A longitudinal analysis of the strong social and ecological sustainability of Icelandic mobility provisioning

It has been postulated that increasing the socio-ecological efficiency of provisioning systems is a critical step for the attainment of a ‘good life’ for all within the planetary boundaries. Mobility systems represent such a provisioning system, playing a pivotal role in connecting society, but which require significant ecological inputs and have environmental and social externalities. Few studies have investigated how effective mobility systems are in converting ecological inputs (and outputs) into well-being and this work, therefore, worked to take such a perspective. Using a longitudinal study of Iceland’s mobility sector as a case study, our work applied a sustainable consumption corridor framework to investigate how the socio-ecological efficiency of a provisioning system can change over time. This was performed through the development of ecological ceilings and social foundations, that developed through the use of eudemonic well-being perspectives incorporating transport poverty metrics and social externalities. A multi-criteria decision assessment was applied to this developed ‘safe’ and ‘just’ space, performed through stakeholder engagement with Icelandic transport/sustainability experts to apply weights to these metrics. These weighted values were then used to measure the socio-ecological performance and efficiency of Iceland’s ground mobility from 1995–2018. It was found that Iceland’s mobility sector did not achieve the defined ‘safe’ or ‘just’ space during this period. Iceland did see high levels of mobility provisioning, coming close to entering the ‘just’ space towards the end of the study period, but at a high ecological cost. Iceland consistently saw ecological overshoot > 2.75 reaching as high as 4.5 in the consumption-fueled lead-up to the banking crisis, while seeing little gains in social welfare. At the current ecological intensity of mobility provisioning, Iceland’s mobility sector would not achieve a ‘safe’ and ‘just’ state until approximately 2100. The value of this work is the ability of the framework to interpret the co-benefits (or detriments) of developments within a provisioning system and can aid in assessing the ecological and social attractiveness of future pathways.