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Climate change mitigation potential of community-based initiatives in Europe

April 2019
Regional Environmental Change 19(4):927–938

DOI:10.1007/s10113-018-1428-1

Authors:

Anne Holsten

Bauhaus Earth

Federico Martellozzo

University of Florence

Show all 5 authorsHide

There is a growing recognition that a transition to a sustainable low-carbon society is urgently needed. This transition takes place at multiple and complementary scales, including bottom-up approaches such as community-based initiatives (CBIs). However, empirical research on CBIs has focused until now on anecdotal evidence and little work has been done to quantitatively assess their impact in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this paper, we analyze 38 European initiatives across the food, energy, transport, and waste sectors to address the following questions: How can the GHG reduction potential of CBIs be quantified and analyzed in a systematic manner across different sectors? What is the GHG mitigation potential of CBIs and how does the reduction potential differ across domains? Through the comparison of the emission intensity arising from the goods and services the CBIs provide in relation to a business-as-usual scenario, we present the potential they have across different activities. This constitutes the foundational step to upscaling and further understanding their potential contribution to achieving climate change mitigation targets. Our findings indicate that energy generation through renewable sources, changes in personal transportation, and dietary change present by far the highest GHG mitigation activities analyzed, since they reduce the carbon footprint of CBI beneficiaries by 24%, 11%, and 7%, respectively. In contrast, the potential for some activities, such as locally grown organic food, is limited. The service provided by these initiatives only reduces the carbon footprint by 0.1%. Overall, although the proliferation of CBIs is very desirable from a climate change mitigation perspective it is necessary to stress that bottom-up initiatives present other important positive dimensions besides GHG mitigation. These initiatives also hold the potential of improving community resilience by strengthening local economies and enhancing social cohesion.

Descriptive summary of the methodology followed for the calculation of avoided greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by the community-based initiatives (CBIs) and analysis of results

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Community-based initiative’s (CBI) performance across different activities: absolute greenhouse gas (GHG)–emissions reductions and reductions as % of beneficiaries’ carbon footprint (CF). Highlighted are the three identified groups by performance. Two CBIs from the organic food activity obtained negative emissions and are not represented

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Climate change mitigation potential of community-based

initiatives in Europe

David M. Landholm

&Anne Holsten

&Federico Martellozzo

&Dominik E. Reusser

&Jürgen P. Kropp

1,3

Received: 1 August 2017 /Accepted: 9 October 2018 /Published online: 25 October 2018

#Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract

There is a growing recognition that a transition toa sustainable low-carbon society isurgently needed. This transitiontakes place

at multiple and complementary scales, including bottom-up approaches such as community-based initiatives (CBIs). However,

empirical research on CBIs has focused until now on anecdotal evidence and little work has been done to quantitatively assess

their impact in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this paper, we analyze 38 European initiatives across the food,

energy, transport, and waste sectors to address the following questions: How can the GHG reduction potential of CBIs be

quantified and analyzed in a systematic manner across different sectors? What is the GHG mitigation potential of CBIs and

how does the reduction potential differ across domains? Through the comparison of the emission intensity arising from the goods

and services the CBIs provide in relation to a business-as-usual scenario, we present the potential they have across different

activities. This constitutes the foundational step to upscaling and further understanding their potential contribution to achieving

climate change mitigation targets. Our findings indicate that energy generation through renewable sources, changes in personal

transportation, and dietary change present by far the highest GHG mitigation activities analyzed, since they reduce the carbon

footprint of CBI beneficiaries by 24%, 11%, and 7%, respectively. In contrast, the potential for some activities, such as locally

grown organic food, is limited. The service provided by these initiatives only reduces the carbon footprint by 0.1%. Overall,

although the proliferation of CBIs is very desirable from a climate change mitigation perspective it is necessary to stress that

bottom-up initiatives present other important positive dimensions besides GHG mitigation. These initiatives also hold the

potential of improving community resilience by strengthening local economies and enhancing social cohesion.

Keywords Greenhousegas emissions .Sustainabilitytransitions .Grassrootsinitiatives .Carbonfootprint .Sustainablelifestyles .

Low carbon economy

Introduction

The impacts of human-induced climate change are growing

with unprecedented rates of observed changes across continents

and oceans in the last decades (IPCC 2014). Mitigating climate

change and its associated risks is technically feasible with so-

lutions that allow for continued economic and human develop-

ment (World Bank 2012). However, limiting temperature to

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article

(https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-018-1428-1) contains supplementary

material, which is available to authorized users.

*David M. Landholm

landholm@pik-potsdam.de

Anne Holsten

holsten@pik-potsdam.de

Federico Martellozzo

federico.martellozzo@unifi.it

Dominik E. Reusser

domi_reusser@gmx.net

Jürgen P. Kropp

kropp@pik-potsdam.de

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Leibniz

Association, Potsdam, Germany

Department of Economics and Management, University of Florence,

Florence, Italy

Institute of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Potsdam,

Potsdam, Germany

Regional Environmental Change (2019) 19:927–938

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-018-1428-1

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

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