welfare is, the importance of individual autonomy, just distribution, and so on. For now, the ability of a sector to reduce environmental impact has not been included in the Decent Living Standards approach (Rao and Min 2018) and only to a minor degree in the Fulfilment of Human Needs principle (Heide et al, 2023). It should be clear, though, that not including the ability to reduce in the sharing principle is a choice that is based on normative assumptions.…”