“None of the European policy instruments have sufficient measures on sobriety”. At the Beyond Growth conference in the European Parliament on 16 May, Yamina Saheb, energy and climate policy expert and lead author at the IPCC, called on the EU to give greater consideration to sufficiency policies.
This is a necessity that no European measure can meet: “We have advocated for technological solutions, leaving aside the concept of sobriety, to address the climate crisis”. But “we know that they do not allow us to overcome the ecological crisis”, she said.
The expert also recalled that, although France was the only country since 2015 to mention sobriety in its energy policy through the law on the energy transition for green growth, this did not mean that measures had been taken by France to increase its implementation.
The fault, according to Yamina Saheb, lies in a lack of European will. This gap could, in her view, be filled by taking better account of the impact of sobriety on European GDP. “It has turned out that in this decade, with the different crises we have gone through, the GDP indicator is only 0.2% to get an idea of the situation, compared to the concept of sobriety”, she said.
She added: “With the end of our energy dependence, we will have the end of its impact on our trade relations. Sufficiency would lead to even better results across the EU. Therefore, we need integrated sobriety models in the European Commission’s policy, taking into account the social impact of sobriety”.
This would lead, for Yamina Saheb, to “an economy of wellbeing, of results, which would protect the most vulnerable”.
She also advocates for an application of this concept based on four pillars. First, policy measures and daily practices: “It is the policy that triggers everyday practices and then individual change. Because as individuals we are locked into old policies”, she explained.
Ms Saheb also supported the idea of an application for natural resources as well as for meeting citizens’ needs in areas such as mobility, housing and health. “If we look at the ‘Fit for 55’ programme, I consider that the results are clearly insufficient to achieve the climate goals and energy justice that the energy transition is about”, she said. This analysis leads her to suggest, as a final pillar, that greater attention be paid to “planetary limits”. “The EU should become climate neutral not in 2050, but in 2030”, she said.
To see her speech: https://aeur.eu/f/6wt (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)