More Quality of Life, Less Environmental Usage

Every year, humanity sooner reaches the point where it has used up the natural resources that ecosystems worldwide can reproduce within a year. The so-called "Earth Overshoot Day" highlights the extent to which we are overshooting planetary boundaries and living at the expense of our planet. For a sustainable way of life and economy, it is not enough to use existing resources more efficiently. There is also the question of how much and in what way we want to consume. The policy of sufficiency embraces this concept and shows that a good life for all is also and especially possible with less material consumption - for example, where overconsumption does not lead to greater well-being or enjoyment of life. This project follows on from the project "More quality of life, less environmental usage – development of user-oriented sufficiency policy project drafts in the environment department". In this project, three sufficiency projects are to be implemented, which the contractors had developed together with UBA employees in the previous project. These are in detail:

1. Comprehensible information on heating costs as the key to reducing consumption
2. Indicators of regional sustainability based on the sufficiency approach (IReNaS)
3. Reduction of emissions of air pollutants through sufficiency policy instruments (PoliSLuft).

In addition to the three sufficiency projects, the contractors also support the UBA in organizing a conference on the 50th anniversary of the Club of Rome report "Limits to Growth" in 2022.

Ecologic Institute is working on the project as a partner in a consortium led by the Institute for Sustainable Economies (ZOE). Other project partners are the IFEU Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Heidelberg and the Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment (IZT) in Berlin. The Ecologic Institute is primarily working on the second sub-project on sufficiency indicators.