A new report explains why we must put sufficiency first

"Sufficiency and the Built Environment" makes the case that sufficiency is as important as efficiency.

Politicians love to build. Where I live in Ontario, Canada, the government is ramming highways through the forests and farmland. It is spending billions to put streetcars in underground tunnels so that car drivers have the roads to themselves. Everything is bigger and faster. They never slow down and ask, what is enough? Can we afford the carbon emissions, the debt, and the environmental destruction that all of this building causes? What is sufficient?

People, institutions, and some governments are beginning to ask these questions. During The Buildings and Climate Global Forum in Paris last spring, the concept of sufficiency was written into the Declaration de Chaillot. There is now a Sufficiency Action Hub, part of UNEP’s Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction, which “aims to demonstrate the necessity, feasibility, and social desirability of sufficiency measures in the building sector, fostering a shared understanding across decision-making levels.”

“The Action Hub highlights the urgent need for sufficiency measures, advocating for a systemic approach that integrates demand-side policies to reduce resource consumption, mitigate emissions, and ensure social equity. Through international collaboration and the adoption of the "Sufficiency First" principle, the initiative aims to reshape the future of the building sector within planetary boundaries. The Action Hub has recently published a report outlining the key findings of its ongoing work and initiatives.” 

Now, just in time for COP29, the Sufficiency Action Hub has released the report “Sufficiency and the Built Environment: Reducing Demand for Land, Floor Area, Materials and Energy. The lead author is Marine Girard, until recently the Head of Sufficiency Programs for the French Institute for Buildings Performance (IFPEB).

The Buildings and Climate Global Forum in Paris put sufficiency on the agenda, and this paper tries to get the buildings sector to realize that sufficiency is as important as efficiency or renewables. Its definition, courtesy of Yamina Saheb:

“Sufficiency is a concept that involves a set of measures aimed at reducing the demand for resources such as energy, materials, land, and water, while ensuring human well-being within the Earth’s ecological limits.”

With buildings, it can pretty much be summarized with Will Arnold’s wonderful graphic and the three words, “use less stuff.” Marine notes on Linkedin:

“Despite efforts to decarbonize, the relentless demand for new floor area has offset gains in reducing the sector's GHG emissions. This increased demand drives resources use, compounding emissions and contributing to planetary boundaries overshoot at large…. To resolve the ecological overshoot and enable underprivileged societies to get access to sufficient infrastructure and shelters, we must shift priorities. This doesn't mean stopping all current efforts but rather prioritize sufficiency - a set of policies and daily practices that avoid demand for material, energy, water and all natural resources while delivering well-being for all, within planetary boundaries.”

As I noted in a recent post, increased efficiency doesn’t always lead to less consumption but can lead to more. Marine says it too in the report:

“In the long run, technical improvements do not lead to decreasing energy consumption and related emissions but rather allow for the expansion of the economy and related environmental externalities. Therefore, the major loophole of the efficiency strategy is to keep focusing on energy and technical-only oriented approaches without setting clear resource boundaries attributed to each sector and related products and services. This underlines the critical difference between consumption and demand and emphasizes the need for demand-reduction policies.”

Demand reduction policies are a hard sell; the business of the building sector is building stuff, and our economies run on the principle of making more stuff. As Marine notes, (her emphasis) “It requires a fundamental shift in mindset, moving away from the pursuit of endless growth towards a more balanced and sustainable approach that prioritizes the well-being of both people and the planet.”

And where I have often talked about personal sufficiency, Marine things big.

“Sufficiency is first about policy making; a very small portion of individuals can change their behavior to adopt sufficiency practices in all aspects of life. The scale and degree of changes is too high to let people bear the responsibility of adopting wide changes at individual level. In fact, people are locked into the solutions imposed by the social infrastructure. Addressing sufficiency at the systems level moves away from the idea that sufficiency would be the responsibility of consumers, and to clearly identify the need to build, in terms of regulation, infrastructure, or corporate action, a range of system-level sufficiency measures.”

Many policies encourage sufficiency; zoning changes can promote Goldilocks density housing, supported by bike lanes and transit. Economic incentives could promote renovation and reuse instead of new construction. Much can be done by designing things better:

“Paying attention to space and quality of living should not only be defined by an absolute number of square meters. The surrounding amenities, quality of outdoor public spaces and available transportation and other services should also define the comfort and attractiveness of a space.”

New buildings should be designed for compactness and flexibility, using low-tech solutions to maximize comfort with minimum water and energy use.

I have written about sufficiency for years, here and in my two books. I often get pushback from people who tell me that I can’t tell people what they can and can’t have. The importance of this report is that it is not about the personal but about the institutional. Marine notes in the conclusion:

“This is why the single most important recommendation of this paper is the introduction of a “Sufficiency First Principle” within all new and revised climate preservation and energy transition oriented policies.”

Now, if only we could have a sufficiency first principle in Ontario.

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Lisa Richmond of Architecture 2030 has also written a paper for COP29:

“Consumption matters. Sufficiency – avoiding the demand for energy, materials, land, water, and other natural resources while delivering well-being for all within planetary boundaries – is a critical missing tool in our decarbonization toolkit. We cannot achieve our carbon reduction goals without building less.”

Read more (and share your sufficiency stories) at Architecture2030.