Enjoying more years of good life while reducing resource use and emissions? A global panel analysis 1990–2019

Sustainability is essentially about enabling everyone to live a good life within planetary boundaries. Analysing this goal is hindered by problems of definition, measurement, and the large number of relevant factors. Comprehensive assessments of countries' resource requirements and emissions (i.e. their socioeconomic metabolism or SEM) related to human wellbeing are missing. To advance the field, we develop a multi-dimensional set of SEM indicators and analyse its relationship with the number of ‘years of good life’ (YoGL) of their inhabitants. The wellbeing indicator ‘YoGL’ measures years a person can expect to live above absolute poverty while enjoying health and life satisfaction. A descriptive analysis of ~110 countries from 1990 to 2019 reveals saturation curves: strong association of SEM and YoGL at low and weaker relations at higher levels of SEM and wellbeing. In a range of panel analyses we introduce mediating factors capturing how countries' provisioning systems turn resources into well-being relevant services (e.g. GDP, education, pollution or inequality). The association between SEM indicators and YoGL mostly disappears or even becomes inverse when mediating factors are considered. GDP is positively associated with YoGL in many but not all analyses. Education is positively and air pollution negatively associated with YoGL when the other explanatory variables are controlled. A cluster analysis of high-YoGL countries identifies a group enjoying highest YoGL at intermediate levels of resource use and emissions. Our results imply that raising wellbeing for all while reducing resource use and emissions will require moving beyond simple ‘decoupling’ and resource-use efficiency approaches.