Diana Ivanova

University of Leeds · School of Earth and Environment

Shrinking household size is a key challenge for sustainability, simultaneously decreasing sharing and increasing resource consumption. We use the Danish Household Budget Survey and carbon intensities from EXIOBASE to characterise small households in socio-demographic cohorts along the carbon footprint spectrum. Single and dual occupant households r...

The scale and patterns of household consumption are important determinants of environmental impacts. Whilst affluence has been shown to have a strong correlation with environmental impact, they do not necessarily grow at the same rate. Given the apparent contradiction between the sustainable development goals of economic growth and environmental pr...

As current action remains insufficient to meet the goals of the Paris agreement let alone to stabilize the climate, there is increasing hope that solutions related to demand, services and social aspects of climate change mitigation can close the gap. However, given these topics are not investigated by a single epistemic community, the literature ba...

This chapter is part of the eleventh edition of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report, published December 2020.

Limiting global warming to 2ºC or less relative to pre-industrial temperatures will require unprecedented rates of decarbonization globally. The scale and scope of transformational change required across sectors and actors in society raises critical questions of feasibility. Much of the literature on mitigation pathways addresses technological and...

Non-technical summary The distribution of household carbon footprints is largely unequal within and across countries. Here, we explore household-level consumption data to illustrate the distribution of carbon footprints and consumption within 26 European Union countries, regions and social groups. The analysis further sheds light on the relationshi...

Insights into subnational environmental impacts and the underlying drivers are scarce, especially from a consumption‐based perspective. Here, we quantified greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and land‐based biodiversity losses associated with final consumption in 162 regions in the European Union in 2010. For this purpose, we developed an environmentall...

As households get smaller worldwide, the extent of sharing within households reduces, resulting in rising per capita energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This article examines for the first time the differences in household economies of scale across EU countries as a way to support reductions in energy use and GHG emissions, while conside...

Around two-thirds of global GHG emissions are directly and indirectly linked to household consumption, with a global average of about 6 tCO2eq/cap. The average per capita carbon footprint of North America and Europe amount to 13.4 and 7.5 tCO2eq/cap, respectively, while that of Africa and the Middle East to 1.7 tCO2eq/cap on average. Changes in con...

Scientists and policymakers recognize the need to address consumption and lifestyles in order to reconcile environmental and development agendas. Sustainability-oriented grassroots initiatives emerge bottom-up to create opportunities for sustainable lifestyles; yet no prior assessment has ascertained the efficacy of their members to reduce carbon f...

Scientists and policymakers recognize the need to address consumption and lifestyles in order to reconcile environmental and development agendas. Sustainability-oriented grassroots initiatives emerge bottom-up to createopportunities for sustainable lifestyles; yet no prior assessment has ascertained the efficacy of their members to reduce carbon fo...

The sustainability transformation calls for policies that consider the global consequences of local lifestyles. We used stakeholders' visions of sustainable lifestyles across Europe to build 19 scenarios of sufficiency (net reductions) and 17 of green consumption (shift in consumption patterns). We applied Environmentally Extended Multi-Regional In...

The oversupply of nutrients (phosphorous and nitrogen) in fresh and marine water bodies presents a serious ecosystem threat due to impacts on water quality through eutrophication. With agriculture characterized as a primary driver of eutrophication, the role of food consumption and trade has been the focus of recent phosphorus and nitrogen impact s...

Carbon footprints aim to engage consumers in contributing to climate-change mitigation. Consumption-oriented policy measures attempt to cause voluntary or incentivized interventions that reduce environmental impact through the supply chain by utilizing demand drivers. A large body of life cycle assessment studies describe how specific actions can r...

While the EU Commission has encouraged Member States to combine national and international climate change mitigation measures with subnational environmental policies, there has been little harmonized effort towards the quantification of embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from household consumption across European regions. This study develops a...

These are the slides to my TEDx talk on the environmental footprint of consumption. A link to the talk can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2GTpd0ZqDU

Available for free at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.12371/abstract We analyze the environmental impact of household consumption in terms of the material, water, and land-use requirements, as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, associated with the production and use of products and services consumed by these households. Using...