What POST-COVID-19 lifestyles may look like? Identifying scenarios and their implications for sustainability

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply disrupted society´s priorities and individuals’ lifestyles with major implications for sustainable development. Economic shutdown and social isolation reduced society's ecological footprint by lowering transportation and industrial activity while prompting families to engage in non-commercialized modes of leisure and social relations. Yet economic recession has intensified problems of under-consumption and poverty, while social isolation has worsened physical and mental illness. The pandemic's short-term effects are visible to everyone experiencing it, yet the global health crisis will also have long-term effects which are presently unknown but whose configurations can be spotted by identifying scenarios based upon individual relations with their material, symbolic and social environments. This perspective article reviews changes in two critical domains of practice: consumption and social relations, based on a theory of scarcity, and proposes an approach to foresee post-COVID-19 scenarios across several areas of social practice. The experience of scarcity in consumption and socializing redefines priorities and values yielding two ideal-types of responses for each domain: the assimilation of reduced levels of material wellbeing and social interactions or the drive for self-indulgence to compensate sacrifices in those areas. Four different lifestyle scenarios are thereby generated based on that analytical framework, enabling the identification of long-term scenarios, beyond the simplistic old normal versus new normal dichotomy. Grounded in available secondary data and relying on the recent Brazilian experience, which can be generalized to other Global South contexts, this proposed framework illustrates distinctive behavioral patterns for each lifestyle across ten areas of practice.

COVID-19 and Green Housing: A Review of Relevant Literature

“…Grounded planes, as well as lower vehicle traffic flows and industrial activity reduced society's ecological footprint, as homebound families turned to non-commercialized leisure modes and social interactions. However, social isolation has hit mental and physical health, and economic recession has also caused adverse effects exacerbating issues of underconsumption and poverty [27]. The pandemic, as some sustainability researchers believe, could potentially speed up the progress towards a future of more social fairness and better environment protection [27,28].…”

“…However, social isolation has hit mental and physical health, and economic recession has also caused adverse effects exacerbating issues of underconsumption and poverty [27]. The pandemic, as some sustainability researchers believe, could potentially speed up the progress towards a future of more social fairness and better environment protection [27,28]. We have been given a rare opportunity for putting together a sustainable transition towards broadly-adopted low-carbon solutions with both shifts in individual lifestyles and systemic-institutional reforms driven and implemented by multiple stakeholders [27,29].…”

“…The pandemic, as some sustainability researchers believe, could potentially speed up the progress towards a future of more social fairness and better environment protection [27,28]. We have been given a rare opportunity for putting together a sustainable transition towards broadly-adopted low-carbon solutions with both shifts in individual lifestyles and systemic-institutional reforms driven and implemented by multiple stakeholders [27,29]. The changes caused by COVID-19 are a source of both worry and hope for organizations engaged in the advancement of sustainable development.…”

“…The changes caused by COVID-19 are a source of both worry and hope for organizations engaged in the advancement of sustainable development. The source of hope have been palpable short-term environmental benefits such as pollution decreases [27,30] brought about by government measures. These events have demonstrated that policy makers can and have the will to introduce systemic changes away from an endless work-spend cycle and non-stop consumerism [8,31].…”

“…These events have demonstrated that policy makers can and have the will to introduce systemic changes away from an endless work-spend cycle and non-stop consumerism [8,31]. Unfortunately, counter-pandemic measures have also led to adverse effects with serious sustainability consequences: they have unsettled sustainable development goals reversing, for the first time in 30 years, the progress towards lower poverty and misery [27]; deprived millions of children of access to education; led to social isolation to the detriment of mental and physical health [27,32,33]; and undermined the efforts to make people less dependent on the use of plastics [8] and individualized modes of transport [34], among others.…”