Study: Reducing poverty and climate goals aren’t at odds

The United Nations’ first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) aims to eradicate poverty around the world. If implemented, however, it might see people consume more—drive more often, buy more products—and, thus, produce more carbon emissions, fueling climate change. “With more money to spend, and therefore more consumption, there is usually a higher carbon footprint,” Benedikt Bruckner, a master’s degree candidate in energy and environmental sciences at the University of Groningen, told Ars.

But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, according to a new study put out by Bruckner, other researchers out of Groningen, and colleagues in the United States and China. Published in Nature, the research makes use of high-level data about consumption patterns to show that reaching SDG 1 won’t excessively fuel climate change.

“A beautiful data set”

SDG 1 aims to move every person out of extreme poverty (i.e., living for less than $1.90 per day) and “lift half of the population currently living below national poverty lines above” those lines. The paper aims to address a pressing question: “What are the carbon cost implications of poverty alleviation?” Klaus Hubacek, another author of the paper and a professor in science, technology, and society at the U of G, told Ars. Back in 2017, Hubacek and his colleagues performed a similar study looking into the trade-offs between carbon emissions and poverty alleviation. For this work, they used a large data set from the World Bank that contained consumption data broken down into four income categories: lowest, low, middle, and high.