New report identifies initiatives for more climate-friendly lifestyles
We describe how this can happen in the report “Promoting sustainable lifestyles in a climate crisis”. Here we outline a number of possible initiatives and measures for the three most climate-intensive areas: Food, transportation, and housing. The report outlines a framework that enables more climate-friendly lifestyles while limiting the most climate-impacting activities.
In CONCITO we believe that a lot can be done if a wide range of societal actors take their responsibility seriously. We propose the following:
- Not only must we work to promote consumption patterns and lifestyles with a low climate footprint, we must also work to significantly reduce the most climate-impacting activities.
- The necessary change in consumption, behaviour and lifestyles will not happen if we only focus on informing the consumers about climate footprints. There is therefore an increasing need to hold a wider range of societal actors accountable for the sustainable transformation of our society, consumption, and lifestyle - not just the individual consumer.
- Space must be created for new perceptions of what constitutes a good and climate-friendly life, which should be facilitated through (new) infrastructure, policies, and services. This calls for multi-facetted approaches to planning and policy to create awareness and demand, while creating incentives and room for action.
The report is an adapted Danish “translation” of the original report “Enabling Sustainable Lifestyles in a Climate Emergency” written by the Hot or Cool Institute and published together with UNEP in 2022.
Our purpose with the Danish version of the report is to bring the insights and messages from the internationally oriented report into a Danish context and in this way contribute to the important part of the upcoming Danish climate action, which is about promoting sustainable lifestyles. The report presents a framework for this work, as well as an associated catalogue of measures for three CO2e-intensive consumption areas: Transportation, housing and food.
