This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Tina Nyfors, who recently defended her doctoral thesis at the University of Helsinki, studied sufficiency, a way of living and a principle for organizing society to stay within environmental limits while ensuring that people have enough. Nyfors directs attention to people whose carbon footprint is already in line with sufficiency and refers to them as the sufficiency class.
Their way of life has a moderate climate impact yet still meets their needs. "I think that a particularly interesting finding relates to bringing attention to the people already living within or close to the limits of sufficiency. This shows that sufficiency is not only about reduction, but that some people are already there.
The participants in my study had carbon footprints already considerably smaller than the average carbon footprint of a Finnish person," says Nyfors. In the study, sufficiency means staying below the upper limit nature can handle, but above the limit people need for a decent life. The idea sits between two boundaries, the "sufficiency corridor." Above the upper boundary, people consume too much: the overconsuming class.
Below the lower boundary, people do not have enough. This is what previous literature refers to as the struggling class. Within the corridor are people in the sufficiency class.
So, sufficiency has two limits, but according to the study, the Finnish climate policy debate mostly focuses on only one of them. There, justice mostly means making sure that no one's standard of living falls below a minimum level. The upper environmental limit received little attention.
The study asks how sufficiency could be implemented in society to address climate change. To find answers, Nyfors studied two different ways of moving society toward sufficiency. The first is climate policy, made by governments and international bodies.
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