Tian, P., Zhong, H., Chen, X. et al. Keeping the global consumption within the planetary boundaries. Nature

Objective:

• How the environmental footprints of consumption and responsibilities for planetary boundaries transgression are distributed across different expenditure (income) groups globally

Case:

• Global country

Methodology:

• EE-MRIO
• Downscale
• Gini index

Data Source

• MRIO: GTAP11
• Household expenditure:
  • World bank global consumption database
  • Eurostat household budget survey
  • Japanese family income and expenditure survey
  • Canada survey of household spending
  • Austrailia household expenditure survey

Findings:

• The world’s wealthiest 10% of consumers was responsible for 43% of carbon emissions, 23% of HANPP, 26.1% of nitrogen fixation, 24.7% of phosphorus fertilizer, 18.5% of blue-water and 37.2% MSA loss

• The poorest 10% contributed marginally 5.4% to HANPP, 4.4% blue-water consumption and less than 3% to the other footprints
• On a per capita basis, the environmental impacts of the top 10% were 4.2 to 77 times that of the bottom 10%

• The consumption of the top 1% contributed 14% carbon emissions

Coding Reference:

• Matlab